Given our history and practice as a mission organisation, I can assume we all accept a diversity of practices and even beliefs when we come to the thorny topic of Christian orthodoxy.

Context matters very much. Worldviews are diverse and fluid. We learn and listen and adapt our witness in respectful dialogue within our contexts and cultures. We use the term ‘alongsider’ in our organisation to describe how we enter into the relational networks where God has called us to serve. But what about ‘outsider’? A recent discussion with a friend (and missiologist) challenged me to think about my own witness and willingness to accept this call ‘outside the gate’.

We read in Hebrews (13:8) that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” But in a world that feels like it’s shifting under our feet every few minutes, what exactly is the “same” about him? This question is at the heart of our mission work and our faithful witness. To identify this solid core is to take hold of the thing we should endeavour to pass on. Is it a political stance? Anti-war? Pro-peace? Is it a specific set of doctrines or a certain denominational structure or a ‘proper’ way to run a worship service? I’m coming to think the Bible suggests something far more challenging.

If we look at the context of this famous verse in Hebrews (see below), Jesus’ ‘sameness’ isn’t about maintaining a comfortable religious orthodoxy. It’s about his consistent and relentless choice to be outside the gate. Inside the gate (in the ancient world) was reserved for the pure, the proper and the powerful.

Jesus, however, chose to go outside the gate, into the places of disgrace and among the people deemed unworthy. The sameness of Jesus has something to do with the places and the people he chooses to associate with.

I felt the weight of this recently while teaching a Sunday School class at a Southern Baptist church in Alabama. We were looking at Matthew 9, where Jesus calls for an expanding compassion and mercy that often shocks our religious sensibilities. It is one thing to talk about ‘sameness’ as a theological concept; it’s another to realise that Jesus is “the same” in his insistence on our moving toward the very people we might prefer to keep at arm’s length and into the places we prefer to drive around.

The Gospel message of embracing the stranger and the refugee was met with some resistance. Calling our brothers and sisters to go outside the gate is not always good news to everyone.

Personally, I don’t find this ‘outside the gate’ invitation easy either. Like many of us, I have a deep-seated desire for influence and prestige. For honour and for people to think well of me. There is a subtle, dangerous trap in mission work where we can drift from the simple desire to follow a call to instead seek honour and recognition for our service.

If Jesus is always on the move toward the margins – to the places of shame and humility – then, how do we lay down our status and follow him? I’m grateful for our 2026 focus on Colossians 3. We’re encouraged to ‘clothe ourselves’ with virtues that reflect the habits of Jesus. Compassion replaces the impulse to judge or control. Humility replaces the need to be honoured. Love becomes the overcoat that binds everything together in perfect unity. I need these reminders, these habits, to accompany the call outside the gate.

Ultimately, the solid core, the sameness of Jesus is found in his willingness to lay status down. Jesus is the same because his love is always expanding the horizon, inviting us to leave the polite city of our own influence and join him where the real, messy work of compassion and mercy is happening. I hope you feel encouraged not only to persist in being an alongsider, but consider the call to be an outsider as you join in the missio Dei.

Here’s the Hebrews 13‬:‭8‬-‭16 passage from the Y’all translation (yes, it exists!):

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Y’all must not be carried away by various strange teachings. It is beautiful for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which do not benefit those who observe them. We have an altar from which those who serve in the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the high priest brings the blood of animals into the holy place as an offering for sin, but the bodies are burned outside the camp.

Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside of the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. So, let us go to him outside of the camp, bearing the abuse he bore. For here we don’t have an enduring city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through him, then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips which openly profess his name. But y’all must not forget to do good and share in fellowship, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”