Migration is Symphony

Photo by Stringberd

I just completed my mid-year self-evaluation as a Diaspora Missions Catalyst for my organization.  This gave me the opportunity to reflect on diaspora a bit and consider why I feel it should be a primary concern of the Church today.  The following are the first two paragraphs of my evaluation. Here you get a sense of what's going on in my heart in this field:

The consistent and overwhelming teaching of Scripture is that God is the sovereign superintendent of all human movement on the earth.  From his original commission to “multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28), the sending out of great diaspora heroes such as Abraham, Moses, and Daniel, to the Great Commission itself, God’s missional purposes have always been centrifugal in trajectory.  Migration is symphony, orchestrated according to the perfect will of the Triune God who, for the sake of mission, determines the times and exact places where people should dwell (Acts 17:26-28).  It is “a missional means decreed and blessed by God” (LCWE, 2010).  The Church, globally and locally, must embrace the purpose of God in the ever-increasing movement of people and be committed to faithfully engaging in mission to, through, and beyond diasporas.

Thus far during 2012, I have sought to be faithful to the task of catalyzing mission to, through, and beyond diasporas.  In the following pages, I have attempted to summarize my work in this field and I hope you will see evidence God’s hand of blessing at work and that the Spirit will prompt you to worship and thanksgiving as a result.  As I have pursued this work, I have grown increasingly convinced that the 215 million diaspora people in the world today represent the absolute “tip of the spear” of God’s active redemptive mission in the world.  I doubt it is possible for a Christian denominational body or mission agency to neglect diaspora mission and simultaneously be faithful to follow God’s leading in mission today.  God is on the move in the people on the move!