The Church is a Missionary

Marseille is a large and culturally diverse city in France that was essentially created by many villages that just grew into one another a long time ago. For this reason, a village mentality still exists, meaning that much of life happens in your little neighborhood. You shop in your neighborhood, go to school in your neighborhood, and work in your neighborhood. 

Situated in one of these little neighborhoods is a church called the Chapelle de Fuveau. Planted by missionaries, it is now a congregation of faithful Jesus-lovers who live and love in their modern-day village: their neighborhood. 

I got to be a part of their neighborhood and congregation this past week by participating in “Christians on mission summer session.” There were ninety something participants, about half from Marseille and the other half from twelve different countries. It was a week intensely and intentionally spent on spiritual development and outreach. Basically, we studied the Word in the morning, served the community in the afternoon, and practiced hospitality with church members in the evenings. 

The more I went about the week, the more I realized that this wasn’t some special event for the church; it was just a continuation of how they normally are all the time.

For example, one afternoon we went to a nursing home to sing. As we walked up and down the halls singing worship songs, one young man from Marseille ended up at the back of the pack every time. I noticed that he greeted almost every resident and talked to them. “They didn’t know I could sing!” He said to me with a chuckle. I must have looked a little puzzled because he went on to explain, “I come here a lot just to volunteer and talk to them, so they are very surprised to see that I can sing!” That’s how I learned that going to this nursing home was not a special outreach of this week alone, but rather people from the church visit here all the time in their free time.

It was the same story with every service activity we did. When we passed out flyers to invite people to a free concert at the church, we kept bumping into people that the church members knew...not from church, just from being in the neighborhood. Whether it was visiting the elderly or the homeless, the church members knew the people and the people knew the church members. 

I was immediately impressed but couldn’t put words to it to explain why until a while later. And here’s what I realized. The missionary in this neighborhood is not any person or team of foreigners. In fact, the neighborhood might not even know there are missionaries like that living among them. The missionary in this neighborhood is the church. And the church loves its community really well. 

I know a lot of missions-minded churches, and the Chapelle de Fuveau isn’t one of them. It is more than missions-minded, it livesmissionally. The people of that church are unified around a mission, and it’s not to be “good Christians”, but to spread the love of Christ in their community. They don’t come on Sunday morning to fill up but rather to be sent out. And I heard over and over not only from the leaders but also the members that each person in the church is valued and utilized for their gifts, which bless the body as well as the community. That’s what the body of Christ looks like. 

Not only do they love their neighbors well, but they love each other well. During my stay, one of the young single women in the church celebrated her twentieth birthday. To honor her, the church held a special lunch. They put out a delicious spread of food and dessert and made special party fruit punches, like the fancy kind with orange slices floating on top. They decorated the church hall with balloons and streamers, and I’m not talking one or two strands. They went all out! And when she entered the room and everyone was there waiting for her, they burst into applause like she was a celebrity. In fact, when the applause should have naturally died down, they kept it going stronger and stronger, as if begging for an encore, while she stood there and beamed, soaking up the love of her family in Christ. It genuinely brought tears to my eyes, for even I could feel the current of love flowing in and out of everyone in the room. That’s what the body of Christ looks like. 

We church people love to come up with strategies about evangelism and winning souls for Christ, but Jesus already gave us the strategy. He tells us that when we love one another, the world will know that we are followers of Jesus and that Jesus was sent by God (John 13:34-35). Along the same lines, Jesus says that the unity of Jesus followers will help the world to believe in him (John 17). Unity and love. That’s the strategy. 

France, generally speaking, is a post-Christian culture, which means that most people are numb and dull to spiritual things. That’s what brought one missionary couple (that helped plant the Chapelle de Fuveau) to France. They literally traveled the world in one big trip, searching for where God wanted to use them as missionaries. From the Orient to the Middle East to Africa, they saw almost every major world religion and discovered that the world is a very religious place...until they arrived in France. In France, they saw nothing. Nothing but a huge religious void. And so they decided to stay.

Even today, France is called the cemetery of missionaries. It’s a difficult field. The soil is hard, but I believe the harvest is still plentiful. For I saw the fruit of the Spirit in a little place called Chapelle de Fuveau. And it’s not just a place, but a people. It’s the body of Christ loving its people and its community well, reaching out with servant hearts to their little corner of Marseille. 

The church is Christ’s best missionary. 

You always hear that you can be a missionary wherever you go and that every city is a mission field, and it’s true. But this story puts flesh on it. Missions is not just something that a church funds; it’s what the church does. The church doesn’t just pray for missionaries and send out missionaries; the church is the missionary to their community. In this way, the church and missions become inseparable. God’s mission is accomplished in all places where the church exists, and every member of the church becomes a viable and important participant in God’s global mission - to receive praise from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people. Starting with the people in your village, your neighborhood.