Video 17 Living “On Mission”
In September 2015, my wife and I had the chance to visit the French Quarter of New Orleans for the first time. My friend Tom Bilderback pastors Vieux Carre Baptist Church, smack dab in the middle of the French Quarter. To the locals, it’s just known as “the Vieux” (it’s French, so don’t pronounce the “x”).
Tom and his wife, Sonia, invited me to come down, to give a few talks to his leaders, and to preach on Sunday morning. My wife and I were so excited! A chance to get away and stroll around this historic city, listening to jazz musicians play “When the Saints Go Marching In” as parents drank sweet tea while kids played in the streets.
My expectations were crushed. The Vieux meets one block off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter—basically a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. Bourbon Street is what you get when you sear a human conscience, pump it full of alcohol, crank up the music, and take away all law and moral restraint. It’s not uncommon for two drunk people to have sex in the street, puke their guts out, pass out unconscious on the sidewalk, wake up to defecate, and then drift back into an alcoholic slumber—all before noon. Let’s just say that my visions of sipping sweet tea on Colonel Sanders’s front porch didn’t come true.
But I saw Jesus. He lives right off Bourbon Street. He resides in the embodied love and grace of a radical little group of Christian misfits who call themselves The Vieux. I was blown away at the power of Jesus at work in this community. People are getting saved. Drunks are coming to Christ. And homeless people are finding family in a ragtag group of Jesus followers who have left comfort and security to live out a mission in a godless city.
Over the weekend, I met several people who spent most of their lives on the streets sucking on a bottle of liquor. Yet they have found Jesus and now are serving him with reckless abandon. These are genuine converts—real Jesus followers. Like “Mamma Rose,” as she’s known by everyone in the Quarter. Mamma spent a good forty to fifty years of her life on the streets, downing two liters of vodka a day. I did the math: that’s equivalent to forty beers a day. I don’t think Mamma was sober for more than an hour since the early 1980s. Previous pastors of the Vieux reached out to her, and Tom and Sonia picked up where they left off. They befriended her, helped her, and built a relationship with her—something that the angry street preachers who parachute into the Quarter on Saturday nights to yell at the drunks would never do. She’s been clean now for a couple years, and she’s telling everyone about Jesus.
Then there’s Jim, who has been divorced three times and spent most of his life on the streets of the French Quarter nursing an addiction to drugs and alcohol. Pastor Tom reached out to him with the love of Christ. Now Jim’s a leader in the church. Jim’s one of the kindest, most grateful Christians I’ve ever met. And talk about brilliant: Jim studied to be a tour guide in the Quarter, and now knows everything there is to know about its history.
Story after story, convert after convert, I became addicted to hearing about the love of Christ that overflows the walls of The Vieux and spills into the streets of Sodom. The life of these disciples gave me life. Their sacrifice challenged my comfort. And I was reminded once again of the power of mission-centered, grace-filled discipleship when Christ followers take it to the streets.
Discipleship is far more than just mastering morality. It’s even more than thinking critically about tough topics. Biblical discipleship must include mission—embodying and displaying the presence of Christ beyond the four walls of church.
What I love about the ministry at the Vieux is that there was no clear distinction between discipleship and non-discipleship activities. The complaint among pastors that people only spend three hours a week pursuing spiritual growth wouldn’t make sense at The Vieux. If you ask Mamma Rose how many hours she spends pursuing spiritual growth, she’d probably laugh and say, “Every minute that I’m not sucking on a bottle.” Tom, Sonia, and the other leaders at The Vieux are living out their discipleship the second they get within a mile of church. Whether it’s providing a meal and a shower for the homeless on Friday nights, or praying over people as they walk from church to dinner (a daily scene), there’s never a time when the discipleship light turns off and then back on. The city on a hill is always lit.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a classic example of being on mission. The Samaritan wasn’t on a “mission trip.” He wasn’t clocked in to do some ministry. He was just going about his daily business and saw a man in need. He gave of his time and money to extend neighborly love to a man he didn’t know. Maybe the man in the ditch was a good man. Maybe he was not. Maybe he was a tax collector or rabbi, a sex offender or pastor. The Samaritan didn’t know. He didn’t care. Here was a human in need, and his impulse to love his neighbor kicked in.
We don’t know if the man “got saved” through the Samaritan’s actions. That’s not the point of the story. The point is that followers of Jesus must demonstrate love for all people as an extension of Christ’s love for the world.
The early Christians integrated this posture into their daily lives. Peter and John were going about their business when they converted and healed a lame beggar. Stephen was going about his business when he was arrested and gave his final testimony before he was killed. Philip was going about his business when the Spirit of God directed him to an Ethiopian eunuch. Ananias was going about his business when God called on him to convert and baptize Paul, the persecutor of the church.
The first Christians didn’t just send out missionaries. They were missionaries. Our ultimate desire, of course, is that everyone would come to the saving knowledge of Christ (see 2 Peter 3:9). But our love and service is not conditioned upon conversion. We don’t just extend love so that people get saved but because God’s love is boundless and showers down upon all (Matthew 5:44-46). Being on mission means embodying the loving and convicting presence of Christ to the world around us. You don’t need to fly over salt water to engage the mission; embodying Christ’s love is something all disciples should do. This mission is fundamental to who we are as Christians and disciples, and therefore it’s an essential piece of the church’s discipleship.