Are all Christians Missionaries?

Having just had our annual missions conference at church, we were once again challenged to consider our individual roles in carrying out the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. Those were Christ's parting instructions when He ascended, and so they are taken seriously. We are told by some that all believers are called to be missionaries and personally fulfill this commission.

This is on the surface an appealing sentiment, I think 'sentiment' is exactly right. I agree with what I think is the spirit of the comment that 'we are all missionaries', but I think it is a sentimental approach that doesn't do justice to the reality of missions.

Back in 1979 I had the opportunity to sit in a class on missions under Dr.Herbert Kane at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS). This sentiment was already on the rise at that time, and he addressed it both in class and in his book Understanding Christian Missions. He had served as a missionary in China for 15 years himself before the Communists evicted all the missionaries.  He agrees that all believers are needed to be fully engaged in the missions effort, but not all are 'missionaries'. He defines 'missionaries' as those who serve full time in ministry of the Word and prayer (as spelled out in Acts for the apostles), who have crossed geographical and cultural boundaries to spread the gospel in areas where it is mostly unknown.
I generally prefer a simpler version: those who spread the gospel across cultural boundaries/barriers.

Many don't like these kinds of definitions. They feel that they create artificial distinctions among believers, separating secular work from the sacred. I disagree. Kane goes on to give what I think is a good illustration from World War 2. All of America was involved in the war effort. Everyone was needed for the war effort, and everyone experienced rationing, many sent their sons to war, many left the farm to work in munitions and equipment factories, many volunteered in the USO and bond drives and other volunteer efforts, many experienced hardships on the home front. But only those in uniform were soldiers. It was still clear that civilians were not soldiers, no matter how committed and involved. Kane suggests that it is the same in spiritual warfare. Many are highly involved and committed, but those who go across geographical and cultural boundaries full time are the 'soldiers'.  I think he is right.

To say we are all 'missionaries' strikes me as making the word itself meaningless. We are saying that missionaries are no different than 'witnesses'. This kind of  dumbing-down of our language is very much like what the secular world is doing to 'family' and 'marriage',  reaching for a lowest-common-denominator approach to these words. We should not be doing that in the church. We devalue those who are missionaries this way, just as the secular world has devalued marriage and family. We should be more careful with our words: they really do have meaning.