The Thessalonians Stayed Home

You might be surprised to hear that I am an introvert if you know that I spent 28 years teaching engineering. How can a teacher be an introvert, when the job requires one to stand and talk in front of a full classroom? Although I was initially timid when it came to something I was passionate about like engineering, my eagerness to share that joy overcame my reticence to speak in public. 

You might also be surprised to hear that I am an introvert if you know that I am an entrepreneur. I started one company and helped grow another. One would think an interest in business development would require an extroverted personality. It is true that I naturally seek the periphery of a crowded room rather than the center. I will likely strike up a quiet conversation with a few rather than boisterously tell entertaining stories to a large group. Nevertheless, I have been able to grow a network of colleagues and friends in my own quiet way.

Introverts are not anti-social, but we also don’t seek to be the center of attention. Our internal energy does not come from a crowded, loud party. Rather, we recharge in small groups of interaction, or better yet, from time spent alone. It turns out that introverts were not as distraught as their extroverted friends when the COVID-19 lockdown kept everyone home. Introverts do enjoy interaction, but the lockdown kept the interactions more manageable. For example, even while working from home I was interacting many times each day with colleagues. My calls not only connected me with others in my home state of Michigan but also with co-workers in the American southwest and others across the Atlantic. 

I am not only an introvert, I also happen to have mild hearing loss. It is a disability that can make conversations more challenging, particularly in situations such as listening to a soft-spoken person sitting on the far side of a large room. I have found the challenge is much less pronounced in a video conferencing meeting where each person is speaking into a microphone. The COVID-19 lockdown pushed many of my business, church, and even family meetings to video conferencing. Like most of us, I have become adept at Zoom, Teams, Meets, and more. Ironically, the move to video meetings has improved my social interaction because I can more accurately make out what others were saying.

Is the Great Commission for Introverts Too?

If introverts like me shy away from large groups and avoid public speaking, I’ve sometimes wondered whether the Great Commission applies to me. Perhaps only extroverts are meant to be missionaries, going into all the earth to make disciples. There is certainly an important role for gregarious missionaries traveling to foreign locales. For example, the itinerant apostle Paul visited the city of Thessalonica around 50 AD during his second missionary journey. His preaching brought the Good News to the Thessalonians for the first time. 

If introverts like me would also prefer to stay home rather than go out on the town, I’ve again wondered whether the Great Commission applies to me. Today, when we think of missionaries, our minds quickly associate such work with a foreign location. The missionary bulletin board at most churches displays pins scattered across a world map to represent the locations of the missionaries they support.  Mission trips similarly feature trips to a far-away location. For example, I have friends and relatives who work regularly for a relief agency that brings help in the name of Christ to areas stricken by disaster. They go wherever the disasters hit, traveling far and wide.

The association of mission with distance also comes up when we think of engineering and technology as a  service-based mission. For example, senior engineering students at Christian universities in the United States often choose “mission” projects as the focus of their capstone design experience. By using the label of mission, they typically mean an international humanitarian project. The specific projects can vary widely. One might be a civil engineering project developing a sanitary sewer system for a village in the Andes foothills of Ecuador. Another might be a mechanical and electrical engineering project to design a community solar-powered lampost that serves a dual purpose of night light and cell-phone charger for sunny Ghana. The common theme is as much the remote location as it is the need for technical assistance. While I am encouraged to see Christian engineering students serving others using their technical gifts, I worry that labeling these as mission projects implies that other projects do not provide opportunities for Christian witness and service. The label of “mission” creates a subtle division between the projects, characterizing them as either sacred or secular. Yet every project should be considered sacred: an opportunity to love God and neighbor.  

The Mission Field is Also Local

When the gospel came to Thessalonica, the first believers formed a local church. Having done so, as far as we know, they did not immediately depart on mission trips. They stayed home. Remaining in their neighborhoods and retaining their jobs, they became salt and light to their local community.  “Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” (1 Thessalonians 4:9-12)

The great commission to go into all the world and make disciples does not mean each one must travel as far as possible from one’s starting point. The harvest is not only in far-away developing countries, it is also in our own community. The lost not only live in another continent, they live next door. They are the poor and homeless on the corner. They are the workers in the same building as we work. They are the bankers, the real estate agents, and the coffee shop baristas. The lost walk the sidewalks, ride the bus, and drive the roads of our neighborhoods.

If all the world belongs to God (and it does), if Christ rules every aspect of our lives (and he does), then every aspect of our lives and every facet of our vocations should fall under divine dominion. Think about the way God made us as bodies, not simply spirits. We need to eat and drink. We need rest. God could have made us without those needs, yet he chose to design us with requirements for sustenance. Then aren’t those functions also holy? Our innate, God-given characteristics are cause for gratitude and praise. We thus pray “give us this day our daily bread.” Furthermore, God gave us characteristics that reflect his image, such as the ability to create and build. Our work is also sacred, an opportunity for gratitude and praise.

Work serves a practical purpose. Work puts food on the table and a roof over our heads. Introverts might even view their work as a means to generate money that can be charitably given to fund the mission work of an extroverted friend. However, work is not merely utilitarian. Work is also worship and witness.  Work is also part of all the world into which we are called to make disciples. This is not to say that anything we do at work is pleasing to God simply because it is part of our job. Sin can warp our work so that it no longer points in the direction God intended. 

For those of us working in technical disciplines, our work serves practical purposes, but it is also worship and witness. In principle, every engineering project is a mission project. Building a highway overpass is a mission project. Developing a new computer control system is a mission project. Designing a new four-bar linkage is a mission project.

Today the choice of pursuing a mission by staying home or by reaching out to remote communities is no longer mutually exclusive. Technology now connects us with the far-flung corners of the earth. Our global communication technology provides tools for introverts and extroverts to witness to the ends of the earth. Derek Schuurman puts it this way: “Indeed, technology has made the question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ even more broad, since we are able to reach anywhere on a global scale as never before.” (Derek C. Schuurman, Shaping a Digital World:  Faith, Culture, and Computer Technology, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013., p. 118) The breadth of our calling is all-encompassing because it all belongs to God. When I am traveling the digital highway, I can and must be the good samaritan who offers a helping hand to those I encounter.

God’s broad calling to make disciples goes beyond any geographical divisions and breaks through any temporal, civic, and professional distinctions. We are called to be missionaries on Monday as much as Sunday. We are called to be missionaries at work, at play, in our neighborhood. Wherever we go, virtually or physically, we form relationships. And in those connections, we have the opportunity to make disciples.