Does mission service seem expensive to you? Not the funds you have to raise to send you on your way and the commitments you must nurture to support your continuing work. I mean the real expense. Missionaries set aside career goals and dreams of ease and financial prosperity. They sell their homes and most of their belongings. They say tearful goodbyes to family and friends. Turning their backs on all they have known, they take up crosses of challenge, discomfort and even danger, fastening their hearts on the salvation of people they have yet to meet. That, my friend, is what I mean by expensive!

While you’re still deep in sticker shock, let’s back away from cross-cultural missions and look for more of a bargain. How about just basic Christian discipleship? That’s a good compromise, right? Surely not everyone is called to the austerity and extremes of mission service. Well, brace yourself for Jesus’ discipleship sales pitch:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? . . . In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-28, 33 NIV).

Wow. Now what? Where does that leave us? I guess it’s time to count the cost and take a hard look at the budget. If mission service seems too expensive, can we even afford discipleship? The fact is, they cost the same. Everything.

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