Tom Harrington works for the Park Service as an Interpreter in Cade’s Cove, Tennessee. I met Tom while on vacation in Tennessee checking out this beautiful place where 650 people lived up until the early 20th century. It was a mountain place that was simply beautiful. So much so that on a good day the cars were bumper to bumper taking the ride around the valley.
Tom was the "Interpreter"giving the tour-talk at the Primitive Baptist Church in the valley that had been there since the early 19th century. He talked about their ways and beliefs and their history and it was fascinating. As I listened, parts of his presentation resonated with my heart - things like people caring for one another, accountability, values, and plain ole’ hard work. And Tom made it very clear that the central value for the people in this valley was God. He unashamedly pointed out the way their lives were built around their faith rather than their faith being some ‘add-on”.
Periodically he would add a rhetorical question like “Wouldn’t that be nice to have that kind of community again?” He was not a preacher, but he was talking in such a way that you knew he was not simply a park employee giving a lecture. He was someone of faith who actually understood the role of faith in building a community.
Afterwards I found him and introduced myself as a pastor. I told him I appreciated the way he presented everything and that I saw the Lord in his talk. He smiled and said “My prayer is always that the Lord would use me somehow in these talks for His glory.” I told him that I believed God had used him. He told me that before he began, he had to submit his talk to the park service for approval and that he didn’t know whether they would approve it or not since it had so much talk of God. He said he had prayed and the people of his church had prayed and here he was: giving talks that reminded people of the central role of faith in the building of a nation or a community.
I thank God for people like Tom.
You see Tom Harrington is a missional person. That is, he takes his current setting and looks for ways to honor God in that situation. He sees himself as on mission with God to reach a lost world. He doesn’t consider missions to be something he does once or twice a year by taking a missions trip somewhere or giving to his church's annual missions offering. To people like Tom, missions is what he does when he wakes up in the morning. When he dresses in his park service uniform and drives to this wonderful place in the mountains of Tennessee, he is not going to work, he is going on the mission field.
That is missional living. Way to go, Tom!
