(This article is intentionally cross-posted on both my blogs.)
I’ve always been a missionary. Everywhere I’ve gone, every job I’ve performed, was always a cover for my real mission in life.
In my personal experience, there have been three missionary journeys so far. The first was my first military enlistment, a near-total failure in mission terms. I did see people come to Christ, but that had more to do with God using me despite my weaknesses at that time. Isn’t it good to know He does that? The second mission was much more redemptive; of course, it was another stint in the military. My wife and I had a very noticeable impact on folks. The third mission was to mainstream churches, and it simply proved that I didn’t belong in that environment because they aren’t ready. It was painful but fruitful in a different sense.
I still have at least one more mission in me. I’m still burning and yearning for one more shot at taking the message into some context that is ready to hear it. While I can’t pretend to know whether it will be under yet another secular sponsorship or something more openly religious in nature, I do know beyond all doubt that I’m not done yet. I’m still an arrow in the quiver, held for yet another battlefield.
On the one hand, it would be easy to find distraction in pursuing the excitement of prophetic anticipation. It’s real, but it’s beside the point. Just because I know that the battlefield is somewhere in the near future, with a fairly significant rise in social turmoil we haven’t seen before, it’s no excuse for getting wrapped up in the ability to see it coming. That’s just a tool for preparation; the mission is not in the visionary gift.
On the other hand, there will be no mission unless we come up with some thing that grabs human attention. One of the most important take-aways from the Parable of the Tares (Matthew 13:24-30) is that you cannot have a movement of faith without folks who don’t really belong there. If we plant the crop, there will always be a mixed harvest. The mixture is not harmful to the fruit of the Spirit; let God sort them out in His own time. But we must plant those seeds and let them grow together, because that’s how the fruit comes.
While I am personally most comfortable with Radix Fidem as the general shape of our religion, and even more so with our specific Kiln of the Soul ministry, I know those things aren’t the thing that carries our broader mission. It’s just the results of something which is more likely to provide the substance of our thing that we should use to grab human attention.
The fundamental issue — quite literally the foundation (fundament) of our work — is the shift from cerebral awareness to heart-led awareness. You probably can’t carry it too far without mentioning how it marks Western Civilization as a death trap, but that’s secondary. It’s something we can’t avoid discussing eventually, but it’s unlikely to be the starting place in most contexts. Everyone has to find their own path and the degree of sanitizing against Western culture is a matter of individual calling. Our main point is simply calling people to regard the heart as the seat of a higher consciousness that is most certainly not just another level of intellect.
This is the thing we show to the world, the one gift we have in our hands that really does need our efforts on the human level to spread. We can trust God to take care of what follows that transition in their lives; heart-led is the essence of faith. While we may still represent Radix Fidem as a religion and even Kiln of the Soul as our parish, those things can easily pass into the grave with us. The one thing we have to offer that will outlive us is faith itself, and we are convinced faith without that heart-mind awareness is not really faith. This is the thing without which we have nothing to offer.
And by now you surely know that I’m not interested in having my nifty little books about this stuff pushed on humanity. I’d much rather you simply grab the ideas in them and take off on your own expressions of faith. Write your own books, and poetry and songs and other artistic expressions of faith. If this same fire does not burn in you, then I’ve accomplished nothing in the first place.
Join me in this mission.
