Our Glokal Priority

There is a new term circulating in churches today. It is the word glokal, a combination of the words local and global. It describes our evengelistic targets geographically. Our foreign missions strategy at Grace has been to partner with Christian missionaries and Christian mission agencies to reach those people who have never heard the gospel message. The current missionaries and mission agencies that we support do not exclusively emphasize Mennonite distinctives. As a matter of fact some of them do not share our Mennonite beliefs at all.

Historically we have not had a strict theological criteria in supporting missionaries and mission agencies. We simply recognize that the gospel is central to all theology. We want to reach as many people as possible with the gospel. If the gospel is central in our foreign missions strategy, and we don't make strict adherence to Mennonite beliefs a test of whether we partner with missionaries and mission agencies, then why would we use a different strategy here in North America?Why not place the same value and priority on simply reaching as many people with the gospel as possible as we do oversees?

My sense is that we (Mennonite churches in this community) want to compartmentalize our foreign mission strategy from our local outreach strategy. When it comes to the home front, we are tempted to shift our priority to preserving our Mennonite distinctives rather than aggressively preaching Christ (ie reaching as many people as possible) like we do in foreign missions.

My Conclusion:
All Christians will spend eternity in heaven. I believe that only one heaven exists. Yet, often we live like there are going to be multiple heavens. "There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism…" (Eph. 4:4-6). Too often we practice spiritual segregation within the body of Christ. We don't associate with certain Christians and Evangelical groups based on cultural preferences, and spiritual convictions that are not salvific. Fellowship is broken because we cannot agree on "disputable matters" (Rom. 14:1). What are we going to do in heaven with all of the people that don't believe like we do as Mennonites? We are going to worship God together and spend all of eternity together. If we are guided by an eternal perspective, it would seem appropriate to relate to each other now the way we will relate to each other in heaven.Living out the Christian faith will vary according to interpretation and application. The key is to know what is negotiable (what are disputable matters) and what isn't.

Pastor Larry