Missionary Confidential

Lose Yourself: What is Your Identity?

Of all the lessons that foreign missions ministry has taught me (and continues to do so), the top of the list has to be that we are shaped by our location and culture more than we realise.  Most anyone who has lived in a foreign country for a decent stretch of time would probably recognise how true this is.

When you meet a fellow Christian from another country, there are some great similarities and kinship that’s experienced through our Family in Christ.  It’s difficult to describe to others, but there is an understanding of what it’s like to press on with life as a Christian in this fallen world.  They know what you’ve seen, and usually understand how fellow Christians experience life.

Then there’s the point that you realise that their Christian experience has differed than yours.  Their “favourite songs” are ones you’ve never heard, or methodology in worship services is, well, just different.  Nothing wrong or sacrilegious, but jarringly different to your exposure.

Who and what you are surrounded by is bound to influence your perception and choices.  Even when I’ve worked with missionaries who are firmly resolved to not lose one bit of their “American” accent, actions or attitude, over time even they begin to start using phrases here that wouldn’t ever be used “back home”.  They don’t notice it, and can become alarmed when informed of this, yet for all their determination to resist, the phrase or action creeps back in.  Bear in mind that these are things that are completely inoffensive both here and to Americans, nor would they be anything wrong in God’s view at all.  They hear it used over and over again, or perhaps people here understand them better when they say that phrase.  It just happens, even if they purposely try to stop. Read More…

Missionary? Not My Kid: When Your Parents Don’t Approve

One of the struggles I’ve faced being a missionary is the fact that my evangelical Christian parents don’t approve of my choice.  At all.  While their initial reaction was understandable, I thought and prayed that perhaps their stance would soften over time.  It has not.  In fact, year by year they have increasingly rejected most contact I’ve tried to make.  Conversations have become few and far between, and any mention I make of ministry here is met with stony silence and a quick topic change, so there’s not much to talk about after a few minutes.  I am no longer kept “in the loop” about even serious things, like my father’s recent surgery, until there was a complication afterward.  I’m very close to being disowned.

In no way am I making a sympathy grab here, just trying to explain that some parents take this very, very hard.

Because of this situation, every time I read in the Bible, “Honour your father and mother,” there’s a little pang of thought: Am I?  If you asked them, I believe they would immediately answer a resounding “No!”  However, after a lot of consideration of the situation, I have to respectfully disagree. Read More…

Tripping Through Cultures (or, When Cultures Collide)

Recently, a woman in my church sought counsel on a possible marriage.  On the surface, it sounded pretty standard-issue stuff: they’d met on an Internet dating site a couple of months ago and, both being young and impatient, wish to hurry things along and get married quickly.  The woman was concerned as she felt he was pressing things really quickly, including premarital intimacy.  I’m sure you already know what needed to be said considering Biblical standards, and it was.  However, when you bring their respective cultures into the picture, there’s more to the story.

She, being from Eastern Europe, was viewing this as a transaction.  After answering a few questions, it became clear that she had essentially the same attitude of a mail-order bride: I’m trying to escape bad living conditions.  There also seemed to be a bit of loneliness adding to the situation, plus a cultural attitude from her country that women at her age who were married with children were much more revered and respected than a single woman.

He, being from an African nation, was also viewing this as a transaction.  In my mission field, sham marriages to avoid deportation are not illegal, and he made it clear that he needed her help to stay here.  When she described some of his actions and reactions to her, a quick view of his country’s cultural norms on the (mis)treatment of women showed me that she had no idea what she might be getting into. Read More…

Working Without a Contract

As I recently listened to a sermon on the Parable of the Vineyard Labourers (Matthew 20:1-16) the focus was obviously on the aspect of some being rewarded unequally compared to the efforts of others.  However, it was in the middle of the sermon (and the passage) that I realised a parallel between the workers hired later and the fundraised missionary: working without knowing exactly what you will be paid.

If you notice, Jesus explains that the first set of workers had an agreed wage.  The second, third and fourth set of workers are told they will receive “whatever was right at the end of the day” in verse 4.  The fifth set of workers are told to join the others in the vineyard with no description of an agreed amount.  Essentially, they are working without a contract.  And so are we.

I’ve mentioned before some of the things we’ve learned about living on fundraised support (we’re also tentmakers for two-thirds of it, thanks to the unfavourable exchange rate and the ridiculous cost of living).  The biggest thing I’ve learned is that fundraised living is an extreme exercise of faith and probably one of the biggest reminders of our immediate dependence on God.

Here are a couple of concepts I see in the parable: Read More…

Am I Less of a Missionary?

Somedays I think that I don’t see missions like a lot of other people do.  Consider the following:

In an email update I received from one of our supporters, the writer mentioned that her current reading was all missionary biographies, so she quoted Hudson Taylor with the implication that I must also be familiar with it.  It was a nice quote.  I had not heard it before, nor have I read missionary biographies.
When meeting a Christian here in the field, she assumed that we grew up, like herself, hearing stories at bedtime of the noble and heroic Christian missionaries in the heart of Africa.  Surely this is what prompted our missionary call?  Surely not.
Through this blog, I was contacted by a man interested in becoming a missionary.  One of his questions was: “Where in the world would you like to share the Gospel where you haven’t been able to yet?”  It’s a good question, but I honestly drew a blank.  I’d never thought of that before.
On our initial fundraising tour, people meeting us afterwards usually opened their greeting with. “You were missionary kids, right?” or “Your parents were missionaries, of course?”  Without divulging personal details, quite the opposite is our reality.  Not only were our parents only somewhat involved in their local church during our respective childhoods, they are now infrequent attenders at best, and all hold deep disappointment at our choice to be full-time foreign missionaries.

My whole life I’ve never fit into the pigeonholes people have tried to place me.  It shouldn’t surprise me that I don’t fit the missionary stereotype, either, and on the surface seem like less of a missionary. Read More…