Learning A Different Kind of Faith

I have often wondered how Christians live out their faith. We read in the headlines or see on the television set the ways that Christians fall in regards to displaying their faith to an already unbelieving and apprehensive world. Occasionally we are reminded that one or two of the great names in Christianity are visiting our city for another annual crusade. But how do Christians, as individuals working and living their normal lives prove a difference in the way they choose to live from those who have chosen different paths? How does church become a different experience than the one previously expected in the minds of so many unbelievers? I have often wondered if Christians were to stop evangelizing in the streets would the voice of Jesus still be heard. Is it possible to live in such a way that you convince others without the use of a track; by simply sitting beside them at the beach? The Sunday school answer is yes. The answer from a world far outside the classroom is the same.

Recently I have spent the last year of life in a small town community on the southern Caribbean side of Costa Rica. I wanted this time to discover for myself how I saw Mission work in the world. I came with the title of Missionary. I have since dropped it. My perspective of Mission has changed. My understandings of faith and evangelism have changed. I would love to say that I did not come with the grandiose presumption that I would leave this place with a trail of newly converted Christian believers behind me, well on their way to a better life and a relationship with God, and that I simply wanted to learn, but the previous months have shown me that many of the ways in which I misunderstood what this time of "mission" would be, are the same road blocks that have caused Christians to receive a title that God does not deserve. You visit the large churches in your area and guaranteed in the fold you find concern about numbers attending, money returning, and competition between other churches either managed or excessive.