The Lausanne Movement seeks to engage global churches in worldwide mission. This is the second of four articles in their series, Evangelism at Work, considering the instruction of Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20, The Great Commission.
Four ways to embrace being a lizard
"When it comes to fulfilling the Great Commission, how can the ‘1 percent’ of Christians who work in professional ministry help the ‘99 percent’ who don’t?
Lee Yih used a memorable analogy when he addressed this question at Lausanne II in Manila in 1989. In his message, he observed the differences in how frogs and lizards obtain their food. ‘The frog just sits and waits, and lets the food come to him,’ he says, while the lizard ‘cannot afford to sit and wait, but must go out into his world.’ Yih continues,
The vocational Christian worker is like the frog. He goes off to seminary, gets a degree, goes on staff somewhere, and somehow people know he is in the business of meeting spiritual needs. Ministry comes to him and before long, he has his hands full.
The layperson, on the other hand, is a lizard. In order for him to have a ministry, he has to learn to hunt. [. . . ] he must move around in the environment he lives in, assess his sphere of influence, sow broadly, build bridges, establish friendships, and then when he has earned the right to be heard, be ready to give an account for the hope that is in him, with gentleness and respect.
‘Unfortunately,’ Yih summarized, ‘there are many sad lizards out there who think that to have a ministry, they must act just like frogs.’ "
https://lausanne.org/about/blog/workplace-evangelism-for-the-99-percent
Image : Photo by wisconsinpictures on Unsplash
