Confessions of a Bad Missionary

I’ll admit it.  I’m not a great missionary.  

In fact, I might be a bad missionary.

(I don’t want to speak for my wife, who may be among the best missionaries ever, though I suspect she’d laugh at this suggestion)

When I read the stories of awe-inspiring missionaries like Hudson Taylor, William Carey, Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, and even one of the founders of SIM, Rowland Bingham, I am struck by their staunch faith, their authoritative power over the demonic, their consistent lives of evangelism, and their ceaseless intercession for those they were serving.  This is of course not to mention that they also were overcoming huge distances from home and family, disparaging loneliness, no internet or Facebook to stay connected, no electricity or water sources, perpetual threats of life and limb, and the plagues of diseases such as malaria and typhoid before treatments had been discovered.

Okay, so you may say it isn’t a fair comparison to line yourself up against the “greats,” but let me take you back to one night a couple weeks ago…

It was 3:00 in the morning.  I had been lying on the floor of the bathroom for the past hour because it seemed too painful to try to get up and back to bed.  For the prior 24 hours I had been cycling between freezing cold and blazing hot.  Between the two extremes I would just lay still yet my body shook on its own as if having a seizure.  Every bone and muscle in my body felt bruised.  Curled up in the fetal position on my tile floor that night I was hit by a sudden feeling. No, more like a compulsion.  “I just want to go home,” my mind whimpered.  I closed my eyes in defeat.

The next morning I was talking with my beautiful, strong, supportive wife about the prior night and the confession of my unconscious psyche.  “YES!” she shouted, complete with fist pump.  I was dumbfounded, and a little offended.  She continued, “It took you two and a half years, but now you finally said it too!  Look at you!  You’re human!”

I can’t say I was particularly encouraged by her enthusiastic response, but I couldn’t help but laugh.  And once again, my wife was right. (maybe I shouldn’t admit that in writing)

There is a problem in contemporary missions, and it’s twofold.  First, we in the West have created a system that places missionaries into the stratum of Christian superheroes.  Forget pastors being one step below God, we’ve all watched pastors fail publically and fail big.  They must be mere humans.  But missionaries!  Now they are people just short of godly perfection!  Partly that interpretation comes about from the same problem I have in comparing myself to books of missionary heroes.  You can’t compare a partial story, just the best and most interesting parts of their lives and ministries, to your entire story, blemishes and failures and all the unpolished pieces of your life.  And what does the average American Christian hear from missionaries?  It is the story of an entire tribe coming to Christ after seeing the Jesus video, the snapshot of a dirty young boy getting a drink from the new well someone dug in their village and the caption of “173 people heard the Gospel because of this project.”  When monthly or quarterly newsletters come out from missionaries, they rarely highlight an episode of lying on the floor through the night trying not to puke their liver out.

The second part of this misinformation about missionaries is somewhat related.  Western sending churches want Western-style reports that will pump up the investors.  They want to hear good news. They want to hear about lives being changed with specific numbers of how many were converted, but preferably in 200 words or less.  Admittedly, this perceived pressure on missionaries to meet expectations of miraculous results with every newsletter comes partially from the missionaries themselves; afraid that support will stop if reports are not rosy (unfortunately this happens).  But look through books or articles on how to write missionary newsletters and you’ll be hard pressed to find much other than how to encourage your readers and sustain their support.  Want more evidence? Read actual missionary newsletters and you’ll see it yourself.  Even when there is little of excitement to report, missionaries can find ways to word the mundane and elongate the smallest good news to create a paper pep rally for missions.

But I’m going to step out of the shadows for a moment [at the risk of losing supporters].  Being a missionary does not make you a rock star.  In fact, we’ve found that being a missionary is a surefire way to bring hurt, heartache, and challenges.  Becoming a missionary doesn’t make you automatically nearly God-like.  Rather, we see that it regularly (and sometimes painfully) points out failures, shortcomings, and areas of sin lodged in our lives.  Living as a missionary does not mean that as you walk through the market everyday people will fall at your feet in repentance, begging to know the way to salvation.  We find that getting opportunities to fully and powerfully share the Gospel take hard work and a long time – and seeing lives change at these invitations really has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God!

Now let me change directions before you call our sending agency to yank us out of Nigeria.  We are not missionary superstars.  We know that and we accept that. We are weak. We still have a sin nature and issues that God is patiently working out in us.  We get sick.  We are sometimes discouraged and feel like we should just go home.  We sometimes share the Gospel and are met with rejection or apathy.  And not every patient I treat at the hospital lives to go home.

BUT – We serve a God who uses imperfect people to work out his perfect will [consider Jonah or David].  We have a God who prefers we recognize our weakness and limitations so we depend fully on him alone.  We serve a God who hears our prayers for patients in the hospital and has, more times than we can count, worked miracles saving people who by all medical logic should have died.  We have a God who is alive and at work in Nigeria and who, for his own glory, chooses to use us as he changes hearts and lives, drawing many to Himself.

The day following my bathroom meltdown I was thinking back on my response and asked God if that was the true condition of my heart and should I really be packing up.  He said no, and reminded me of one of my favorite verses, 1 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

I may never be a Hudson Taylor or a Rowland Bingham, and I may never make it as a Christian superhero.  Only God knows that.  But I thank God that he continues to work in our lives and in the lives of those around us.  I’m no Paul, but even he admitted, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)