God's Economy

We had a representative from a New Tribes Mission Training Center come and speak to your youth group tonight about their Wayumi Training Center in Pennsylvania.  We are planning to take a group there for a week over the summer.  They teach the kids what it is like to be a missionary entering the jungle for the first time to share the gospel with an unreached people group.

The kids will learn how to present the gospel, they'll sleep in hammocks (that is a highlight for the kids :), they will study about languages, they'll participate in exercises aimed at teaching them about international travel and actually go through a mock customs, and they'll experience a tribal encounter along with other mission specific exercises and at least an hour a day studying the word of God in a group setting.

It was awesome to watch how excited they got during tonight's presentation!  The speaker said something that stuck out to me and my mind hung on to it for later....He said, "God places value in two ways....eternal or worthless".  "So, if we want to invest in God's economy, we will invest in the eternal....which is GOD'S WORD and THE SOULS OF MEN."  No time spent reading GOD'S WORD or LOVING PEOPLE TO CHRIST is ever wasted time....(and that is really saying something in this age and culture where we waste so much time due to our weapons of mass distraction...just my opinion.)

Anyway, I appreciated that he told the kids that God may not call all of them to be missionaries in distant lands, but He may call a couple out of our group to this type of mission.  But, that this experience will challenge all of them...help them to understand what missionaries to unreached populations face and, really, how to present the gospel anywhere we are living.  He said the biggest lesson to learn from an experience like this is to change the way we think....or, rather how we might ask, "what do I/you want to be when I/you grow up?"  to "what is God doing and where does He want me to join Him in that work?"  If our kids take that mindset away from their experience this summer, I will be so excited to see how God will use them! ...AND THAT IS PRICELESS!