I was reading this article the other day about a man who wanted to invest his money for God. He started to invest it and continued to reinvest and reinvest and never ended up using what he had for God. And it made me think. There is a thought traveling around at the moment that to reach the world we need to first of all invest here where we are, and so the advice is not to go overseas, but stay here and give your lives for the investment of people here. The difficulty i have, is when does that investment start to impact the world? We are a relatively spiritually rich country, and yet we bemoan (and rightly) our spiritual destitution when in reality, the majority of the world is in worse poverty. We do need to be challenged and moved, to serve God wherever we are, but that should never be staying home at the expense of going out. People are more often challenged for God by those who live for God, and more often challenged for mission by missionaries. People are difficult to push, but often willing to be pulled. What pulls people? Example, leaders, those they can follow.
I challenge you, if you want young people to be excited for missions, become a missionary and lead them by your example. The difficulty is that those who go, must look not only forward, but backwards, calling and lifting people up after themselves. We are called to witness to two people, those who do not know, and those who do. To fellowship and encourage our brothers and sisters along the race. The sidelines might sound like a good place to do that from, but an athlete will always listen to another athlete before they listen to a spectator.