Probably the most basic definition of a missionary is "a person undertaking a mission ". But the real question is, "What is the mission?" The mission has to do with calling. If you are living out what God has called you to do, then you can legitimately call yourself a missionary.

In order to refine our understanding a little, we need to know what God has called us to do. Every believer has been called to preach the Gospel (Matthew 28). God has blessed us with this beautiful calling. The mission, therefore, is to preach the Gospel. So the person who undertakes the mission of preaching the Gospel is by definition a missionary. We tend to define a missionary as someone who goes and lives in a third-world country without running water or electricity performing some humanitarian service to the under-privileged.

But Biblically speaking, the missionary is the one who seriously undertakes the calling of preaching the Gospel. Some would say, "At the very least a missionary should live in a culture that is foreign to him." I would agree to this statement. You see as Christians we are all foreigners and sojourners in this land. Our citizenship is in heaven.

So whether you wake up in the morning and go to the office or the work site, you are doing this away from your real home - heaven. So I believe that every Christian ought to view himself or herself as a missionary. After all, we want to be like Jesus, and Jesus was the first missionary. He left a wonderful heavenly kingdom to dwell in an impoverished, disease infested cesspool, rampant with sin otherwise known as Earth. John 1:14 says "the Word became flesh and pitched his tent (dwelt or tabernacled) among us." This is the first true missionary.

Now some have the calling of actually leaving their earthly culture/society and live in another earthly culture/society for the sake of furthering God's mission here on earth. These are the ones we think of as missionaries. The country doesn't have to be third-world. The requirement is Immanuel (God with us) in this great commission that He has imparted to us. So if God is with you and you are focused on God's mission, our commission, you can consider yourself in many ways a missionary.