One of the most urgent needs in our time is the restoration of the inseparability of orthodoxy, or right believing, and orthopraxis, or right living. We do real harm to the global church and the advance of the gospel if we send out workers who are theologically illiterate or fundamentally unfaithful to authoritative biblical revelation. One only has to give brief attention to the history of American Protestant missions and they’ll be struck by the infectious nature of heterodoxy when exported through missionary efforts.
I have the privilege of serving an institution that speaks with regularity about the Great Commission. I’m part of a denomination that brings together local churches to cooperate and pool the majority of their collective resources for the sake of international missions. My own church has sent out men and women from our own congregation to places all over the globe to push back the darkness of unbelief.
With all of that said, I can’t help but notice that many of us struggle to connect the dots between what happens on our college and university campuses and God’s mission in the world.
Every Student, Every Major
You’ve heard it before. We speak of a particular group of Christians as those “called to missions.” I don’t think we intend to signal that the Great Commission is applicable only to some followers of Jesus. But language has a funny way of reflecting how we actually see ourselves and the world, not just what we claim to believe.
There are no exemptions to the Great Commission. It’s not applicable only to the varsity team (by the way, there is no “varsity Christianity”!). God’s design for every one of his redeemed children is that they would be mobilized on mission to fulfill his work in the world and make disciples of all nations.
What if this moved beyond a theological proposition or statement to which we all give polite assent, but instead shaped our homes and churches? I suspect we’d see families and students making different educational choices. We’d see students choose their respective college according to a different set of criteria than those of the world. We’d see students adopt a radically different mentality regarding student loans and debt. And we’d see students make vocational decisions and choose their majors due to a variety of new and more enduring factors.
I’m not suggesting we’d see a sudden surge of “missions majors” (although there might be great benefit from that!). Rather, a Great Commission reformation in our homes, churches, and institutions would mean we’d see students selecting their majors in a wide range of fields due to a different set of motivating factors than their unbelieving peers.
Is electrical engineering your major? Wonderful. Work hard at it, do excellent work to the glory of God, and seek to love your neighbor well. But be ready. God might call you to take your education and deliberately pursue your career in a place where you’ll be on the front lines of global mission from the marketplace.
Just don’t choose your major because you think it’s the fastest route to the fulfillment of the American Dream. The reasons you choose your major may actually be saying a lot about what and whom you truly worship.
