Tag: missionary

Guilty feelings about missionaries

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image credit: Rob Gros, CreationSwap

Growing up, my local church would bring in a missionary couple once/quarter on a Sunday evening to present to our congregation about the work that they’re doing. Some were working overseas, others domestically. Either way, though, the format was the same.

My pastor would come on stage with his tie a little looser, and I could just sense it was coming. Nap time.

He’d give a brief intro, then have the congregation welcome the missionary couple to stage. They’d give a few words in another language, thank us for having them, hit the lights and queue the slide show. For the next 45 minutes, they’d scroll through slide after slide of pictures of huts, out-of-focus large-group pictures, and lots of “um…what is that, honey? Did you take that picture?”

And then I’m sure they said something after that, but I never caught it. I was enjoying my nap. 🙂

Part of me felt guilty, though. The most boring services of the year were the ones where someone who had given their life to serve others, and taken the Gospel to the most difficult areas of the world, were presenting.

But it wasn’t my fault. I had no reason to feel guilty.

It was the missionaries’ faults for being dull.

Dark rooms and pictures of people nobody know rarely inspire a room. Especially when you’ve got a 7 year old in the room.

Your story

If you’ve got a story to tell (and, presuming that you’re reading this, you’re alive, which means you do), tell it with gusto. Tell it like your life depends on it.

More accurately, tell it like someone else’s life depends on it. Because it does.

God uses other people to call us out of our normal existence and sweep us into the fuller picture of who He’s calling us to be and what He’s calling us to do. Rarely do moral platitudes do it. Ever more rarely do condemning opinions and judgments. Stories change the world. Stories shape ministries.

It was a story that helped shape my ministry. Over the course of 2 years, I listened to the story of a guy a few years older than me share his story of being called to ministry. I was 15, and it was his story that shaped the community I was a part of. Out of that community, 4 men are serving in full-time vocational ministry.

You’ve got a story to tell, so tell it. Share your pain, your frustrations, your disappointments, and your victories with those whom God’s given you the gift of building a relationship. Share it often and share it well.

 

 

Let’s be Dangerous

image via Creation Swap, Jordan Chesbrough

Jim Elliot is one of my favorite missionaries.

He was a missionary in Ecuador in the 1950s, attempting to bring the Gospel to the Waodani people. The Waodani were savages, and violent to those outside their tribe. You can read his journal HERE.

Elliot and his team, who included Nate Saint (you can watch his story in the film, End of the Spear), spent months trying to communicate with the Waodani. They had made some contact, and decided to set up camp in order to build a closer relationship. However, Jim and his 3 companions were killed by 10 Waodani warriors. Jim’s wife, Elizabeth, continued to minister to the Waodani. She encountered much success, as many were converted to the Gospel through the work Jim, his team, and eventually their wives would do.

Jim’s most famous quote is

He is no fool who parts with that which he cannot keep, when he is sure to be recompensed with that which he cannot lose.

But I ran across another, longer quote that is so perfect for modern-day followers of Jesus. It challenged me. I think it may challenge you, too.

We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the twentieth century does not reckon with. But we are “harmless,” and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are “sideliners” — coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!

HT: Challies

“Faith” and “safe” are incompatible. Be dangerous. Live courageously. 

 

*image credit: Creation Swap user Jordan Chesbrough

 

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