Most Methodists are familiar with these words: The world is my parish. That’s a line from John Wesley we’ve used to inspire global missions and evangelism. While appropriate, it’s also good to remember what Wesley meant when he said that back in 1739.
His actual words were, “I look upon all the world as my parish.”
Why did he look to the world as his parish? Because the parishes he had known now rejected him. His preaching pierced the sensibility of church decorum, offending many along the way. As more parishes turned him down, he kept to the field and mine preaching the church detested. The established church wanted him to “sit still” and so took his parish from him. Little did they know he understood all the world to be his parish.
Now, I’m not sure Wesley meant to create a world-wide vision of every Christian going out into the world to preach. I don’t believe Jesus did either.
And that’s okay.
We need people to stay where they are to preach Jesus, too.
In the book of Matthew, several stories fuse together to demonstrate Jesus living out the kingdom reality. One of those stories says two blind men followed Jesus around after he healed a woman who had been “suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years” and the daughter of a local leader (Matthew 9:18-26). The news of their healing spread “through all of that district.”
When Jesus healed the two blind men, he told them not to tell anyone. Excitement and joy, perhaps, got the best of them. Just like in the other story, they went and told everyone “through all of that district.”
Some of us have a calling to go out into the world. For most of us, our calling is to our district, so to speak. We’re called to be a faithful presence where we are. Your neighborhood. Your community. Your workplace, even. That may not sound as exciting or exotic as being sent into the world. But where you are, is a part of the world the message of God’s love needs to be known.
Stay blessed…john
