Crazy Missionaries. Idealistic Dreamers. Men and Women Enjoying an Extended Vacation. These are some of our secret thoughts about those who go overseas with the gospel.
I don’t mean this post to be offensive in any way. I don’t want you to think I am not a patriot or am in any way criticizing our military. I am so proud of the men and women who serve in our Armed Forces in a sacrificial way. I am just wondering why we Christians aren’t just as proud and supportive of our missionaries who serve God’s Kingdom in a sacrificial way.
After watching the movie, The Insanity of God, the following question was raised in one of my men’s small groups:
“Why is it that we applaud young men and women for volunteering to join the military, knowing that they might have to lose their lives in service to this country, yet we often have less favorable thoughts about those who volunteer to become missionaries?”
It is odd that both groups choose to risk their lives for a cause they believe in, and for one group we call them “patriots” and are proud of their sacrificial decision, but for the other group we think of them as “idealistic dreamers” who need to get a dose of reality because we feel they are spending their lives frivolously.
This is not a new phenomenon. Many of the missionaries in the past faced the same type of negative scrutiny from others. Too often, they heard negative comments from fellow Christians.
Leaders in the British East India Company said at the beginning of the nineteenth century: “The sending of Christian missionaries into our Eastern possessions [India] is the maddest, most expensive, most unwarranted project that was ever proposed by a lunatic enthusiast.” Ouch! What an encouragement that must have been to those who felt called of God to reach the lost people of India.
However, at the close of that same century, the English Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal said: “In my judgment, Christian missionaries have done more lasting good to the people of India than all other agencies combined.”
I have known of multiple families who made sure that their children were in the missions education programs of their church (such as the R.A.’s and G.A.’s for Southern Baptists), and yet when their young adult children indicated that God was calling them into overseas, cross-cultural missions, the families quickly indicated to them that they must have misunderstood what God said.
Even now, I know of missionaries whose families are not extremely supportive of what they do, nor of the costs that they pay to follow the call of God. It is as if many of us think that because the missionaries are in far-off, “exotic” places that they are on some kind of extended vacation. The reality is that the mission field can be lonely and difficult and cause missionaries to have the cry of Jeremiah when he said:
O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long.
Lottie Moon prayed: “I hope no missionary will be as lonely as I have been.”
Not only are our missionaries isolated from family and friends as they try to share the message of Jesus with people who often are not receptive, but too often it is their own families, friends, and church members who are not very supportive. We ask awkward questions such as, “When are you coming home?” when their home is now on foreign soil where they live for 50 out of 52 weeks each year. I fear that we have not served well as senders of those we know who serve as missionaries. In fact, some of us have inwardly considered them a bit crazy, just like the East India Company leadership did.
I am glad that the missionaries I know have had the additional feeling that Jeremiah shared when he followed up his complaint with:
But if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.
Let us who know missionaries be better senders. Let us think better thoughts of them. They are not on an extended vacation. They have devoted their very lives to endure hardship, persecution, loneliness, and isolation all for the sake of the gospel. Their love for God and the lost has compelled them to go. May our love for God and for the lost compel us to support them with our inner thoughts, our love, our words, and our actions. Let us always remember these truths and applaud them for their willing sacrifices. Let us thank them for their example to us of what it means to lay down their lives for Jesus and others. And may we never discourage our own children or fellow church members from the missionary call of God.