What If They Don't Need Our Stuff?

As Christians, or even just as people who go to church, I think there's one thing we can all agree on: missions matter. Short-term or long-term, missionaries usually have our hearts, our prayers, and our financial support. And rightly so. They're doing important work, going where many of us will never go, learning languages we may never speak, living in cultures very different from our own, and sharing the Gospel.

So, kudos to all the missionaries out there. Seriously. And let me say this too: not only IMB missionaries are "real missionaries." I once heard a Baptist pastor say something along those lines, and honestly, it bothered me. The Great Commission belongs to Christ, not to one denomination. Jesus didn't say, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, as long as they belong to our denomination." He said, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19).

All nations. Not just the nations that look poor. Not just the places where people need our help. Not just the places where we can arrive with boxes of clothes, medicine, toys, shoes, food, and school supplies.

Those things can be wonderful. They meet very real needs. I've seen it. I've participated in it. I'm thankful for every person who has served sacrificially in those places. I was born in Brazil, and I've met missionaries who served in parts of Brazil I had never even visited, short-term and long-term, who gave years of their lives to people who desperately needed practical help. Praise the Lord for them.

But there's another kind of mission I don't think we talk about enough.

What about missions to the "rich" world?

What happens when you go somewhere where people don't need your old clothes? Where the toys your children have outgrown aren't considered a treasure? Where the people you're trying to reach have money, good healthcare, beautiful homes, education, technology, opportunities? Some have advanced degrees. Some know more about other religions than we do. They don't look like they need anything.

And that raises an important question: How do you share the Gospel with someone who doesn't think they need anything?

I've thought about this many times because of my years living in Japan.

Japan was a very different kind of mission field. I remember it taking us two hours to get to our church. Two hours. And we went anyway, because we knew how precious it was to gather with other believers, worship, hear God's Word, and encourage one another. Hebrews 10:24-25 reminds us not to neglect gathering together but to encourage one another. When you live somewhere Christian fellowship isn't readily available, you understand that passage differently.

I remember another moment that has stayed with me. My sister and I were in Seoul, walking around, when we heard a woman singing "Amazing Grace" through a speaker and sharing the Gospel. That wasn't something we were used to seeing in Japan, so we went over to meet her. I don't remember all the details of the conversation. What I remember is the joy of meeting another believer. We hugged. My sister sang with her. Strangers who had just met, worshiping Jesus together. It was beautiful. Sometimes you don't realize how much you miss something until you suddenly find it.

Japan taught me a lot about missions. I remember seeing cartoons and stories about missionaries who went there full of faith and excitement, ready to change the world for Jesus, and then, slowly, the loneliness would begin. The invisible oppression. The cultural barriers. The language. The incredibly slow progress. The feeling that you could work and work and see very little visible fruit. Not every missionary experience was like this, of course. God did, and still does, incredible things in Japan. But the work could be incredibly difficult.

I understand some of that weight personally. My husband was nearing the end of his own missionary term when we met, and I saw firsthand what that season had cost him and what it had given him. It's part of why this topic isn't just theoretical to me.

I remember one missionary pastor there who said something I've never forgotten: "Japan was a graveyard for missionaries."

Those words stayed with me. Not because the Gospel had failed. The Gospel never fails. Isaiah 55:11 reminds us that God's Word does not return to Him empty. But because the mission field can be hard. Really hard.

Sometimes the hardest mission fields aren't the ones where people are visibly suffering. Sometimes they're the ones where people are comfortable, busy, educated, private, spiritually indifferent, or simply not looking for what you're offering.

Which brings me back to the question: how do you reach people who don't think they need anything?

The UAE

I had the incredible opportunity to live in the United Arab Emirates, and one thing that stayed with me was attending a large evangelical church there, one where so many different denominations and Christian backgrounds were represented and used by God. People who might disagree about many secondary things were serving together because they had something much bigger in common: Jesus.

But worshiping there was different in another way, too. There were rules. Things Christians could and couldn't do publicly. Boundaries that had to be respected, and depending on the circumstances, violating certain laws could have serious consequences.

Yet there was something beautiful about watching people worship anyway. When you know gathering together isn't something you can take for granted, you appreciate it differently. I remember the joy. The gratitude. The sense of what a privilege it is that we can be here together.

And it made me think about us.

Here in America, we can drive to church. Carry our Bibles. Talk openly about Jesus. Invite people to church. Have Bible studies. Teach our children about Jesus. Listen to Christian music in our cars. Open God's Word whenever we want.

And sometimes, because we have so much freedom, we don't realize how precious it is.

Sometimes what is abundant becomes ordinary.

Maybe that's part of the challenge of missions in first-world countries. The problem isn't always persecution. It isn't always poverty. Sometimes the problem is comfort.

So what do people actually need?

Here's what I've observed, through my own experiences and through friends who have served in first-world countries: people need a place to belong.

Not a place to attend. A place to belong.

That's the difference. Anyone can attend something. Show up, sit down, leave. But belonging means someone would notice if you stopped coming. It means someone would ask why. In places where people already have everything else, that is often the one thing missing, and it's the one thing the church can actually give.

And I don't mean simply having somewhere to sit on Sunday morning. I mean belonging to a real community of believers where someone knows your name, knows your story, notices when you aren't okay, and actually cares. A place where discipleship is intentional and personal, not just a class we attend once a week. Jesus didn't say merely to get people to attend church. He commanded us to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). That requires relationship. It requires time. It requires walking with people.

People need a shoulder to cry on. An ear that listens carefully. Someone who will sit with them when life is messy without rushing to fix it. Someone who will pray with them, open God's Word with them, and walk with them through the hard seasons.

Galatians 6:2 says, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." That's not a program. That's life together.

I think this is one of the greatest mission opportunities in first-world countries. Because people may not need our stuff. But they still need someone.

They need community. Truth. Hope. They need to be known. They need to know they are loved. And ultimately, they need Jesus.

This is where the church has such an incredible opportunity: to become a place where people who have everything materially can finally admit they're hurting spiritually. A place where someone can walk through the door carrying shame, questions, doubts, failures, loneliness, or a complicated story, and be treated with dignity.

A safe place.

But let me be clear about what I mean by safe. A safe place doesn't mean a place where we affirm everything someone does. It doesn't mean avoiding difficult truths because we're afraid of offending someone. It doesn't mean love requires us to call sin something other than sin.

A safe place is not a place where truth disappears. It's a place where truth is spoken in love.

Jesus was "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). We need both. We don't compromise God's Word to make people comfortable. But we also don't use God's Word as a weapon. Ephesians 4:15 tells us to speak "the truth in love."

Think about how beautiful that is. Someone can walk into a church carrying something they've been afraid to tell anyone, and instead of being rejected, they encounter believers who love them enough to listen, love them enough to tell them the truth, and love them enough to walk with them toward Christ. Not affirming sin. Not excusing it. Not pretending it doesn't matter. But also not treating sinners as if they're beyond the reach of grace.

Because none of us comes to Jesus because we were good enough. Romans 3:23 reminds us that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Ephesians 2:8-9 reminds us that salvation is by grace through faith, not something we earn.

We are all sinners in need of the same Savior. That should change the way we look at people.

Real discipleship is real life

I think sometimes we've reduced discipleship to information. Take a class. Read a book. Complete a study. Check the box.

But biblical discipleship is so much more than that. Jesus spent time with people. He taught them, corrected them, answered their questions, confronted their hearts, served them, prayed with them, and prepared them to follow Him. He didn't simply hand them information and send them home.

Paul told the believers in Thessalonica that he was "gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children," willing to share not only the Gospel but his own self, because they had become dear to him (1 Thessalonians 2:7-8).

That is discipleship. It's life-on-life. Teaching God's Word. Asking hard questions. Celebrating victories. Crying together. Correcting one another. Forgiving. Praying. Showing someone what it actually looks like to follow Jesus when life is beautiful, and when life is incredibly hard.

Maybe this is something we need to recover in our churches.

People don't just need a place to attend. They need a place to belong. They don't just need a sermon. They need someone to walk with them. They don't just need to be told what the Bible says. They need to be taught how to live it.

They don't need a church that simply makes them feel good. They need a church that loves them enough to tell them the truth, and loves them enough to stay.

That is mission work, too.

The greatest evangelist I have ever known

If you ask me what this looks like in real life, I don't have to look very far. The greatest evangelist I have ever met was my mother.

She wasn't an IMB professional. She wasn't a seminary scholar. She didn't have a theology degree. She loved Jesus. And she shared Him everywhere she went.

I honestly don't remember ever seeing my mother come to church by herself. Not once. There were Sundays when she'd walk in with ten, twelve, sometimes more new people. And the next week, there would be more.

But here's what I learned from watching her: those people didn't just appear at church because my mother invited them. She had already been doing the work. She had already shared the Gospel with them, answered their questions, listened to their stories, started a relationship, earned their trust, loved them.

The invitation to church was the last step, not the first.

That is evangelism. And that is discipleship, already beginning to happen.

My mother understood something I think we sometimes forget: people are not projects. They are people. People with stories, questions, wounds. People who need to be heard, who need truth, who need Jesus. And she made herself available. She didn't need a title. She didn't need a position. She didn't need someone to tell her she was a missionary. She simply loved Jesus enough that she couldn't keep Him to herself.

Jesus said, "You will recognize them by their fruit" (Matthew 7:16). My mother's life bore fruit.

When she passed away, I received so many messages from people telling me what she had meant to them. What she had done for them. How she had loved them, listened to them, walked with them, introduced Jesus into their lives. I was hearing stories I didn't even know.

And I thought, what a legacy.

Not a building. Not a title. Not a degree. People. People who knew Jesus because my mother was willing to stop, listen, love, share, and walk alongside them.

I saw it happen in our kitchen

I remember starting a small group in our kitchen in Japan. I was the one leading the singing, which, honestly, is funny in itself, because I cannot sing. At all. I mean it. And people still stayed. It started small. Then it grew, and kept growing, until our kitchen wasn't big enough anymore, so we rented a room at a community center nearby. And we kept going. More people came. More relationships were formed. God's Word was opened. People prayed together. We shared life together.

Until one day my mother told the pastor, "They should open a church here."

And they did. We ended up with a church ten minutes from our home.

I still think about that. It started in a kitchen. Not with a big campaign. Not with a huge budget. Not with a fancy building. It started with people sitting together, opening God's Word, sharing life, and loving Jesus. And maybe that's what missions looks like sometimes. Much smaller than we expect. And yet God can take something small and grow it far beyond what we imagined.

Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 3:6, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth."

My mother planted. She watered. She loved. She shared. And God gave the growth.

Missions isn't about who needs our stuff. It's about who needs Jesus.

This is something I keep learning. Sometimes we think of a missionary as someone who goes somewhere to help people, and yes, missionaries help people. We should care about physical needs. Scripture is very clear about caring for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and those who are suffering (James 1:27; Matthew 25:35-40).

But ultimately, the missionary isn't taking Jesus somewhere Jesus has never been. Jesus is already there. The missionary is going as an ambassador of Christ, proclaiming the Gospel and making disciples.

One thing I've learned during my time at the seminary, is that evangelism isn't just something we do when we go on a mission trip. It's an everyday lifestyle. We're called to share the Gospel with intelligence, relevance, and boldness, wherever God has placed us.

I love that, because it changes the way we think about missions. It means our mission field isn't only across the ocean. Sometimes it's right across the street. At work. At school. Over coffee. At the grocery store. In our neighborhood. In our church. At the dinner table.

Missions isn't just about where you go. It's about how you live wherever God has placed you.

And that means we don't have to wait for a mission trip to become missionaries. We don't need a passport. We don't need a team T-shirt. We don't need a fundraising page. We need to be willing to open our mouths and tell people about Jesus.

Paul asks in Romans 10:14, "How are they to hear without someone preaching?"

That's a question worth sitting with. How will they hear? Someone has to tell them.

Maybe we've made missions too comfortable for ourselves

We love mission trips where we can see the impact. We love pictures of children smiling because we gave them something. We love being able to say, "Look what we accomplished."

And again, there's nothing wrong with serving people practically. We should. Jesus Himself taught us to love and serve others.

But what if the most difficult mission field is the one where you can't see the need? No obvious poverty to fix. No physical problem to solve. No box of supplies to deliver. What if all you have is a Bible, a conversation, a relationship, and the truth about Jesus?

Would we still call that missions?

I hope we would. Because Jesus didn't command us to go only where people are poor. He commanded us to make disciples of all nations. Acts 1:8 reminds us that we're to be His witnesses "to the end of the earth."

The mission has no socioeconomic boundary.

So, what does this mean for us?

Maybe it means we need to stop asking, "What do these people need from me?" and start asking, "What do they need to hear from me?"

Maybe we need to look beyond someone's material circumstances and see their eternal condition. Maybe we need to remember that the person who has everything can still be desperately lost. Maybe we need to stop measuring missions by how much physical help we provide, and remember that the greatest gift we have isn't something we can put in a box.

It's the Gospel.

And maybe the mission field is much closer than we think. The Great Commission didn't end when the mission trip ended. It didn't end when we came home. It didn't end at the airport. It follows us home. It's in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our schools, our friendships, our churches, our dinner tables, our everyday conversations.

Jesus is for people who have lots and people who have nothing. The educated and the uneducated. The wealthy and the poor. The religious and the skeptical. The comfortable and the persecuted. The person sitting freely in an American church, and the believer worshiping carefully in a place where that freedom cannot be taken for granted.

The Gospel is for all nations.

So maybe the question isn't, "Where are the people who need me?" Maybe it's:

"Where has God already placed me, and who there needs to hear about Jesus?"

And maybe there's one more question worth asking: "Am I creating the kind of place where someone can hear the truth, experience the love of Christ, and be discipled to follow Him?"

Because the person God has placed in your path doesn't need your old clothes. They don't need your money. They don't need you to fix their life. They may not even think they need God.

But they may need someone to sit beside them. Someone to listen. Someone to love them. Someone to tell them the truth. Someone to open the Bible with them. Someone to walk with them. Someone to show them what it looks like to follow Jesus.

Someone to help them belong, not merely to a church, but to the body of Christ.

That is missions. And maybe the greatest mission field isn't the place with the greatest physical need. Maybe it's the place where the need is hardest to see.

Because the greatest need has never been what's missing from someone's hands. It's what's missing from their heart.

And only Jesus can fill that. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations..." Matthew 28:19

So go. Go across the ocean. Go across the street. Go to the wealthy. Go to the poor. Go to the educated. Go to the forgotten. Go to the comfortable. Go to the hurting. Go to the person who thinks they have everything.

And wherever God has placed you, live on mission. Because missions isn't just where we go. Missions is how we live.

And the world still needs Jesus.

Love,

Andrea Anderegg