Through a recent conversation I had with a friend there were some important truths to think through and consider. As my life continues on and "missions" is apparently somehow involved there are topics to consider. I wanted to just post the whole conversation here to refer back later in life or just to share with you, the reader some of these well thought through points.
Though ignorance is bliss, should we adhere to our ignorance in order to maintain our bliss, when the freedom of the truth is out there to be found? I think C.S. Lewis sums this concept up nicely when he says, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: If you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth – only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and in the end, despair.”
‘Missions’ is an interesting concept for me. I guess the reason I find it interesting is that I don’t consider myself a ‘missionary’ or on a ‘mission’ and here is why: after arriving back from my work overseas, at various times I have had a lot of conversations with people who are interested in what I am doing. During these conversations I got a lot of questions and comments like:
· So how do you like being a missionary?
· I’ve always wanted to get into missions
· How do you manage your financial support?
· You should send out a prayer letter
· Have you gotten a lot of opportunities to evangelize to people?
At first I found these questions a bit annoying. The reason being that, I just viewed myself as an ordinary guy doing a pretty ordinary job that happened to be overseas… How did I suddenly become a ‘missionary’ to all of these people? I mean, I am in job where I get paid to do pretty typical business activities, so why should I send out a prayer letter or keep tally of how many people I evangelize to? I worked plenty of jobs back in the States, but I didn’t get any of these questions then, why not?
I began to realize that most of my Christian friends and family somehow associated me, living overseas, with being a ‘missionary’ which is fine. But here is the reality of the matter; It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, or what your job is, the only thing you are able to do, under any circumstances, is this:
1. Live your life
2. Work at your job
3. And do it well all while living 100% for Christ and the life that he has called us to
I do not believe that this life he has called us to is the life of a ‘missionary’ per say, but rather the life of a follower of Christ. A life where sharing Christ’s love is a natural outpouring of following him. In my blunt opinion, the only thing that separates ‘missionaries’ from the rest of us is, that they simply do this while being financially supported by others.
So to address the questions of my friends: Maybe I should send out a prayer letter, but then again maybe you should as well; maybe I should keep track of my evangelism opportunities, likewise maybe you should as well.
The response I have gotten to this is, “yeah, I see what you are saying, but I really just feel like it’s easier to be more ‘intentional’ about it when you are on a missions trip.” Although this may be true, the reason why it is true is not what we may think. When people go on short-term missions trips I believe they often, albeit sub-consciously, come to two conclusions:
1. The people they will be evangelizing to will likely view them as somehow being different or cool, giving them a more open platform for sharing the gospel… something that surely couldn’t happen amongst their non-Christian peer group back home!
2. Even if their evangelistic efforts do get ‘rejected,’ they will likely never see these people again and can therefore avoid embarrassment; which simply isn’t the case with your neighbor or co-worker you have to see every day!
I would argue therefore that evangelistic short-term missions trips are not ultimately promoting ‘boldness’ in evangelism but rather fear. Are we meaning to support this mentality?
The second issue I take with many missions (especially short-term missions) is this: people often come back from missions trips being ‘on fire for the Lord,’ or having developed a ‘real heart’ for XYZ country. And while both of these things are great, and I support them 100%, I also question the reality of there presence in these people’s lives. Because, I believe at the root, these conclusions were arrived at entirely in the wrong manner.
I have seen that missions are often designed to create an emotional experience in people’s lives which they often misinterpret as the Spirit moving in their lives. A couple of years ago I was reading some letters from C.S. Lewis, and I came across this quote that really stuck out to me:
“Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift… The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely a response of the nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as certainly you will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be the most operative when you can feel it least.” Letters (15 May 1952)
Yet we see this misinterpretation every day in the church.
As an example: a few years back I participated as a high-school youth group leader at my church. Every year the kids looked forward to the annual winter retreat… ‘The Dunes Retreat!’ And every year I would see the same cycle appear. First the kids would go non-stop from eight in the morning to at least two to three the following morning all three days of the retreat. During the day, they would have a lot of games and activities to keep them busy. At night they would do some combination of worship, speaking, prayer, and break-out sessions, all with lots of loud music, flashing lights and a whole lot of hype.
The third night was always the big push, a challenging evangelism message, followed by an all night prayer/singing session. And of course, at some point toward the end of the evening the speaker would usually do some sort of pulpit-call and we would see dozens of people coming to Christ or recommitting their lives, together with their friends, in tear filled groups. At church the following Sunday we would always hear the reports from the pulpit about how great these kids were and how many lives were changed during the treat, etc….
However, what I always noticed with these kids is that I never really saw any real changes in their lives. A couple weeks after the retreat, things were back to normal. I began to question: is this what the Holy Spirit looks like when he moves in someone’s life? Or is what I am seeing something else? Looking back years later, it now seems pretty clear that it was something else. I mean, does over-exhaustion, combined with a convincing message, loud music, and group think equate itself to a movement of the Holy Spirit? I should think not. It is likely that you could get a person to do just about anything under such conditions. So why do we in the church so often glorify this methodology?
Unfortunately, I am afraid that this very same methodology is so often applied to short-term missions. Only instead we replace the emotional strains of the retreat with things like, showing destruction in Haiti, child prostitutes in Thailand and crying babies in Africa. Why can’t we just take emotions for what they are and be thankful for them instead of trying to manipulate them into being something spiritual?
My final point on missions is this: when doing missions combined with some sort of aid work, we seriously have to consider exactly what it is that we are doing, and how it will affect the population in the long-run. I have plenty of examples of this of my own, but I’ll actually borrow from my friend Jonathan Martin’s book called ‘Giving Wisely’ because it paints a very clear picture of what I am trying to say:
“Mexico, 2007: A Mexican orphanage near the U. S. border had figured out how to work the system. American Christians are generous – very generous. But when it comes to the ways they give – they can be a bit uninformed. And this orphanage found it easy to keep them this way.
During the Christmas season, truckloads of gifts arrived for the parentless children. Many U.S. churches had heard the call of the Scriptures to help the orphans in their distress, and they responded in the way they’d been trained to respond: Give money; send gifts. Church after church sent truckload after truckload of nice stuff.
As one truck was emptied, the goods were quickly hidden so the next church with their truckload of stuff wouldn’t see the vast amount of gifts already received from other generous churches. All the churches were easily kept under the delusion that they were giving the only gifts these poor children would receive. And the orphan children were known by the locals to be the wealthy kids in their neighborhood.
My friend, Walter, who was working for the spiritual well-being of these kids, was amazed at the high quality and vast quantity of gifts being received. He watched as a truckload of very nice football jerseys was unloaded. The young men were delighted. The photos taken for the church folk who gave back in the U.S. showed joyous beaming smiles. But this delight on their faces was not for the reasons we might simply choose to believe. They young recipients of the gifts knew these jerseys would receive top price in the markets. They already had way too many clothes. Americans love to give clothing.
Hours later, Walter saw these same jerseys in the markets for sale. Cash now in hand, the boys came back to the orphanage. That night Walter noticed these same young men leaving the orphan complex. Curious, he followed and watched as they walked out to meet a truck arriving from the city – arriving with a different kind of Christmas gift. The truck carried several young women. They boys were able to purchase these prostitutes thanks to the generosity of the American churches.
Walter’s heart was broken. These were boys he loved. They were being empowered for evil by the very good intentioned, but ignorant, generosity of the church.”
This is an extreme, but very true example. I wish I could say that this sort of thing is the exception, but from my experience, it is not, it is the norm. I can’t even tell you how many of the drugs MTI distributed in Haiti ended up in the market that very same day. And even when we aren’t empowering them through free gifts, we often empower them to be lazy. I’ll ask this question, why is the church sending teams to Haiti to build simple structures? Is it possible that it might be better for this unskilled work to be completed by the Haitians, who have an 80% unemployment rate? To be blunt, Haitians are some of the laziest people (as a whole) I have ever met, how do you think they got this lazy? It is because we have empowered, and continue to empower them to be so. The only point I am making is this: If we are going make an attempt to help, let’s make sure, first of all, that we aren’t doing any harm. Aid work is VERY complex; it is rare that even professional aid agencies get right. How do we expect the church to get it right?
So, there you have my thoughts. If you have any questions about any of this, please let me know, and I’ll be more than happy to share further. I really do love to see people getting involved with missions; because, as you and I both know, it is a big world out there and there is a lot of spiritual, emotional, and physical needs that we as Christians can help fill. I just wish we would be, more often, encouraged to think through some of these things before we are sent out.
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