How not to be a missionary

To many people that have come to visit us, and to some at home too, we have had discussions about missions in Bolivia and we often say that we have learned more from the American missionaries here about how not to be a missionary rather than finding any positive examples to emulate. So I thought I would put some of those thoughts we have had down here for other people to read too. And not that we have the right formula, or that we are any better than any of our compatriots here, but the root of the bad example we have seen here seems to be money. Simply put, Western missionaries lifestyle is probably the largest impediment to their communication of the gospel in Bolivia, and I imagine that many other people have observed likewise in other Third World countries.

There are a lot of problems with the missionary's lifestyle here in their communication of the gospel, the largest of which is that a person cannot separate the message from the medium. If I come to Bolivia to give people a message that proposes to radically change their worldview and thus their lifestyle, I hope I live out a good example of what that worldview should look like in practice, right? But it seems like missionaries here think that their only mission is to tell people the message, not to live it out. In a book I had to read in college that talks about this, the author says,

The message of the Cross was never intended to consist exclusively or even primarily of a series of theologically correct propositions about the Triune God, man, sin, salvation, the Church, and life after death. Those whose faith is genuine have always been converted. "The demons believe," no doubt correctly, but they make bad missionaries precisely because their lifestyle is at odds with their belief (James 2:14-26). Saying, being, doing-- each is an integral part of the Gospel being communicated by the missionary.

How can we hope to contextualize the Gospel so people here can understand it, or enter a "partnership" with a local church or local missionaries if we ourselves are out of context? Paul told the churches in many of his letters to "imitate me." Paul congratulated the Thessalonians because, in spite of great suffering, "you became imitators of us and of the Lord. . . . and so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia" (1 Thes. 1:6-7). We learn by imitation. But how could a Western missionary ever exhort a native convert to imitate them? Besides, that is not even a possibility from the converts' side of things. It seems to me that the missionary's real message here is often, "Do as I say, not as I do," which as we can see from Paul and Jesus, isn't really a biblical proclamation of the gospel.

Another thing I have learned from these observations of other Americans and ourselves here and from our own experience here living on the other side of our own society's consumption is that poverty is not just out there--it is a relationship. I have come to see that the way we live in the States has a huge effect on people's daily lives here, and I have seen that the way we live while here among the poor has a huge effect on our personal relationships with people.

Realizing this has taken me back to Luke's and Matthew's beatitudes on the poor and the poor in spirit. We know that Luke is talking about the literally materially poor, but I'm afraid that many people in the North American church have used Matthew's take on the Beatitude as a kind of loophole ("I may not be poor, but at least I'm poor in spirit."). However, I don't think Matthew's version is contradictory to Luke's or watered down. Rather, what I believe Matthew's version means is blessed are those who have come to the realization that we have nothing in the form of spiritual wealth and neither can we gain anything at all in this world without God. The poor in spirit are those who've stopped being self reliant and see that only God can provide and decide to let him provide. God is all, yet he loves me and cares for me, which frees me to stop relying on myself. I can let go of all I have--my possessions, identity, security, reputation, family--place everything in God's hands, make it totally available to him, because he is my provider. Then perhaps, having emptied myself, having become poor in spirit, then we can begin to understand truly what the Lord is asking of us about our actually poor brothers and sisters.

One of the things that would come out of this new understanding is what one of my college professors calls a "theology of enough." Perhaps this new view would not, or should not, compel us to earn less money, but rather we should learn to live with enough so that when we live with an abundance we see it as just that: an abundance that we do not need to hold on to and we should be free to let go of in order to help those in true need.

I think this is a Christian imperative that our church in North America has conveniently overlooked. Does it not strike anyone as odd that our church gets all tied up in knots over homosexuality (which is mentioned 6 times in the Bible) and not over human greed (mentioned over 2,000 times)?

This is one of the biggest things that bothers me about Western missionaries here too. By accepting as legitimate the entitlement to affluence which is theirs as Western Christians, missionaries and mission agencies have forfeited the right to speak a desperately needed prophetic word to a self-satisfied church which is fat but lean of soul (think Laodicean church in Revelation). Who better to speak out to this injustice than missionaries on furlough that are first-hand witnesses to this problem out on their mission field and back home? But by choosing to accept the same standards for themselves while oversees as they would expect at home, they have no right to speak out to their churches back home (not to mention it might make raising support harder by speaking about this to your church rather than just giving them a pretty report on how many people have been saved, which of course only shows pictures of poor children, not the mansion they live in and their personal maids).

But really what all of this really reminds me of is my own faults, my own failings, and my own problems here. You meet any missionary here and they are (usually) the sweetest, most caring and helpful people you will meet. They really want to serve the Lord, and they are, but behind them they leave a path of totally lost and confused "converts" who can't relate to the missionary and usually perceive the motives and message of the missionary very differently than the missionary intended. I have often done the same thing. And I wonder what other faults in my life am I totally blind to. It is humbling. But I praise God that in our weaknesses he is made strong, that he chooses to use me and others, despite our faults.