Ever think maybe, just maybe, you would be a better missionary if you just weren’t one? I do.
When did this term, this identity, get wrapped up in so many unrealistic expectations? Expectations from generations of history, from sending and receiving agencies, from churches, from supporters, from other missionaries, from Facebook, Lord help us, from ourselves. All these expectations point to an image that isn’t even real. Where are the stories of missionaries that were just average humans incarnating Christ where they happened to reside? Is that any different than what I was doing before I sent newsletters and appealed to Church boards? What makes us so special?
The true confession is, that nothing makes me altogether special. I do dishes and make dinner and wrestle with poverty and try to make space for a devotional life, and question what I am doing and how I am helping anybody, every single living day. I show up for the hospital, I try to give my kids my attention and discipleship, and make a billion mistakes and sometimes, truth be told, hide from people. I hide because I feel incompetent in this language and space and want to be with people I can deeply connect with. I grieve, I seek Christ, I run away from Christ, and do all the very same things I did in my home country except there’s more dust and pests here.
I could gripe about how hard and how lonely this all is, except I know I am not alone. There are many of us around the world that are questioning exactly what it is we gave up our lives for. What could possibly have moved us from there, to here, for? Was I being a martyr? Was I choosing a path that seemed like the most sacrificial, the most blessed, the most exciting, only to find that I could have been just as effective (or dare I say ineffective) as the place we left behind? Are we hindering more than we are helping because of our colonial heritage? Are we advancing a kingdom or advancing our agendas, our resources, and our need to feel like we did something for Christ?
If anything has become clear in this COVID season which never seems to end, it is that we cannot be a people about doing anymore. We came with agendas, we came with plans, we came with a lot of expectations behind and before us, but we are human hearts needing the grace of God not just to do something through us, but IN us. And now we are locked in our houses, homeschooling our kids, limited in resources and freedom of movement and would you believe, the Church and her Christ will still stand? Without our programs and ministries, without our perfect solutions and ideas, and without us at all.
So with every bit of pain I feel, I take comfort in the stripping away of who exactly I thought I would be in this space and think maybe it’s time to change my title and perhaps more so, actually change my heart. If, at the end of the day, we all realize we need Christ just a little bit, then this entire year would be worth it. Maybe if we possibly learned that we are just as inadequate as we ever feared but just as called as we ever dreamed, we might actually start being the Church instead of trying so hard to do Church.
Maybe, we’d stop trying to be missionaries and just be His.
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Shannon is a mother of 4 kids, a nurse, a writer, and a missionary in Malawi. Her family is currently residing in Vancouver, Canada because of COVID. Her writing explores the awkward spaces of life like waiting, grieving, calling, and transition, which seems to become increasingly relevant in our lives and in our global story. She has just finished her first book. Find her at shannonbrink.org.
