Last night, while on the phone, I was convicted in the way I have been presenting my story to potential supporters. I am employed by Great Commission Ministries and my current job responsibilities are to build up a ministry team of people who give financially to and pray for GCM. All financial gifts that I raise go into a specific account that I am responsible for. Out of that money given my insurance is paid, some ministry expenses are taken care of and I am given a set salary. Once the account has a certain amount of money coming in each month, then I will be released to assignment at the University of Missouri where I will serve with The Rock Church.
I like GCM. I love the people who serve with GCM as campus, urban and foreign missionaries as well as those who serve in the headquarters and handle all things administrative for running a missionary organization. But though I am employed by GCM and I serve with GCM, they are not whom I serve. I serve the Lord first and foremost and it is his gospel, his kingdom and his message that I want to proclaim with my life and with my vocation - not GCM's.
Now, it is my calling from God that I serve vocationally as a missionary to the University of Missouri. In my four years as a student, I fell in love with my community at The Rock and developed a deep compassion for my friends and other students I didn't even know. I knew since eighth grade that God wanted me to serve in vocational ministry. It was during college that God spoke to my heart, telling me that these were the people he was preparing me to serve.
He brought me to The Rock for a reason. He opened the door of becoming employed with GCM as part of his plan for my life. It is not everyone's path to follow. GCM is not the best or only way to serve the kingdom of God - it is simply one way. So it is with a humble heart that I am thankful for those with GCM who desire to enable, equip and mobilize missionaries like myself to serve where God has called us. They are a blessing to me and I am, to a degree, a GCM representative, but they are not my king. My allegiance relies solely as an ambassador for Christ and my purpose is to be a vessel for him to change in the lives of those around me. The students of the University hold a special place in my heart and that is why he has lead me to serve in a college ministry like The Rock.
If that has not been clear to those of you I have met and shared with, then please accept my deepest apologies. I serve along side GCM with gladness but I answer only to God. He guides my path and this is the one he has chosen for me. I embrace his desire to bring those alongside me who will pray for me, The Rock and will give financially in order for me to serve the campus full-time as a missionary.
So thank you for giving, for praying or for prayerfully considering giving to GCM on my behalf. I am humbled and grateful that God desires to build up a team of supporters who I can minister to and who minister to me in my journey of serving as a college missionary. May God bless you in your faithfulness in responding to what he has put on your hearts. And thank you from the bottom of mine.
