It was a Tuesday night I will never forget. Tom and Alice had invited me over to talk about "something important." As I sat and drank a diet Coke in their comfortable living room, I couldn't help but wonder what was in store for me.

Our conversation shifted back and forth--serious, then light, then serious again. We talked about Alice's father and his untimely death. We talked about the encouraging new church where we recently had met, laughing about some hilarious incidents that resulted from holding our church services in an elementary school. We talked about the previous Sunday's Bible message and how puzzling it was that the same loving, sovereign God described there could also be the God who allowed Alice's father to die. "Aren't there thousands of criminals in prison who deserve to die more than my dad?" Alice asked. I took another sip of my soft drink and considered her point.

Minutes turned into an hour, and I found that as the questions grew more complex and difficult, my answers could only be more simple and loving--rational, yet straight from the heart. I talked about the character of God, what He's like, what He did through Jesus. I talked about the hopeless condition of all people--not just criminals and fathers, but me too--until we meet Christ. As I discussed Who Jesus Christ is and what He means to me personally, I could sense a light bulb going on for Alice. 

Then her question forever froze in time that moment for me: "Well, Nate, if I wanted a personal relationship with God like the one you're describing, what exactly would I do?"

I don't know if I've ever experienced a moment which held greater significance than that moment when her question lingered in the air. She was asking me if she could meet God and know Him now. She was asking if she too could live with Him forever.

I quickly prayed for help, and for Alice and Tom to "get it," to understand they could find Him in their living room that very night. It wasn't the first time I'd prayed for them. In fact, long before this opportunity came along, my conversations with God had led me to hope for it. Now I keenly sensed my own helplessness and asked God to do what only He can do. Then I briefly explained what the Bible says about entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

A few moments later Alice--and then Tom--prayed and asked Jesus Christ to be their personal Lord and Savior. I found the next few minutes were almost a blur for me. We located an old Bible Tom kept on a shelf. We outlined passages they could begin reading to understand more. We identified a small group in our church in which they would feel comfortable. We talked about this thing called baptism. I prayed with them once more before I left, and in my heart I imagined angels rejoicing.

Then I was back in my car driving home. Part of me was elated. Yet part of me was puzzled, even troubled. I had been a Christian for more than 30 years. I had taught Sunday school classes, been a youth director, served as a deacon, sung in and directed the choir. Yet, until the past few months, this incredible experience of leading people to Christ was one which I had rarely experienced. Now I was experiencing it every month or two. What was happening?

On that drive home, I began to analyze and think about the differences in the kind of Christian I had always been and the kind of Christian I was becoming. In my case, the transformation seemed to be closely tied to my involvement in a new church--one that really was trying to reach "unchurched" people. But I decided that I had known other Christians like this who hadn't necessarily been part of starting a church, but who were--to describe it in one phrase--Christians who were on mission.

What do I mean by an on mission Christian? Well, I certainly don't mean a higher class of Christian, or a second or third work of grace, or even a deeper maturity level. If I were to describe it with my emotions, I would simply say that my heart yearns to see people come to know God personally. The experiences I've now had with people like Tom and Alice have become "addictive" to me--I need more of them. I've started seeing people differently. I intuitively approach others looking for clues to whether they know God personally or not, and when they indicate they don't, I just as intuitively start speculating about which barriers may have hindered them from truly hearing the gospel. And I really, really want to help remove those barriers.

But that's a description of what it feels like on the inside for me. And while I know there's no magic formula or uniform process, in the months that have passed since that drive home from Tom and Alice's house, I've tried to think more analytically and objectively about what it means to be on mission. There are not only people, but churches, who have the evangelistic zeal and mission-minded passion that is newfound in my life.

What makes them that way? What does it mean to be on mission?

An on mission Christian spiritually awakens.

"...I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life..." John 4:35-36 NIV

An on mission Christian starts as a regular Christian. By that I mean he or she has come to know Christ, is growing in relationship to Him, and is serving in a local church. And that describes where I was when I started becoming an on mission Christian. Coming to Christ for forgiveness and renewal when my life strayed from Him. Growing--sometimes steadily, sometimes in surges--as I spent time in Bible study and prayer and obedience. Serving others in the church by using my gifts of teaching or organizing or leading.

Still, I have to admit, missions studies never kept my attention. Witnessing courses sounded too intimidating and too demanding. Church visitation was a matter of duty, not desire. Most of those opportunities--and most of the people leading them--left me feeling guilty and uncomfortable. Though I knew it wasn't completely true, I felt they were trying to get me to do something that worked for them, but not for me. And, to be honest, I wondered why they didn't seem to make more of a difference. My church was seeing very few people become Christians. I was personally seeing even fewer.

But because I was committed to my church, I continued to listen, and study, and pray, and to give help to people I sensed were on mission reaching others for Christ. I wasn't awake yet, but I was stirring.

Increasingly, I couldn't miss the dissonance between what the Bible was describing as normal and healthy, and what I was experiencing personally. The Great Commission was emerging to me as the direct responsibility and mission of all believers, and I was beginning to realize that coming and growing and serving in the church weren't all that God wanted for me. Somehow He wanted me to be involved in leading others to Christ. At first, I just couldn't figure out what that meant for me personally, and I couldn't find my style with others who seemed to be doing it.

About that time a handful of Christian friends, including my wife and me, started talking and praying about why our churches didn't seem to be impacting our community and why our lives weren't drawing others to Christ.

And for me, that's where it began. I believe the Holy Spirit was stirring in our hearts and creating an "awakening," a realization that was very real and very personal. I began to realize that people need to know God--no, it was more than that--people around me need to know God, and loving Him meant letting Him use me to make that happen.

As Henry Blackaby writes about in Experiencing God, the Lord was bringing me to a "crisis of belief" where I had to reconcile what the Bible says with my own life and experience. My relationship with Christ was not only to be "come, grow and serve." It was to include "go." And, frankly, that scared me to death.

An on mission Christian continually adjusts.

"To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." 1 Corinthians 9:22 NIV

"Upward" spiritual awakenings always lead to "inward" spiritual adjustments. On mission Christians are not evangelistic "square pegs" that have been whittled and hammered into evangelistic "round holes." They are God-crafted pegs of all shapes and sizes who have adjusted--twisted, turned, rotated--until they discover how God has uniquely positioned them to "go" and bring others to Christ rather than "stay" an insider whose faith is only connected to God and other Christians.

When I was "awakened" with a new sensitivity to the people around me who needed Christ, my initial fear led me to deep spiritual introspection. How am I going to do this, God? You know how I feel about this! I'm willing to "go," but I feel so inadequate and I don't know how to start...

Have you ever noticed how many times in the Bible people say something like that to God? Yet it is in that moment of weakness and submission when God raises up on mission Christians. Using an obedient, broken disciple who has been newly awakened and committed to the mission, God begins the inward adjustments. Where there's a will submitted to God, there's a way provided by God.

My inner adjustment led me to start asking myself why the people of my community weren't coming to my church, or my house, or my desk at work to hear the gospel message. That may sound kind of silly--doesn't everyone know that you have to go and meet people where they are? But the reality is that most coming, growing, serving Christians like me are doing very little to go to the places where people don't know God personally. We need an adjustment in our habits and patterns of thinking.

Adjusting means re-evaluation. How am I living my life or leading in my church, and to what degree are those plans and processes designed to reach people who aren't "churched" already?

Adjusting means research. What are the people around me like? How do they spend their time and what interests have a hold on their hearts? 

When an on mission Christian commits to inward adjustment, he or she is committing to teachability, to learning new ways of thinking and acting, often because the old ones weren't fruitful. Perhaps the most painful adjustment an on mission Christian makes is the commitment to change, and to embrace new patterns and create new strategies in order to reach new people.

That's not to say that the age-old strategies of leading people to Christ aren't valuable. In fact, the most effective new ways of sharing Christ are usually a simple return to New Testament principles. But applying those principles to today's situations and people often requires the Spirit-led creativity of on mission Christians who are learning to adjust so that those timeless principles may find personal, practical incarnation.

Adjusting, on mission Christians learn to hate the obstacles that stand between people and the gospel so much that they learn what those obstacles are, and they form creative strategies for removing them. An adjusting, on mission Christian is a lifelong learner who twists and turns and flips and rotates until his or her unique style as a Christian forms a creative bridge between Jesus Christ and people who don't know Him--yet.

An on mission Christian evangelistically activates

"How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" Romans 10:14 NIV

An on mission Christian discovers that an "upward" spiritual awakening and "inward" spiritual adjustments inevitably result in "outward" spiritual activity. And the liberating discovery that God made you personally to share Christ often leads to wonderful innovation. Examples:s

• One on mission friend I know volunteered as a "welcome wagon" greeter for her town so she could call on all the new families who moved in and ask them if they needed information on area churches.
  
• Another couple offered a brief, six-week "overview of the Bible" class in their home and found that many of their "unchurched" neighbors were interested.
  
• Still another delivered brownies and a Christian video to every home in their neighborhood before Christmas.
  
• The "adjusted" methods used by our new church resulted in people who had not been to church in years--like Tom and Alice--coming to know Christ.

In other words, activated Christians find increased opportunities to share Christ. They develop patterns of living and disciplined behaviors which somehow utilize their unique shape and situation to create occasions of divine appointment.

That doesn't mean it's always easy. The professional athlete who gives glory to God on camera has to endure the scorn of the locker room. The attorney who shares his faith or stands on her integrity becomes the target of unscrupulous methods. The teacher who speaks of eternal truth or a creative personal God is accused of being less intellectual, less objective or even less safe for the students. Those natural avenues, an on mission Christian discovers, don't make sharing Christ any easier, they just make the opportunities more frequent.

Being activated--actually developing a personalized lifestyle that results in regular opportunities to share Christ--is where the rubber meets the road for an on mission Christian. There are lots of Christians who talk about it. Many long for it. Some have even been trained for it. It's curious that so few of us experience it.

An on mission Christian passionately advocates.

"He told them, `The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.'" Luke 10:2 NIV

I really wish I had discovered earlier in life that actively leading people to Christ did not have to be an unusual, occasional experience reserved for a minority of Christians. And I wish I knew more about how to "activate" regular Christians like me. In fact, that's something else that describes on mission Christians. They long to see other believers leave the sideline and "get in the game." They become passionate advocates for the awakening of more and more on mission Christians.

Of course, only God can do the awakening. Yet I can't help but believe it would please Him immensely to see more Christians sharing Christ. And I have a couple of hunches about how that might happen--how God can multiply the minority of on mission Christians into a majority. 

The first hunch is that each of us "regular" Christians, with God's help, has to discover a personalized path to being on mission. Someone else's inspiring story, someone else's creative method, someone else's magazine article--well, those allow the mission to remain at arm's length. If we choose to be on mission, it is because God has intimately touched our hearts with the profundity of our salvation and opened our eyes to the personal way He created us to be on mission with Him.

For me, and for many others, being on the ground floor of a new church gave me opportunities and put me in positions where it was very natural to share Christ. God had gifted me to help plan and organize a new church, and then to teach many "unchurched" people whose natural questions drew the gospel out of me.

For others, the activation process might be entirely different. For you--well, how might God do it for you in a way that matches your personality, your vocational skills, your setting, your unique gifts and abilities?

My second hunch is that if God is going to activate more of us regular Christians into on mission Christians, it will take not only personalized paths, but purposeful partners. An on mission Christian recognizes that God made Christians to work in teams. The team may be as small as two people or a team of leaders within a church. It may be a whole church. Or it may be a worldwide network of churches--cooperating and volunteering and sending and sharing and reproducing.

But "missions" can't be defined as something that someone else does. "Evangelism" can't be defined as something for which only certain Christians are gifted. Christians who are awakening and adjusting and discovering personal ways to share Christ must passionately advocate that process in many, many others. And churches must advocate focused, deliberate, creative, versatile ways to empower everyone in their church to be on mission.

The reality is that even the heartiest on mission Christian won't last long in isolation. The Bible is clear that to be actively sharing Christ means to be attacked by many adversaries. And the inner strength that God provides by His Spirit is augmented by the strength that comes from being active together with other on mission Christians.