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Discover your mission style!We are all different and we are all unique. Yet for some reason, student mission has often had more of a 'one size fits all' approach. We want to reach a wide variety of people through releasing the unique contribution of all those participating in evangelism. Have you noticed that some people revel and excel in doing certain types of mission activity and others just don't? Why is that? Could it be that we each have our own God-given style of doing mission and that by understanding more of how God has made us can make us more effective in mission? Using the concept of learning styles we can shed some light on this.
Coming soon...discover your mission style here!
What happens when someone comes to know Jesus? They go through a process of learning about him. Now, you might say it is more than just learning; it is about getting to know Jesus, a revelation and experiencing him. This is what the learning styles are about. We have to learn the facts like a theorist, decide whether God will actually make a difference to us like a pragmatist, experience him like an activist and mull over it all to make a decision like a reflector. As people learn about Jesus, they will do it most naturally through their own individual learning style. The facts will make the most difference to the theorist; an experience of God will make the most difference to an activist and so on. We need to discover of a wide variety of missional avenues that cover all the different learning styles, so that we are not missing opportunities that help people learn about Jesus. The other side of this is that I have my own specific learning style and therefore I will most naturally share Jesus with you in the way that would most impact me. We all have preferences, different backgrounds and upbringings, unique interests, motivations, passions and desires. Our preferences affect the way we engage, act and communicate. It's not a great leap to suggest that all this influences our approach to mission and evangelism. As we look at our preferred learning style, we can explore what types of mission we might most feel at home with. It is about discovering our God-given way of showing the world who he is and becoming comfortable and confident in that. We call this our mission style. These mission styles are a bit like love languages. The point of love languages is to learn other people's language to communicate love in a way they can best receive it. Quite often it can be in ways that aren't natural to us. There are definitely missional things I feel out of my depth with, but people respond to them. It is about us laying down our lives so that others come to know Jesus. So on one hand we need to understand ourselves so that we can find our natural way of leading people to Jesus but also to learn to understand and appreciate others better so that we can communicate in their language. The more we understand ourselves and how God has made us, the more we can help people who are different from us grow towards God. All we have to offer up is ourselves. This might not provide the excuse we're looking for to get out of handing out free water at 3am or skipping the next debate but it can provide a freedom to pursue areas where we are most effective and facilitate others to do the same.
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