The first missionary was a crazy man and Jesus has been recruiting crazy people ever since to be missionaries.

What does Jesus do after he cast the demons out of the guy and into the herd of pigs? He tells him, "Go home and tell everything God did in you." So the guy goes back and preaches all over town. (Luke 8:39)

That's how the missions movement works. We're a mess, God cleans us up, and then asks us to tell everyone about it.

So the only qualifications for being a missionary in my book are that you're a crazy mess who's been healed. You're don't go with someone else's story, you go with your own. In John's book about his experiences with Jesus, after being introduced to the crazy guy, we see two other missionaries, a lame guy and a blind guy. He touches them and the lame guy walks and the blind guy sees. Both of them go away and start telling everyone their story.

The blind guy gets in an argument with the Pharisees. But they can't argue with his reality: "One thing I know, I was blind but now I see."

As missionaries we're going to get in trouble telling somebody else's story. People will debate someone else's story. But when you tell your own, their arguments are toothless.

Once our needs have been met, once we're in our right mind and can see again, we can begin telling our own story. It's the most natural thing in the world. Some people say, "I don't have the gift of evangelism." They don't need a gift, they just need a story to tell that sounds something like, "One thing I know, I was blind but now I see."

Perhaps a reason the number of missionaries is declining in America is not that Jesus is no longer healing as some suggest, but that people don't have their own story of being healed. If you haven't been a crazy mess, you probably won't be a good missionary.