Has something been lost?
When I hear or read stories about great missionaries of the past, the level of faith I see challenges me. People simply believed God for impossible things.
Think of all the people that encouraged Henry Martyn to turn his back on a successful life of influence in England. Or the early Alliance churches that waited for months for news from Toronto son Robert Jaffray while he travelled Asia, establishing leadership centers in China and Indonesia (the latter thrived despite being established over the same years as the Great Depression in Canada and the U.S.!). I marvel at these heroes, but marvel even more perhaps at those that could send them, believing that God was at work.
It feels like something is lost in our churches today. No generation has it all together, so I’m not pining for different times. But we can learn from a history of faith. It will look different in our times, of course — but I can’t wait to see what faith expressed in our times will look like. Here’s three elements that concern me:
Faith in God working through ministry that’s beyond my reach:
I love the common story of a person who has gone on a Short Term Missions trip, walked around with one of our workers overseas; removed from “home” culture, they see a new people, pray with an emerging church, hear the heart of a missionary, perhaps serve alongside them in some small way. I believe that in this “small” world, we can have more and more people bringing gifts, news, love and encouragement to our IW’s, experiencing an important education in return.
BUT; a word of caution. Short Term Missions is not a replacement for faith. It can help us grow, it can do so much, but if a person “needs” to have an STM experience in order to be missions minded, something’s wrong. “We want to do a missions trip” is the default answer of so many churches who want to drum up support for missions. It may be a good idea – but missions supporters are not consumers. It is a question of the heart, not of the method — a heart steeped in a biblical worldview regarding the purpose and identity of the church, a heart confident of the need for the gospel, and it’s power to save every person. The other motives that creep in are – let’s face it – common to the middle class traveller from North America. I want to do good somewhere, I want to see new things, have new adventures. That is a foundation of sand. You just can’t build eternal things on that.
God uses us still, despite our cultural baggage, but it’s healthy for us to go deeper, seek His voice, and let the Word examine our motives. Then go after that! Or better, send someone to learn for you, and welcome the news they bring back as precious and revolutionary.
Can you believe God is working, even though you yourself are not there right now?
Faith in God working through people beyond my reach.
I love the technology that makes it possible for me to have Skype call with a friend from Poland, or Thailand; read the tweets of a colleague in Mexico City; emails that feature pictures of a building project in Central Asia — all before lunchtime! Let’s make the most of it!
At the same time, it is not fair to an international worker to say “Out of sight, out of mind.” Even as they embrace new technologies (I love to see churches helping IW’s do this), surely faith in someone’s God-anointed ministry would require us to purposefully remember them even without fresh news! In the Kingdom we should be able to enjoy a close relationship without 24-7 tweet and status updates!
This is especially important now, when so many of our friends are serving in countries where too much information may bring suffering and persecution for them, or for those they are close to. They need our faithful prayers more than ever, yet they cannot “compete” with the modern world for messaging. But maybe we need to go against the grain for them, using “old school” methods: talking friend-to-friend, passing the news around the church by word of mouth (without glossy photos or videos!).
The workers need prayers for miracles, let’s not leave them high and dry!
Faith in God working on a schedule beyond my reach:
So often (not always, not predictably) the first workers who arrive among a given people group will experience hardship and little fruitfulness. Witness the first American workers to arrive on the shores of Congo – today believers are everywhere, but there was years of difficulty at the beginning. Some people died, and some came home discouraged. Today the C&MA is sending people into regions where they face monolithic, seemingly impenetrable systems of culture and life built on other religions, or a “post-Christian” mentality that rejects the gospel out of hand because of some false, previously taught or encountered version of Christianity, or even authoritarian persecution of anyone confessing the name of Jesus.
Do we have the faith needed to respond to this, according to God’s schedule?
I’m not sure if anything has been lost. But it does seem like we have yet to see the rewards for flexing the muscles God have gifted us with. What will real faith look like as we are stretched in the coming 50 years of missions?