finding your mission field

Ah, the mission field. I guarantee that if you've grown up in the church in any capacity you have heard about the mission field, whether it pertains to your personal mission field or your church's. When talking about mission fields many people reference Acts 1:8:
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"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
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​In this verse, Jesus calls the disciples to be His witnesses in their immediate surroundings, the neighboring regions, and all across the world. This can be applied in different settings. Some people feel a calling to international missions, others to corporate America and others to college campuses. Some have a heart for those in the sports industry, the music industry, or the future generations. These are all mission fields!

But how do you find your mission field?

I believe that we all are capable of — and called to — having a mission field in senses both specific and broad. I consider it foolish to limit God's revelation of your mission field to one specific way, so please do not take this post the only way to discover yours. Rather, I want to share my experience with you. What I have found to be true concerning the discovery of one's mission field is the work of a couple different factors at play:
- Your passions.
- The good news of the Gospel for you.

Your Passions.
I am a firm believer that the Lord has intentionally instilled unique passions in each and every one of His image-bearers. ​
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For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Psalm 139:13-14

These passions can be anything: photography, nature, cars, teaching, music, etc. The list could go on forever. It's important to pay attention to your passions and interests, as the intentionality with which they were knitted into your being can serve as a map to your mission field. What are your passions? In what ways do you feel that your passions could be used to reach a certain group of people? Spend some time in prayer with the Lord sifting through your passions and asking how they can be used to glorify Him. (I find it of the utmost importance to warn each of you how quickly and subtly a passion can become an idol, as it did with me. Always pursue God more than the blessing, the Gift-Giver more than the gift.) God cares about the things we care about. He has put passions in our hearts for a reason. 
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Personally, I have always been drawn to nature, animals and the wilderness. One day in the fall of my senior year of high school I was exposed to the idea that the scientific culture is a mission field, too. Ever since then, I have been convinced of my calling to the scientific world. While it was my passions that sent me in the direction I have pursued — the direction I feel very strongly the Lord was calling me to — the idea of my mission field has been honed with the revelation of the Gospel's good news to me.

The Gospel's Good News.
It wasn't until recently — like, three weeks ago — that I finally discovered what the good news of the Gospel is to me. Reflect here for a second — if you can't truthfully say that the Gospel is good news to you, that's okay. Pray and ask the Lord to reveal to you what the good news is for you. And then trust that whatever comes to your mind is the Holy Spirit speaking to you. For me, the good news is that there is no place on this earth — no wilderness — that is more wild than my relationship with the Lord. Now that I know what the good news is for my life, I want to tell everybody, but I especially want to tell people who are like me, people who put their hope in nature rather than in God. 

This is where the idea of specific and broad mission fields come into play. My specific mission field is people who are searching in nature for something that only God can provide. I have a heart for this group of people because that's the kind of person I used to be. I very deeply understand where they come from and what they search for. My mentor Brent, on the other hand, has a completely different perception of the Gospel's good news, and that allows him to have a different specific mission field, one with which I am unable to empathize as much. When I asked him how the good news of the Gospel effected his ministry, he replied with this:
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To me, the Good News, is that when I was least worth loving Jesus reached past my bitterness and hatred and saved me from myself. I don’t mean that on a grand, theological scale, I mean it personally. Literally, July 7th 2012, Jesus had an encounter with me in my room and stopped me from committing suicide. It’s the first bit of good news I ever heard and the only one I care about. My reasons for loving Jesus are unashamedly selfish; I wouldn’t love him if he hadn’t done that for me, and the Gospel would just be words on a page without it. I wish I was capable of loving him for who he is because he’s worthy of it. But I either wasn’t capable or wasn’t willing to live in such a way before July 7th. And, truthfully, it’s only after many, many more encounters with Him that I’ve found my desire to worship and serve him to be less selfish. 
That made my mission field extremely simple. I wanted to reach everyone but, mostly, I wanted to reach the people who were like me. 
The ones who grew up hearing about a man they’d never met. The one’s that well-meaning churches and friends and parents had convinced had life in Christ but were, in reality, just like me. Just people walking around, going through the motions, unknowingly waiting for the moment they realized their life was built on nothing. The ones who were like me.
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And upon asking a dear friend Chantel the same question, she replied:
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For my life, the good news has proven to be that Jesus came to redeem my true self. Not the person I have been taught by society to be. But the person who is most true to the child in me. We live in a world in which everything is predicated upon keeping up with the Joneses or even being the Joneses. The good news for me is that Jesus is the standard and His method of bringing me to Him is coming to me. This has shaped my mission field because, as a black woman in finance, so often black women are competing to be better than the next, simply as a self preservation tactic. I want to bring ministry into my mission field by being the person that is willing to help others realize that they are enough. That the true power of God is in them, and money is nothing to fear. I want to change the paradigm of thought associated with money, power and identity by bringing Jesus into the conversation. The good news is that you don't need "things" and there is nothing to keep up with. Simply be who you are and Jesus will come to you, no dollar signs or titles attached.
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The three of us have very different versions of what the Gospel's good news is in our lives, and it is that good news that shapes the mission fields that are very specific to us. Chantel is far better equipped to reach black women in finance than I am, and I am better equipped to reach bush-goers in Africa than she is. This is one of my favorite things about the power of Jesus and His ability to use each of our passions to further His Kingdom here on earth.

Despite our different specific mission fields and the different good news that each of us has to share, each of our messages ultimately communicates the same thing, as my friend Graham pointed out when I asked him the question:
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 I believe that in this life we all search for two things: love and satisfaction. We search for it in all these different areas of our lives, but nothing other than Jesus will give us the love and satisfaction that we so deeply crave. A relationship with God means that I am fully known and loved by the Creator of everything. Jesus satisfies me and helps me know that I am loved and enough.

This brings me to the broader message that we all have to share: Jesus is the only thing that satisfies. No matter what desire we're looking to satisfy, Jesus is the only thing that will bring the satisfaction for which we search. We can convince ourselves otherwise — and be convinced otherwise by the enemy —, but the reality is that there is no job, no relationship, no accomplishment, etc. that will satisfy us the way that Jesus can and will, if we let Him. Nothing. And it is this broader message that allows us to reach a greater group of people: people who turn to things other than Jesus for love and satisfaction, no matter what that "thing" is to which they turn. This is what allows me to evangelize to a desperate church-goer who has never had a relationship with Jesus or to a black woman competing in the financial world. In the same way it allows Brent and Chantel to evangelize to someone returning from the African bush disappointed by the lack of satisfaction they had set out to find (which, ironically enough, was me about four months ago). While our Gospel experiences will be more helpful to specific people with similar experiences, the message is the same regardless: Jesus satisfies.

Taking these two things into account — our passions and the Gospel's good news to us —, along with dedicated prayer and conversation with the Lord, we are able to find our mission fields. So if you're curious about the mission field the Lord may have in store for you, I'd greatly encourage you to spend some time with Him meditating over these things. If you feel like you already have an idea of what your mission field is, what is it? I'd love to hear how the Lord is using different people's mission fields to further His Kingdom in every area of the world! As always, if you have any questions, please leave them below.

May the dust of the Rabbi cover you,
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Kerrington