The Positive Perspective of “God is Already There!”

There’s a great community development principle that says “God is already there”. It’s just reminding us that we didn’t bring God into that context, He was already there and He’s already at work. And we should come in in a way where we stay present to that reality and try to evaluate what He’s doing and come alongside that.

And I think as missions mobilizers this would be a much more positive approach because we often come into a community, evaluating what they don’t understand and what they’re not doing in terms of missions. And this is possibly an approach where we say “hey God is already at work here and I’m going to come in looking for God’s original design for this community or individual and call it forth”. And really when we do this, we’re operating in our Adamic role that Jesus has restored back to us. Because if you remember they had a job to do and it had to do with calling forth identity in the garden. And so, when we go into the community (we’re always entering community) when we talk with the person we should be FIRST evaluating: “What is God’s original design for this community or individual?” “What is his unfulfilled dreams for this community or individual?”, And call those things forth!

And I think as missions mobilizers this would be a much more positive approach because we often come into a community, evaluating what they don’t understand and what they’re not doing in terms of missions. And this is possibly an approach where we say “hey God is already at work here and I’m going to come in looking for God’s original design for this community or individual and call it forth”.

In community development, there’s an approach called “ABCD” Asset Based Community Development. And I would love to have us work on developing an approach where we go in asking the questions “What are your strengths, what are your passions, What are your values, What are the things you have to offer? Rather than going in first thing saying “What are your problems, What are your needs?” We could actually come in evaluating assets and strengths and help them see how God has uniquely designed them to have an effective and essential role in fulfilling the great commission, as an individual and/or as a community.

So let’s remind ourselves “God is already there” as missions mobilizers that we’re coming alongside of what he’s already been doing and that we can have this more positive approach of calling forth original design and fulfilling unfulfilled dreams that God has for those individuals and communities.

Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash