This post confused me.

You asked people to think of “someone who is dedicated to prayerfully passing on the message of Christ to people”.

This is what every Christian should be. So I expected a post saying “look, you can do gospel ministry whatever your job and position in society”. The first two options on the list (mother and father) back up that principle.

But then most of the list is about people in salaried ministry/church/mission jobs. Are you trying to encourage everyone into overtly “Christian” work, whatever that is? Or have I misunderstood this post?

Hi Ben,

Thanks for this post - it has prompted me to think again about something thats been wandering around in my mind for a while.

That is, why do we feel we have to ‘footnote’ mission as ‘homeland and overseas’? (#83). Why can’t we just have ‘overseas missionary’ as a distinct category?

I’m thinking on this list the ‘homeland and overseas’ category is a bit redundant - what is the difference between being a homeland pastor (83) and a church pastor (5)? 

But the bigger issue is not one of ‘list consistency’ - I know this list serves as a brainstorm and thats fine. I’m wondering why we feel the need to somehow say that overseas mission can’t be a distinct category?

Is there possibly a sense of ‘everything we do is mission’ creeping in here, which means the distinctive nature of overseas missionary work is being lost?