Missions Theory – Page 15 – A Life Overseas |

Struggling Missionaries (or, Does our Suffering Help the Cause?)

Something has changed. I am not sure exactly when it happened, and only in looking back can I see that it did. But there is no arguing it; things are different now than when we first got off that plane. Back then we were fired up – and ready to take on the needs of the poor even if it meant that we had to sacrifice anything and everything of our own. We had just sold the sum of our earthly possessions back in America, and it was time to give it all for those in need.

That was almost four years ago.

Four years of power outages, bad roads, no money, missing home, water shortages, mystery sicknesses, car trouble, and countless cultural frustrations that brought us to our knees daily. As evidence I submit the following, a photo of our first “kitchen” in Ethiopia.

Now, though, things are easy, or at least easier.

We used to wash dishes in tubs of cold, cloudy well water; we now have a $50 instant water heater next to the sink in our indoor kitchen. We used to spend hours waiting for taxi’s; we now drive a new (if you can call 1997 new) car that rarely breaks down and even has seat belts for all of the kids. We used to run out of water a few days a week; we now have a tank on the outside of our house that keeps the showers on even when the city pipes offer up nothing but air.

Not that life is all perfect and roses now. We still live in a foreign land, and people yell “Ferenj” (foreigner) at us when we walk down the street. Our skin is still the wrong color. We still can’t get Oreos or chocolate chips at the supermarket. On the other hand, we don’t even like Oreos anymore. You don’t miss what you can’t remember.

Part of me, though, feels that with this shift we are not here for the same reasons that we came for. Even though I know that is not true. If anything, we are exponentially more effective today than when we first arrived.

We came to help orphans. When we got here we had to work at helping just one child. Now we help hundreds.

Less complications = more help. Right?

The truth is, though, I kind of miss the struggle. I miss the closeness to God that I felt when I was hurting for the least of these. I miss feeling like I was doing something of value just by being here.

But should I? Was I ever really helping the kingdom more because the couch legs were falling off? Was I somehow holier when I smelled like a tribal person because the water had been out for two weeks?

People keep asking me when I will write a second book. My first was about how we sold everything to move to Ethiopia, messed up our perfect lives to rescue children who were being killed due to a tribal superstition, and nearly lost ourselves in the process. The second book, if I were to write one, would be boring as all get out! I am left to wonder what part of this change our lives has gone through is good.

——————————–

Today with this post I want to pose a question to all missionaries, missionary hopefuls, and missionary supporters.

I want to open a discussion about suffering and productivity. I honestly don’t know where I land on this. Some days I am all about making our home as comfortable as possible so that we can “last” longer in this place. Other days I am ready to give it all up so that I can help more people who have nothing themselves.

When visiting friends I can see that every missionary has a different point of view when it comes to how much is “enough”. I know it will never be the same for everyone. Still, I am left here wondering: is there a right and a wrong when it comes to how we should live as missionaries?

Okay. Enough said by me. What do you think?

——————————–

Levi Benkert – lives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with his wife and four children where they together created a ministry called Bring Love In that unites widows from the local community with orphans from the government orphanages to create new families. He wrote a book called No Greater Love and writes a personal blog at www.LeviBenkert.com

Pianos Aren’t in the Bible

You can find verses about stringed instruments. There’s stuff about joyful noises and music. But you go ahead and try to find mention of a piano in your bible. Not gonna happen, my friend.

Water purification systems aren’t in the bible either. Neither are AIDS prevention programs. Not a mention of slave trafficking awareness. You’re not going to see tent meeting crusades either. Other unmentioned activities: youth sports outreaches, bible smuggling, university campus bible studies, business as missions, and orphanages.

These are strategies developed towards a desired end. Is it okay that none of these things are strictly ‘biblical’? Must everything we do as missionaries be found bound in the bible? As providers of humanitarian aid must their be a touch of divinity mixed in with our humanity?

On his blog Seth Godin says,

“Non-profit failure is too rare, which means that non-profit innovation is too rare as well. Innovators understand that their job is to fail, repeatedly, until they don’t.”

Read the whole article here: ‘Non-profits have a charter to be innovators‘.

Then come back and chat about it. You can add your thoughts in the comments below.

We are a strategic bunch of people. We push limits. We challenge. But do we fail enough?

Is “failure” actually a sign of effective ministry? How have you failed in your work in the last 3 months?

To further the discussion on the tension between validity and innovation:

As a missionary do you find yourself running tally marks on a mental spreadsheet to make sure your existence counts? How effective is this mentality?

As a humanitarian relief worker do you justify the dollars sustaining you by logging as many “wins” as you can? What would you do differently without performance pressure nagging you?

Where do we derive our validity as we work in our different fields?

– Angie Washington, missionary living in Bolivia, South America

blog: angiewashington.com twitter: @atangie

photo credit: Ariana Terrence

My Job Description

The trees. They know how to lift their arms to heaven and let go.

Autumn comes late to Florida. All the way in early December. I watch the old season as it turns gold, catches flame and surrenders to the wind. Our autumn comes in an instant and usually lasts less than a week. It reminds me how suddenly seasons can change.

A little over six years ago I showed up site unseen in the middle of a war zone in Central Africa. On Christmas day, I flung wide the rickety gates of my newly rented compound, welcomed home my first 12 children and served Christmas dinner for 1,000. It was a path paved in miracles and Jesus coming where I least expected Him.

Almost six years later, our base is established on 40 acres of our own land. One of my greatest joys was to turn the keys over to an integrated field team of indigenous leaders, missionaries, and some of my first children {who came a little older to our family}. They have grown up, been trained, and returned to serve. That brings tears to a mama’s eyes.

I initially came to my adopted nation with a hunger to find the hurting and the broken and to love them well…. To give away all I had so they could fly higher and farther than I could or would. I came with a job description to love and to learn, go low and slow and do only what I see my Papa in heaven doing.

In September I moved back to my childhood home in Florida. I continue to serve my precious family in South Sudan, raising awareness as a founder so often does. I look forward to when I next visit and can spend the long hot days hugging my babies.

The transition back to the USA was in many ways far harder than the one going the other way. Between my 18th bout of cerebral malaria soon upon arriving back and then a terrible dental mishap that electrified my mouth and blew out my trigeminal nerve, it has been quite a welcome back!

I returned with a longing to live out what I was learning there, here. Could the same simple faith and relentless love of Jesus work here too? Was it really just about stopping for the one person He set in front of me every day?

In the weeks since I relocated, we have a vibrant growing family here who wants to find out what missional community looks like here. Not a strategy session, not a project to fix people’s problems, or worse fix people themselves. Not complicated theory, but an intentional journey to the margins of our community.

I found out this weekend in our small county alone there are 900 children in our school system registered as homeless. There are multiple camps set up for the homeless. There is a growing problem with human trafficking. Suddenly my lessons of holding the broken and learning to be a friend to the outcast didn’t seem foreign at all.

All mission is local. All ministry is local. Your organization can be global and international in its scope and vision, but missions can only be lived out right where you are.

My heart is leaping this morning. I feel like my Papa in heaven has given me the best gift ever. In a season of looking for presents, He has extended an invitation to be present among the invisible and overlooked hurting ones right in my midst.

I am reminded. My address has changed. My job description has not.

So my friend, what have you considered your job description to be in missions? Look at your calendar and it will give you a pretty good idea. 😉 Take some time ask Jesus if He would like to speak to you about His heart for your daily purpose right where you are.

– Michele Perry: Artist, Author, Executive Coach & Founder of Iris Ministries work in South Sudan
blog: From the Unpaved Road | twitter: @micheleperry | work: Iris South Sudan | USA: Create 61, Edge Creative Consulting, LLC

Missionaries as Human Traffickers?

If you’ve read here for any amount of time and clicked on a few links, you’ll know that I am passionate about the injustices of modern day slavery. You’ll have read that my husband has been an undercover investigator into brothels and that we now work full-time promoting rescue efforts in SE Asia.

Which is partially why when I read a recent article equating missionaries with human traffickers my skin bristled and my temperature started to rise.

In the article, a human rights activist, Matthew McDaniel, is interviewed about the long term effects the missionary community has had on a particular cultural group in Thailand called the Akha. McDaniel, who has since relocated to the US with his Akha wife, advocates on behalf of this particular hilltribe group. He talks about the “business” in Thailand of missions organizations taking children from impoverished villages for the purpose of education or religious indoctrination, while raising funds on the premise that children are orphaned or trafficked, which in many cases is not factual. He talks about the financial gain which organizations often make from their stateside donors because of this type of marketing and communication and the irresponsibility of removing children from their local culture to raise them in a largely Western one. He writes,

“Might I add that the mission enterprise of removing Akha children is a three legged stool. The parents don’t know that their children are advertised as orphans or abused by the missions to the US and other churches nor that the missions collect a lot of money for this, which is far beyond what it would take to feed the entire family in the village together. The church people don’t know the real situation for the Akha in the villages or how they came to be at the mission and how the finances work. Only the missions know both stories and keep them carefully segregated. Under UN regulations to move a person from one point to another for exploitation and or financial profit by MEANS of DECEPTION is human trafficking. Thus missions qualify as human traffickers.”

*****

“Well, after I left the rate at which they took children from the Akha villages accelerated greatly. Now it is in the thousands of children. It is very big business, as it brings a huge cash flow to the missions, the children are the bait for that money, but little of the money ever goes to the villages or defends their culture and language.

I believe in Jesus Christ. I don’t believe in taking kids away from their parents and destroying their culture and language.” – Matthew McDaniel

And while you can find the entire article here, just the above quote is enough to spur a conversation here about the way we do missions. And while I am not claiming to agree hook-line-and-sinker with McDaniel’s perspective or statements in the interview, I think he raises excellent points that we here at A Life Overseas don’t want to shy away from

because hard questions and honest conversations lead to more effective ministries.

And, so, the floor is open. Read the article (or don’t, it’s long, fairly one-sided and there’s lots there, again, that we are not claiming to agree with), browse the below questions, and tell us about how you’ve seen some of these concerns played out in your area of the world. Remember, it’s okay to disagree with each other or with the material. The entire point of controversial posts like this are to “stir the pot” and get us engaging on ways we might be doing (unintentionally and maybe with excellent motivations) more harm than good.

Should a Christian organization ever remove a child from his/her native culture? Even for the purpose of spiritual teaching?
Are missions organizations abusing the terms “orphaned” and “trafficked” in an effort to raise more money?
Are most missions organizations concerned about the anthropological effects of their efforts?
Is it ever okay to hold the promise of education (or rice or benefit or job-training) in front of the impoverished like a carrot, in order to achieve our own goals of sharing our faith, or, worse, raising more money?
When a group removes a child from a village, under the premise of education, but with the underlying motivation to teach them about Christianity (or to raise more funds for their organization), is that, indeed, a form of human trafficking?

– Laura Parker, Co-founder & Editor, Former aid worker in SE Asia

Why I Will Not Say “I Never Made a Sacrifice”

Hudson Taylor said it, David Livingstone said it. “I never made a sacrifice.” A life spent as a foreigner, away from traditional comforts, away from family and home country, a life of talking about Jesus, in these men’s opinions was no sacrifice.

While I understand the sentiment and the faith-filled valor behind it, I respectfully disagree. What these men did with their lives in China and on the African continent is the very definition of sacrifice.

A sacrifice is a giving up of something loved, something precious in order to gain something better.

I heard a young woman working in Uganda say that her life doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. In the next sentence she talked about hardships and how some days she doesn’t know how she will get through the day. That is sacrifice. I’m not sure what people expect a sacrifice to feel like but I think it feels hard sometimes. I think it feels like not being sure you will get through the day.

Every step of obedience, every life choice, every risk taken, whether it is getting married or not, having children or not, living overseas or not…brings with it a gain and a loss. Negating the reality of the sacrifice cheapens the reward, the sense of joy, fulfillment, purpose, the God-honoring obedience.

One of the problems with saying ‘it is no sacrifice’ is that it leads people to put international workers on pedestals. Have you ever had someone say something like:

“You are so holy because you don’t care when your hair falls out from the brackish water and searing heat.”

“You are so much more spiritual because you don’t struggle when you aren’t able to attend your grandfather’s funeral.”

“I could never do what you are doing because I couldn’t send my kids to boarding school.”

No and NO! We are not all so different, we simply live in different time zones. I cry when I see handfuls of hair in the drain and when I watched my grandfather’s funeral three months later on a DVD and I weep with a physical pain in my chest over the miles between here and my kids at school. I am not more holy or spiritual or stronger than anyone, I feel the sacrifice.

And feeling the sacrifice makes the privilege, the reward, so deeply precious, so treasured, so urgently prayed for.

Livingstone said (emphasis mine),

“It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.”

Not a sacrifice, but rather a privilege.

Can this life not be both? Are sacrifice and privilege juxtaposed against one another or could they perhaps go hand in hand? It is a privilege to sacrifice.

Living with hair in the drain instead of my head, away from loved ones during a crisis and on everyday days, international borders between me and my kids, living like this is a sacrifice. It hurts, it tears, it might leave you weeping on the couch some nights, snortling into your husband’s shoulder. But it is not in vain. It is not without joy. It is not without faith. Feel the pain and the joy of it and then render everything sacrificed as rubbish and count the privilege as gain.

I will not say that I have never made a sacrifice.

I will say that I have never made a sacrifice in vain. I have never made a sacrifice that didn’t bring with it a deep, residing joy. I have never made a sacrifice without faith that there is a reward coming which will, like Livingston said, far outweigh these present sufferings.

With my eyes steady on the prize, I sacrifice. Never in vain, (almost) never without joy. Always with faith.

In what ways do you feel the sacrifice? Experience the privilege?

-Rachel Pieh Jones, development worker, Djibouti

Blog: Djibouti Jones, Twitter: @RachelPiehJones, Facebook: Rachel Pieh Jones

The Common Coffin Consolation

When missionaries gather we console each other. We encourage each other. We laugh together. We gripe together. We solve problems together. A particular consolation comes up frequently in my corner of the world. When things get hard or lonely we say,

“At least we didn’t have to pack our stuff in a coffin.”

Some missionaries a long time back would pack their stuff in a simple wooden coffin instead of suitcases. The regions God called them to often did not participate in the practice of burying their dead. The trip was one-way because of cost and the extensive time to arrive. Aside from sporadic letters through the postal service, the missionaries sent so far away were rarely heard from again.

My have times changed!

Missionaries now use tools like airplanes and the internet. We can call our loved ones in our passport countries with relative ease. Even those working in rural regions, cut off from communication methods, can hop in a motor vehicle to get to an urban city pretty quickly.

So we tell each other in short, “Things could be worse. Things have been worse. Be grateful.”

Maybe one day, way far off in the future, missionaries will console each other by saying,

“At least we don’t have to travel in clunky old airplanes now that teletransporters exist.”

Could happen, right?

Where do you find consolation? How have things changed since a hundred years ago in the region you work? What contemporary tool are you most grateful for?

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– Angie Washington【取寄せ】ディズニー Disney ピノキオフェアリーズティンカーベル置物フィギュア人形セット彫刻エネスコ Enesco [並行輸入品] Disney WDCS Blue Fairy, missionary living in BoliviaSIEVE シーヴシーブソファパートソファ二人掛けソファ二人用 part sofa 2seater ファブリックカバーリングナチュラルシンプル北欧木製木ウッドかわいい , South America

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10 Reasons Not To Become a Missionary

1. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Think You Are Going to Change the World. First, high expectations doom to disappoint, but, also, maybe your desire to change the world is trumping your desire to serve. Ask yourself if you would be happy moving overseas to a much harsher environment in order to quietly help a local, while getting no recognition and seeing no fruit in the process. If you can answer honestly yes, then maybe you’re still in the running. {Don’t worry, we thought we would’ve answered yes, but found out that we really had some unhealthy saviour-complexes to begin with. You can read about that here: On Living a Good Story and Not Trying So Hard and The Guy in the Orange Shirt .}

2. Don’t Become a Missionary to Make Yourself Better. My first mission trip was as a middle schooler to Jamaica. I’m not really sure how much good we actually did, but I do remember one of the missionaries we worked with. His name was Craig, and he had some of the biggest glasses I’d ever seen. And the dude talked to everybody about Jesus. Everyone– the pot-smoking Rastafarian in the line, the tourists at the store, the check-out guy at the food stand. And I remember turning one time to another missionary who worked with him and asked what made him so “good” at evangelizing. The older missionary said, “Craig? Oh, he didn’t come to Jamaica and become like that. He was already like that in the States.”

And I think Craig with the big glasses dispels the lie that if you move overseas, then you will magically become a superhero Christian. Um, false. What you are here, you’ll be there. And while it’s true that the change of environment can spark growth, it doesn’t mean you’ll go from luke-warm average Christian to Rob-Bell-Cool-On-Fire-Mother-Theresa just because you suddenly find yourself on another continent. Pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.

3. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Think You Have the Answers and the Nationals Don’t. Westerners have clunky shoes. This is just true. We are loud and obnoxious and, good Lord, arrogant. Our DNA has us descending on other cultures and dictating ways they can “fix” themselves, while throwing money at their problems. I think I’ve learned that every good missionary LISTENS, first. And listens, a lot. {Don’t worry, I suck at this still. You can read about that here, Rich Guy with the Crappy Car or Quiet Heroes.}

4. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Can’t Hack Transition. We’ve been overseas now for less than two years, and we have moved houses three times, taken two major trips, and have gotten close to and then had to say goodbye to over 15 good family friends. People come and go on the mission field. Terms are up and governments change the visa laws. You find a deal on a house or the house you are in has rats. When you sign up for missions, like it or not, realize it or not, you are signing up for a transient lifestyle. {On Moving House, Like A Lot and New Girl both speak to this reality.}

5. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Think You Are Really Pretty Great, Spiritually-Speaking. There’s nothing like moving to a foreign country to reveal all the crap that’s in your heart. Seriously. I have cussed more, cried more, been more angry, had less faith, been more cynical and, generally speaking, have become in many ways a worser person during my last two years of serving in Asia. Call it culture-shock if you will, but I tend to think the stress of an overseas move thrusts the junk that was conveniently- covered before out into the blazing-hot-open.

6. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Think Living on Support is Cake. It might look easy, but it is most definitelynot– this monthly process of holding your breath and praying that you get a full paycheck , while knowing that even thatpaycheck is based on the kindness of your parents or your friends or the lady you know hardly has two pennies to rub together anyway. And then, when you do have a little money, you stress about how you should spend it — Should I treat myself to a coffee? Do the kids really need to go to the pool today? Should I buy the more reliable scooter or the used one that will {probably?} be just fine?

And then, and then, shudder, there’s that awkward process of asking for it in the first place and feeling like you are annoying-the-heck out of the same people, who happen to be the only people you know — like that pushy lady selling Tupperware down the street.

The whole thing might be great for your faith, but it can sure be a killer on your . . . heart, finances, sense of self-worth, savings, relationships, budget, fun, and freedom.

7. Don’t Become a Missionary if You Aren’t Willing to Change. Flexibility is more important than I ever thought it would be in an overseas life. So is humility, actually. Unfortunately, neither of these qualities is naturally at the top of my Character-I.Q. However, I have learned that the more determined you are to stick to your original plan– regarding ministry or living situation or friendships or organizations or personal growth– the more painful it is when that plan changes, and change it most definitely will. It’s the ones who humbly hold things loosely that I think can go the distance with far less collateral damage.

8. Don’t Become a Missionary at the Last Minute, on a Spiritual-Whim, Spontaneously. And yes, my Charismatic friends may disagree a bit here, but moving overseas, especially with a family and especially in any kind of committed-capacity, is not something to be taken lightly. It’s not necessarily a move that should be felt at a tent-meeting on Friday and plane tickets bought for the the next Monday. Training is important. Spiritual, emotional and cultural preparation has immense value. Turning your heart to a new place often takes time to fully root. So, give it a little time. Don’t be afraid to put the brakes on a bit, and heaven’s sake, don’t think that you’re more godly if you decide, pack and go in record time. This is not the Olympics, and sloppy leaving can take more time to clean up than you realize.

Don’t Become a Missionary to Fix Your Kids. Jerking a rebellious teenager from liberal American society and sticking them in an African hut so they can “find God,” is not a valid parenting technique. Family and personal problems will follow you overseas, in fact, they may be amplified. It’s important not to buy into the lie that forcing your kids to be missionaries will supernaturally make them love Jesus. That might happen, but moving a rebellious teen might also royally backfire on you, and should never, ever, ever be the primary reason a family takes up missions.

10. Don’t Become a Missionary to Find Cool Friends. Now, I’m not saying you won’t find amazing friends– maybe the best in your life– but there is no denying that the mission field can draw some pretty odd ducks. {Of which, I, of course, am not one. See #7 regarding my natural humility.} Don’t be surprised, though, if you find yourself in a church service with ladies wearing clothes from the 80?s singing praise songs from your middle-school years like Awesome God, but without even the drums. Don’t be surprised, too, if your social interactions are awkward at best with many of your fellow mission-souls. Living out the in jungles for twenty years might do wonders for your character and strength and important things, like, oh, the translation of the Bible into another language, but it can sure do a number on a person’s ability to shoot the breeze in a church lobby somewhere.

But, there, again, maybe there’s a necessary shifting that has to happen to your definition of cool, anyway.

– Revised and Extended from LauraParkerBlog‘s original list, posted Jan 2012

Laura Parker, former missionary in SE Asia.

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What would you add to the list? Bring it. Even if you are not a missionary, pretend and add to the list.

Short-Term Missions: Is the Price Tag Worth It?

Short term mission trips are a popular thing these days in Christian circles. In fact, estimates are that literally millions of individuals, mostly young people, serve on short term trips (1 week up to a year) every year worldwide. Now that’s a lot of people and a whole truckload of money. Here’s an article written last year asking some sobering questions about short term mission trips:

Consider this: a group of 15 high school students {with four adult leaders} want to go on a missions trip to Africa. They write support letters, hold spaghetti dinners, call up grandma across the state line. The cost of the trip is 8 days out of their summer vacation and $1800 USD out of somebody’s pocket. Per person.

The goal of the trip is to paint the outside of a church, do a VBS for an hour four evenings, and “love the orphans” at the local orphanage {a.k.a. play soccer and give lots of hugs, since they don’t speak the same language}. The group gets called to the front of the church for a send-off prayer before and produces a killer video that makes their mothers get teary after. There are lots of Facebook updates and instagram pictures of the trip– rich American teens hugging on dark African orphans– which become the profile pictures of the participants for a good six months post-travel.

The church got painted, which locals could have done for about 30 bucks maybe.

The orphans got hugged, and then had to say goodbye to people that they’ll never see again and who promise to write, but never really do.

The four days of VBS got delivered. And included the same bible stories which the previous four short term teams had also told. Through the mud of translators and with songs and hand motions that didn’t really make cultural sense.

And the grand total of this particular missions trip: $34, 200 USD. Ouch.

In a country where the average wage might be $2USD a day. That would be the equivalent of 17,100 days of work for a local. At that rate, the money could have gone to give 46 single mothers honorable employment for an entire year.

In this part of the world in Asia, it could provide clean water filters for 1,700 homes in village communities or it could begin a business to give hundreds of future prostitutes another choice or it could fully fund several national pastors for a whole year.

Ouch, again.

And maybe I shouldn’t knock what I myself have tried, and tasted the benefits from. I went to Jamaica on my first summer missions trip as a jr. high kid, and I still remember the stories. My husband has led a half-dozen missions trips for teenagers during his work as a student pastor. And some of our ministry here in SE Asia has been based on the idea that there is incredible value in the mentorship of young adults as they travel and volunteer internationally. {And we have seen that it has.}

I get it.

And I know that maybe that money wouldn’t have been given to support those other {more cost- effective} endeavors, anyway. I understand that motivating a Westerner with an experience which could make him or her a financial supporter of missions for the rest of a career has value. I get that there is intrinsic value in letting the third world know that they are not forgotten by the first, and I can see that a missions experience for a teenager could translate into a lifetime of living overseas themselves.

Yet, yet. $34,000. For eight days? When people are starving and children are trafficked and pastors themselves don’t have access to Bibles?

It’s hard to swallow. Or justify sometimes.

Or, is it?

originally posted here: LauraParkerBlog, former missionary to SE Asia.

The Most Important Question for a Missionary

This may be the most important missionary message I have ever shared. It certainly is one I must apply the most frequently.

The longer I am in missions, the more I gain a sensitivity to a perceived sense of superiority. It is not intended, but it is the message we often communicate.

I hear it with new, zealous missionaries who are convinced they have something to offer the poor helpless souls of such and such nation.

If I am honest, I still hear it from my own mouth after twenty plus years.

Well meaning, willing to serve; of course
But dripping with an unintended superiority complex; yes

Duane Elmer, in his book Cross-Cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in Christlike Humility, interviewed countless people on the field, asking them about the experiences they’ve had with missionaries. A common response was one which causes us to think.

“Missionaries could more effectively minister the gospel if they did not think they were superior to us”.

Elmer, in his book , raise the questions of attitudes. As missionaries, do we minister from a desire to serve or a sense of superiority.

He defines servanthood as “the conscious effort to choose one direction and one set of values over another.”

This is difficult in normal life, but when we cross cultural barriers, the choice becomes much more difficult; but perhaps even more essential.

Elmer goes on to state, “Many missionaries are like me: well intentioned, dedicated and wanting to serve, but also naive and in some denial about what it means to serve in another culture.”

Desire to serve is not enough, we must guard against ministering from a place of superiority.

Here are some beliefs or statements that may help us gauge how we are doing:

I need to correct their error (meaning I have superior knowledge, a corner on the truth).
My education has equipped me to know what is best for you (so let me do most of the talking while you do most of the listening and changing).
I am here to help you (so do as I say).
I can be your spiritual mentor (so I am your role model).
Let me disciple you, equip you, train you (often perceived as let me make you a clone of myself).

“Superiority cloaked in a desire to serve is still superiority”

Ouch!

The Bible calls this pride.

Jesus himself came to Earth as a suffering servant. “even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28) Although superior, He did not cling to that, taking the form of a servant. (Philippians 2:7)

Whether you serve cross-culturally or domestically, we must ask ourselves if we are ministering from a sense of superiority.

Take a good, hard look. It might be painful, but your effectiveness will benefit from it.

When is the last time we learned something from the people we are serving?
What aspect of the foreign culture have you implemented into your life?
Can we receive from those we serve, or do we always have to be in the place of power as the giver?

– Chris Lautsbaugh, Missionary teacher and author with Youth With A Mission, living in S. Africa.
Blog: NoSuperHeroes Twitter: @lautsbaugh Facebook: NoSuperHeroes