Give Up Your Small Ambitions!
A Missional Commentary on Ash Wednesday 2017.
By Grant McClung
On a breezy March afternoon in Fresno, California, two fifth graders were navigating the wind with their dime store kites which were gracefully equipped with homemade tails for balance and “accuracy.” I was one of those “aeronautic experts.” The other was my school chum, Larry. Like newly rich millionaires, we mowed through a stash of chocolate bars that filled our pockets.
In a moment of rash repentance, Larry grabbed his mouth as if he were in mortal danger. “I just remembered,” he moaned, “I gave up chocolate for Lent!” Just when I thought it might be eternally too late for my friend, he corrected his error with, “It’s okay, I can go to confession tomorrow.” Thus, a blue-collar Pentecostal kid (yours truly) was introduced to the high church liturgy of a historic Christian community.
Multiplied millions begin their Lenten season with “Ash Wednesday” services on March 1 and commence a six-week period of sacrifice and self-denial in their personal spiritual journey toward Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. Typically, they will commit to fasting or giving up certain types of luxuries (or special treats like chocolate!) as a form of penitence and devotion.
Google the question, “What are you giving up for Lent?” and the listed denials run the gamut of all sorts of foods, activities, and personal comforts (TV, dessert, Facebook, caffeine, on and on).
Our journey toward the Easter season provides a time for reflection on how we will grow in our Christian walk as Christ followers. Whether we do or don’t officially observe this liturgy, it would surely help us to lay aside many things, not just for Lent but for a lifetime. This would be in keeping with how we started our walk with the Lord, permanently “putting off” destructive behaviors and “putting on” new ones (Colossians 3.8-12).
How about this for something to give up: “Give up your small ambitions!” The original version of this line is attributed to Francis Xavier (1506 – 1542), missionary to India and Japan who (in his time) was said to have won more people to Christ than anyone since the Apostle Paul. While reflecting on the great masses of unreached people in Asia who had yet to hear the gospel, he was heard to say one day, “I wish I could go up and down the streets of Paris, and tell the students to give up their small ambitions and preach the gospel.”
Missions leader Michael Griffiths picked up on that famous quote when he wrote his best-selling book, Give Up Your Small Ambitions. This challenging call to world evangelization was first published in London in 1970 and popularized among the Great Commission community throughout the following decade. It was the late 1960s and into the 1970s when great numbers of evangelical students were mobilized into missionary service through such movements as Inter-Varsity, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Campus Crusade for Christ, Operation Mobilization, Youth With a Mission, and the Lausanne Movement for World Evangelization.
This was also the era (1976) when my wife, Janice, and I landed in Germany and started our journey of student mobilization, missions teaching and writing. In Germany, Give Up Your Small Ambitions was published as Es Gift Grosseres, which is translated as “there is something greater.”
There is “something greater” than ourselves. It is a call to a lifetime of missional service in the arena and daily context where God places us. For some, it may involve relocation to another country or cultural context. For everyone, it will mean a long, abiding journey to follow Christ, whether that leads us across the street or around the world. It will mean more than giving up a temporary luxury or an occasional meal but ultimately giving up our small ambitions. The final question will not be, “What am I giving up for Lent?” but “Who will I serve for a lifetime?”
Dr. Grant McClung, veteran world missions leader and author, is President of Missions Resource Group (www.MissionsResourceGroup.org), and International Missionary Educator with Church of God World Missions.
