Being a Good Missionary
By Chelsy Massa
When Jesus becomes Lord of our lives, we are new.
Yet newness doesn’t mean we’ve let go of all our old life.
We all have moments where we realize we are clinging to dead things we’ve accidentally brought out of the grave when Jesus called us into His resurrected life.
It’s easy to discard old things and think, "I don’t need that anymore." That certainly would be the easier thing to do.
And sometimes that’s true. God does tell us we need to let go of the things of old for good. In being resurrected with Christ, we lay down the idols and the dull things we once thought were treasures.
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Isaiah 43:19
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Isaiah 43:19
But sometimes God brings old things and makes them new with our new life.
Like basketball.
Jordan dreamed about making it big. Standing at 6'5 "and playing basketball, he was looking at an NBA jersey with the last name Scott on the back.
But Jesus had a much different plan for him.
Jordan heard the call of his savior and stepped out of the grave into new life with the Lord his God.
But with that, his NBA dream died because Jesus was calling him to something different.
And he realized he wasn’t NBA material after all.
Jesus was calling him to a life as first a missionary and then a pastor. Yet, God was bringing basketball into a new light for Jordan, and he saw God do incredible things on the court.
Being a good missionary does not simply mean being able to evangelize to anyone at a moment’s notice. Though that is a great missionary skill to have, it is not the only one.
To be a good missionary means to be intentional. The word “missionary” comes from the word “apostle,” which means “one who is sent.” To be sent is not just about evangelism. It means to be sent to live among the people. To make disciples is more than simple gospel preaching.
It means being among the people, knowing them, and inserting yourself among them so that, through evangelism, relationship, and teaching, they become disciples —a person brought from death into a resurrected life with Christ. To have both gospel influence and fluency is not as simple as saying, “Jesus loves you, He died for you, and rose again defeating your sin.” It’s living out the very transformation that you Christians experience daily. It’s leveraging your whole life for every chance “to teach all that Jesus has taught you” (Matt: 28:20) and “to be doers of the word” (James 1:22).
Jordan Scott has lived this out so well in both Missoula and Grand Junction, where he now serves as the pastor of the church that was planted there in 2024.
Jordan has been on staff with Resonate Church since 2019. Before that, he attended the University of Idaho and played on the men’s basketball team.
Jordan graduated from the U of I and moved to Missoula in 2018. It was there that he was trying to figure out how to love people and be a part of their daily lives. He wanted to live incarnationally with people in all aspects of his life, and that is where basketball returned for him. He missed the daily aspect of the sport and decided to join pick-up basketball games. He said, “Jesus came to us, I can go to those who play basketball every day.”
If Jesus was sent to live among us, why couldn’t Jordan be sent to play basketball? He wasn’t good enough for the NBA, but he was a star talent among the courts in Missoula, MT. This made him attractive to those who also loved basketball. Jordan then turned something he loved into his mission field. He started creating large group chats to plan pick-up basketball times, allowing him to control when pickup was. The first year didn’t go well; the second year was okay, but by the third year, they had well over 50 people come to play, despite having only two courts.
“Jordan then turned something he loved into his mission field.”
This not only created gospel opportunity, but it also created community. The guys who came to play became some of Jordan’s closest friends.
One of these guys was named Nevin. Nevin, too, was met as a freshman through pickup basketball. Nevin walked on campus, and when Jordan saw him, he said, “That guy looks like a basketball player.” Nevin started playing with Jordan and became a believer as a freshman. He then moved in with Jack and pursued Jack for a whole year. Nevin then served as village leader and now serves on staff at the University of Montana.
Another one of these guys was Jack. Jack was a twerpy freshman (weren’t we all?). When he first started to go to the pickup games, Jack had no interest in Jesus. Yet over time and through his time spent playing basketball with Christians, he became a believer in his junior year and now serves as a Joshua in the village at Resonate Missoula. Not only that, but he has a significant influence in the lives of athletes at the University of Montana and has seen God bring athletes from death to life in a bible study Jack has been leading.
Eric moved from Alaska to be a student at the U of M. Jordan met him as a freshman and again invited him to play basketball. He played for three years in the same summer. During that time, a Jack went through tough things and saw how Christians went through hard things. He did a bible study through Mark, and in Mark 3, Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, but Jesus says that the man’s sins need to be forgiven more than his body needed to be healed. Eric saw that story in himself. Eric said, “I need my sins forgiven”, and over that year, he kept searching.
Jordan moved to Colorado to plant a church at Colorado Mesa University, and Eric went back to Alaska. Instead of having face-to-face conversations, Jordan and Eric write letters to one another. In a recent letter Jordan received, Eric wrote, “ I am starting to believe that Jesus is true, but I am not there yet.”
These are just a few of the fruits that were seen in Missoula, all from a hobby Jordan loved.
“We leverage our WHOLE lives that the gospel may be proclaimed in word and deed. ”
Jordan, Jake, and Zach continue to play basketball in Grand Junction. And God continues to bring death to life from a hobby, from being sent. From being a part of something bigger than ourselves when we implant ourselves into the towns and cities God sends us.
Jordan, Jake, and Zach continue to play basketball in Grand Junction. And God continues to bring death to life from a hobby, from being sent. From being a part of something bigger than ourselves when we implant ourselves into the towns and cities God sends us.
They have two group chats with 70 people in between them. They play Tuesdays and Thursdays with 20-30 people a week. From that group, they have seen two guys come from death to life.
Jeremiah 29:4-8 says this to the people of Israel in exile:
This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘‘Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and father sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may give birth to sons and daughters; and grow in numbers there and do not decrease. Seek the prosperity of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its prosperity will be your prosperity.’
Being a good missionary is owning the place you're sent. It’s looking at the lost and grieving the ways they walk in death, and using any means necessary to reach them. Even basketball. Or knitting, or book club, or simply walking and meeting new people. We leverage our WHOLE lives that the gospel may be proclaimed in word and deed.
Where can you be used to have such a gospel influence as this?
