Missionary Mirage

A couple of reads on the web got me silently fuming on the subject of missionary mirages. But why keep it in when I can let it all hang out in a first-rate rant?!?  First, iMonk tells us to look to churches in the developing world to re-evangelize the developed world and instruct our churches in “as many ways as possible.” Then I ran across a Dan Edelen post at Cerulean Sanctum from way back in March of last year sharing missionary stories that can’t possibly be true but actually are… or maybe not.

The sad truth is that there are just as many goofballs and hucksters in the third world churches as there are in the developed world.  I have ceased to believe that a guy wearing a tie and calling himself “Pastor” is necessarily a Christian. He is just as likely an “opportunista” hoping to fleece a flock and pull the wool over a missionary’s eyes in the process. On top of that you can hardly cross the street without being run down by some ”missionary” in a Toyota 4×4 trying to save the lost and reach the unreached which for some reason always seems to involve buying a lot of bicycles and roof tin. If I’m to believe their publicity some of these missions have flooded Tete province with the Gospel and new churches are springing up by the hundreds. But I have yet to see even one of these supposed churches and instead all I hear from local believers is “that’s the mission that pays people to be pastors.”

Don’t believe everything you hear in missionary newsletters for a couple of reasons. (Why am I saying this? I’m cutting my own throat!) As a missionary I am trapped between your vision of what the field is like and what is really happening out here. Out of respect for the local populace and because the situation is not as simplistic as our supporters would wish we often can’t report what’s going on in the trenches. We tend to tell you about the good and then just gloss over the bad.  And if you take the bad and add it to the just-plain-boring stuff, they outweigh the good by far.  I had a recent example where my Bible college students had written some extremely moving “epistles” to the believers in Turkey after hearing of the recent killings of Christians there. I really wanted to publish a couple of those letters to show people some of the depth of sincerity present in believers here. But in the course of the students turning in an assignment based on those letters it was discovered that four of the six students were involved in plagiarizing one another’s work. Even then I thought, “Well, I can just share the letters and not mention the cheating.” But that’s not the kind of thing that helps a guy to sleep well at night.

My colleagues Mikael and Semo have been slogging away for the last month checking the Nyungwe translation of Genesis. In a month they checked twenty-five chapters, day after day. Sitting on tippy pews, and working at a rickety table in the corner of a church. It’s not glamorous stuff but it is what much of being a missionary is about.

I have the privilege of knowing many sincere, Spirit-filled hard-working expat missionaries and Mozambican pastors. Most of them work too hard for very small results and none of the ones I hang out with are fabulously wealthy as a result. Just yesterday I was rejoicing that I was in an environment where I get to work with godly brothers and sisters in Christ from many nations of the world all with a passion for spreading the gospel in Mozambique. But within that same group are people, myself included, with character flaws, weaknesses, failings and more that I probably can’t guess and would be shocked if I knew. We are the body of Christ, strong in our weaknesses and doing the kinds of things month after month that don’t make very good press releases.

So go ahead and believe everything that you hear coming out of the mission field. Much of it is true. But much of it is a mirage. If you want to be able to tell the difference you might have to come over here and see it for yourself.

Related information: Take a look at our Dinthi Day posts for a slightly sanitized view of missionary life in Africa. The Nyungwe Bible Translation site is an example of focusing on the good without making too many grandiose claims.

---

Subscribe to Lingamish