anyI am Brittany Bruns and I am a missionary.

When you read “missionary” you probably did one of three things:

1. The “Girls In Action” song started playing on a loop in your head;
2. You imagined me in a hut in Africa;
3. You thought, “She must be pretty religious…I could never do that.”

Those things could be true about me, but they’re not. We need to start changing our idea of what a missionary looks like, and the type work a missionary does. Because when I read Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:19 and 4:19 we are all to live sent lives. We are all called to live on mission…to go and make disciples.

We have taken the word – Missionary – and given it a heavy weight, a heavy responsibility, a definition that seems unattainable and larger than us.  I believe we have taken missionary Paul of the New Testament and placed him on a pedestal – someone to aspire to, but not really someone we can relate too.

When God called our family of five, three of which are kids, to be missionaries and move to Germany, there was nothing logical about that decision. I am not a Biblical theologian. I do not speak German.  And I am not the most “religious” person I know.
So why am I going?  Because I can see in my life when, where, and how God has been faithful. And out of His faithfulness to me, I can trust Him.  As I labored for months to dispel the lies of Satan that fueled my fear, God’s voice became louder. So much so that when God asked us to move to Berlin and work in former communist-controlled, eastern Germany, I was prepared to go. As Abram did in Genesis 13:17, “he moved his tent” to the land God was calling him to.  And by obedient faith, I will move mine!
My question for you is – Who are you not talking to? Who are you not sharing a relationship with over a cup of coffee? Are you avoiding anyone because you are afraid of what they will think of you? Who can you invite to a Bible study, but you are not?  Most of us aren’t doing these things because we are afraid.

Fear stops us from doing God’s work. We allow our fear to be bigger than our faith. Bigger than God.

Are we afraid?  Yes!  Are we traditional missionaries? Maybe. Are we going to live in a hut? I hope not!  But, we know that God is bigger than the mountain of fear we must climb to get there.

I hope that next time someone says they are a missionary you will think, “I am too”, and give validity to the work that is in your midst.

Brittany Bruns and her family will be working with a small church outside of Berlin, Germany.  

For more from inContext, click here.