Josh Broward
July 23, 2006
Meet Secret Agent Ethan Hunt
Profile: Ethan Hunt is an American secret agent working for the IMF, the “Impossible Missions Force.” Played by Tom Cruise, the “dream guy” for countless women, Ethan Hunt is daring, intelligent, and handsome.
Setting: Ethan Hunt’s exploits span the world. He chases the bad guys from one continent to another in just a few seconds.
Mission: Ethan Hunt’s missions are always classified as “impossible.” They range from discovering double agents to keeping weapons of mass destruction away from terrorists. In short, Ethan Hunt’s mission is always extremely dangerous, nearly impossible, and absolutely necessary to save the world. (Hence, the drama!)
Dangers: Hunt faces bombs, missiles, bullets, knives, speeding cars, helicopters, terrorists, kidnappers, and double agents – all out to hurt him or those he loves.
M.O. (Mode of Operation): Ethan Hunt is Evil Kanieval + James Bond + MacGyver. He works with a tight team of highly skilled and extremely courageous people. They consistently trust each other with their lives. The IMF supplies Ethan and his team with amazing technological gadgets which they use fearlessly. His success comes from his audacity to do what everyone else believed was impossible.
Vision: What motivates Ethan Hunt is a vision of a safe world where good people are free to live their lives without being harmed by those who work for evil. He and his team risk everything to bring safety to others.1
Meet Secret Agent Antipas
(Read Revelation 2:12-17)
Setting: Pergamum. Jesus calls this “the city where the great throne of Satan is located” and “the place where Satan lives” (2:13). That doesn’t sound like the kind of name that will ever make it on a city sign. What is Jesus talking about? Scholars have lots of suggestions. Pergamum was a very religious city with major temples to at least 6 different gods. Most notable were there worship of Asclepius – a god of healing, a huge temple to “Zeus the Savior,” and a temple for Roman emperor worship. Jesus could be talking about any of these or a combination of all of them, for they all threatened the church.2
Pergamum had many trade guilds or labor unions. As part of their union meetings in this religious city, they worshipped the gods of the city. The dinner was steaks and ribs straight from the sacrifices to the idols, and the after dinner entertainment involved prostitutes from the city temples.
Profile: We don’t actually know much about Antipas, but one thing we know that he stuck to his beliefs no matter the cost. I imagine Antipas was a skilled craftsman. He made things with his hands: maybe jewelry, maybe furniture or houses. Antipas was probably a member of one of the city labor unions.
Mission: Live as a Christian in a very un-Christian place. Live as a child of God in a society ruled by Satan. Be a “faithful witness” to Jesus Christ no matter the cost (2:13).
Dangers: The dangers were obviously huge for Antipas. He was killed for his faith. He faced direct opposition from those outside the church, but he also faced a more dangerous temptation. The church in Pergamum had “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15). Some false prophets acted like innocent sheep but were really wolves who wanted to tear the church apart.
Jesus says they were like Balaam (See Numbers 22-25, 31). Balak, king of Moab, paid Balaam, a prophet-for-hire, to put a curse on God’s people. Dan Boone says, “The only problem was that the curses kept boomeranging into a blessing.”3 Eventually, after three or four failed attempts to curse God’s people, Balak was getting mad, and Balaam had a new plan. Balaam realized that the only way to get to God’s people is to get God’s people to turn away from God.
Balaam and Balak came up with a sneaky plan. They sent the Moabite women into the Israelite camp. The women had a mission: Sleep with the men, and get them to join you in worship to our gods. Well, men will do just about anything for sex, so their plan worked. Then Balaam and Balak finally got their curse. God cursed them himself, and he sent a plague on the people to correct them and bring them back to worshipping God alone.
The church in Pergamum had some dirty, cheating prophets like Balaam. The church remained faithful when attacked directly (2:13), so Satan came up with another plan: “Just get them to compromise. Make them believe that sin isn’t sin or that sin is worth the cost.”
M.O.: What was Antipas’s Mode of Operation in this difficult city? No compromise! Whether the attack was direct or indirect, Antipas stuck to his beliefs. He would not turn away from Christ no matter the issue: life or death, rich or poor, popular or unpopular, temporary pleasure or temporary pain. He refused to compromise Christian standards for success in an unChristian world. He decided he would be 100% percent Christian, not 10%, 50% or even 90%.
Vision: What motivated Antipas in this struggle? When he turned down the labor union’s barbecued ribs and garlic bread, he remembered the heavenly banquet that will be his (2:17) and is already his in Christ, the heavenly manna, the “Living Bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:30-51). When the labor union kicked him out, and when his friends betrayed him, he remembered that Jesus loves him and has included him (2:17).
Meet Secret Agent Dana Preusch
Profile: Secret Agent Dana is one of my good friends. She is a single, female pastor who courageously and gently proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ. She loves books and StarTreck and movies, and it was in her church where I first heard the cry: “More movies, less preaching.” After a difficult and painful exit from a church where she served for 10 years, Dana refused to give up on her calling. She is continuing her education at Duke and is serving as an assistant pastor at a Nazarene church in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Setting: Raleigh is the home of IBM and other high tech companies. The church located between three major universities. Dana says there is a Starbucks on every corner, and everyone drives an SUV (those expensive, gas-drinking, off-road car-trucks that people always drive on nice concrete roads). In this place the top values are: education, stuff, fun, stuff, money – and did I say, stuff?
Mission: Live as a Christian in an un-Christian place. I emailed Dana this week and asked her what her specific mission is. This is what she said, “My mission? Restore community among a people who have become too busy with life in general … and trips to the mountains and beach … to connect with each other in meaningful ways.” Her mission is to help disconnected people get connected through Jesus Christ.
M.O.: Dana has a few different strategies for accomplishing her mission. She is encouraging her church to make small group life a priority for them as individuals and as a church. She is trying to help the church people connect with each other again, despite their busy lives. She is helping people connect with a poor inner-city church so that they can see a different side of life, something different than the rich-stuff-culture where they live. Last, she is living a simple life in a stuff-oriented over-busy culture, hoping that they will see her example and see a healthier way to live.
Vision: What keeps Dana going is a consuming vision of a simple, loving community. Her vision for the church is a loving community that freely shares our love among ourselves and with the community and world around us.
Meet Secret Agent X
Setting: Secret Agent X is serving the Kingdom of Jesus Christ as a secret missionary to far-western China.
Profile: She is a simple, quiet woman. She wears simple clothes, not particularly fashionable. No one would suspect her of being a secret agent.
Mission: Live as a Christian in an un-Christian place. Agent X’s specific mission is to share the gospel with a minority group in China – the Tajiks. Most are Muslim by name but not by practice. They speak Sarokoli but have no written language. The Tajiks in western China are considered an “unreached people group.” This means that as a culture, they have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Agent X is giving her life to share Jesus’ life with the Tajiks.
M.O.: The Tajiks are so isolated that in order to learn their language Sarokoli, Agent X first had to learn Chinese. Then she had to learn Uigur. Then finally, after many years of language study, she could learn Sarokoli. All along the way, Agent X has introduced her language teachers to Jesus Christ and helped them become part of the family of God.
Now Agent X works in a university for most of the year and spends the vacations riding bicycles into Tajik villages. When she gets to the villages she tries to become friends with the people, and then she shares the gospel with them through comic books, audio tapes, or anything else she can think of.
Vision: The vision that motivates Agent X is seeing a people who have never heard the gospel experience the life transforming power of a friendship with Jesus Christ. She will be part of an entire people group hearing about Jesus.
Meet Secret Agent Chris Cheon
Profile: Chris Cheon also goes by the code name: Christian in Cheonan. Chris is smart, well-educated, and financially stable (especially in comparison to the rest of the world).
Setting: Chris lives in the city of Cheonan. Cheonan is a booming city, with sky-rise apartments and office buildings going up overnight. The reigning values of Cheonan are education, stuff, money, stuff, power, entertainment, stuff, sex, - and did I mention, stuff? The people of Cheonan tend to be well educated, and most have two primary goals: advance financially and have fun. People in Cheonan are also isolated. Most of them have moved away from their families and friends to find work or education in this growing city, and now they live in a world of surface relationships.
Mission: Live as a Christian in an un-Christian place. Chris Cheon’s mission here is to live the Kingdom Life so beautifully that the people of Cheonan want to be part of it.
Dangers: Cheonan constantly cries out to Chris to compromise Christian standards, to give in a little here and a little there. Some people in Cheonan are workaholics. They work night and day, neglecting family, friends, church, God, and self. On the other side, some people here live for fun. This group focuses life on entertainment and adventure, again neglecting real relationships, church, God and self. Chris always feels the press for materialism: a bigger apartment, a faster computer, a nicer car, better clothes. In Cheonan sexual immorality is freely available (or available for a price) through the internet, bars, love motels, and even seemingly healthy relationships.
Chris Cheon must always be on guard and must always be prepared, for here the enemy’s attacks are very, very subtle.
M.O.: Chris constantly works to maintain his relationship with God. Chris knows that if he drifts from God, that is where the danger starts. Chris meets every week with a fellow Christian so that they can hold each other accountable to living in the Christian way, not in the Cheonan way.
Chris is constantly looking for ways to show hospitality. Chris is involved in a small group. Chris serves in his church, knowing that this is a key display point for the Christian way in Cheonan. Chris also shares his heart and life with nonChristians in the community. Chris has dinner with them, goes to movies with them, and generally tries to become their friends. Eventually, Chris invites them to a dinner at his church or even to a worship service. When the time is right, Chris explains to his friends how Jesus has changed his life and invites them to meet Jesus, too. Those friends usually tell people that they have actually seen Jesus today in the life of one Secret Agent Chris Cheon.
(Mission Impossible song here.) This is your mission should you choose to accept it: Live as a Christian in an un-Christian place. Be a Secret Agent Chris Cheon. Live like Jesus so people meet Jesus. This mission is often classified: “impossible,” but “Nothing is impossible with God!” (Luke 1:37).
1 Thanks to the plot summaries at http://www.imdb.com.
2 Marva Dawn, Joy in Our Weakness: A Gift of Hope from the Book of Revelation, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 64.
3 Dan Boone, Answers for Chicken Little: A No-Nonsense Look at the book of Revelation, (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill, 2005), 30.
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