Missional? Yes! Missionary? Maybe Not... despite the rhetoric, not everyone is called to be a missionary...

Being a missionary is hard work.

Maybe that’s why not everyone is not called to be a missionary.

Please hear me out on this before you dismiss me as not knowing what I am talking about or as someone who is going to undermine your preaching that we are all called to go, evangelize and make disciples of all the nations.

I believe that everyone in the Kingdom is called to be missional in this great world of ours.  It is my sincere belief that God has set apart the church, in whatever way you understand it, to be living examples of His hands, His feet, and His skin.  All of us are called to be about Christian relationship, community and love in this broken world
where we live.

However, that does not mean everyone is called to be the ends of the earth kind of person that leaves his or her home, gets on a plane and travels to some f
ar off land to proclaim this truths to other cultures.

I have served in Mexico for over 20 years.  For those of you who are not aware, Mexico has historically served as some sort of gateway mission drug for the US church.  Since Carolyn Koons of Azusa Pacific University essentially jump started the short-term mission industry almost 50 years ago, millions of people from the United States have gone to our neighbor south of the border on mission to help “evangelize” people.

I was one of those millions and a little over 20 years ago, I Co-founded an organization called Adventures in Life to facilitate short-term work in Mexico.  Like many back in the day, I got my first taste of what I thought was being a missionary in Baja California.  Our ministry also started just north of Ensenada, in a little area called La Misión.

Over those 20 years I have become pretty good at navigating the local culture, proudly feeling comfortable moving from one part of the country to another.  It did not matter if I was enjoying a fish taco with friends in Ensenada or building a greenhouse with my Christian brothers in Oaxaca, I was at peace and content.  Frequently I have been told, by Christians and non-Christians alike that alongside my love for Christ, I had the heart and soul of a Mexicano.

One night recently I found myself on a road to a new area of Oaxaca.  I did not choose this area, rather God sent me there, using some respected ministry partners to issue that call.

After a long ride, we arrived late in the city of Tlaxiaco, tired and hungry.  When we called our hosts for the week, we were told where to meet and soon found ourselves seated in a blue painted taco stand.  As plate after plate of food was being brought to the table, Roberto, our host, told us to eat, that the food was not simply there to be admired.

The extrañeros with me, one a Christian from another area of Oaxaca and Brother Joe Ramirez from San Diego were digging it.  Great food, new friends and lots of stories to share and to hear.  As relationships were reignited my mind started to race.

How would the average short-term missionary enter into this area.  Some of the best people who have ever served with me would have struggled that night.  None of our hosts were Christians.  We had mountains of deep fried food, and when I say deep fried, I mean in lard.  Not that 100% vegetable stuff we use in the states. Fat... and when we finished the fried food, the grilled tacos arrived.  That great Oaxacan cheese mixed with mushrooms and jalapenos, topped with a smoking hot habañero chile salsa and then the classic flor de calabaza.  All of that was wonderful, and a sort of a prelude to what was next.

Tacos de sesos.  Cow brains.  Served just for you by people who are watching your every move.  And that’s when I was reminded that being a missionary is hard and that not everyone is called, equipped, or ready to be a missionary to another culture, in spite of all the books and literature out there saying otherwise.

Things like your ability, or even desire to relate to non-Christians on their turf suddenly come into play in this type of setting.  Is the missionary versed enough in the culture to even carry on a conversation about secular stuff like economics, education and politics with locals?  Is he or she aware enough to pick up on social cues as they are being offered on how to eat and act around the table?  Is it possible to look at a plate of food you’ve never eaten, not frown or look disgusted and take it all in without a clue that you are scared stiff at the prospect of eating the brains of a cow or a bowl of pork skin soup and chile?

Have you thought about how to not run from your faith when you are confronted with some of the ugly realities of previous missionary outreaches to the very people with whom you are sharing a meal?  Do you have the skills to navigate a conservation that can be very critical of your home country and do it in a way that allows a budding relationship to continue?  Can you decline a shot of tequila, or scotch or vodka, depending on where you are serving in a way that does not offend your host?  Or perhaps even more difficult, can you drink a shot of mezcal or a glass of wine that is served for you by your hosts and newfound friends?

These are the questions that have been coursing through my veins the last couple of weeks as I have struggled to reflect on the rhythm, culture and ethos of this new place where I am serving.

Yet there is another question that is also dogging me and that question is this.  Given the reality of the above types of situations, is there a role for short-term mission work in the life of the long-term missionary?

I believe that there is, but only if we are willing to acknowledge and accept certain realities and make some changes in our approach.

The first place we need to start is with the sober realization that not everyone is called to be a missionary.  I know this goes against the current rage that we are all missionaries, but hear me out.  We are all called to be missional in our approach, but not everyone is called, or gifted to be a “ends of the earth” missionary person.

Here’s what I mean.  As you live your life day in and day out in your normal sphere of influence, you need to be living Christ out in an incarnational way that draws people to the Kingdom.  It needs to be part of who you are and how you live your life, where you are planted.  So what I am talking about here is being living witnesses for Jesus in your school, work, house and neighborhood.

For me, when I speak of being missional, I am talking generally of how we relate to and serve others in the name of Christ where we spend 90% of our lives or to put it bluntly, our home country.

When I speak of being a missionary, I am talking about getting on a plane and crossing borders of culture, geography, language and understanding.  I am talking about someone who essentially lives within the culture to where he or she has been sent. Naturally, there are exceptions to these broad strokes, but that is how I see things.

It is this reality, that not everyone is called to the “ends of earth,” that has led me to conclude that while short-term mission [STM] should certainly be in the tool box for any long-term missionary, most people on these mission experiences are simply not equipped to be incarnational on the foreign mission field.

Missions is hard.  Being a missionary is hard, requiring a skill set few young people with no cross cultural training will ever have.  Short-term mission participants are by their very definition, only in a country for a few days or months.  This is hardly enough time to get their feet wet, let alone begin the laborious process of assimilating into another culture.

Should we abandon short-term mission in favor of an approach solely tilted to long-term work?  Only at our peril because I believe that short-termers do indeed bring many needed assets to the work of the log-term missionary.  But we must live in reality and make sure we are not expecting more from short-term work than it is realistically able to give, or do.

What are your thoughts?

AIL Ministry, Evangelism and Being Fishers of Men...

Sometimes you give a man a fish, and other times you teach him to fish.

My friend David Phipps of The Global CHE Network explains it this way... sometimes the situation is so dire, you have no choice but to give someone a fish to keep him alive.  It's called relief.  But effective relief should always be followed with development.  That's called teaching people to fish.

Sadly, because development is painstakingly difficult and time consuming, it has been very hard for short-term mission to be effective in this realm.  In our growing Facebook and Twitter culture, anything that requires an attention span of more than a few moments, gets pushed aside for the instant, the quick and the demands of a 140 character lifestyle.

Think of it like this.

A lot of short-term mission has become like the greeter at the church door who asks everyone how they are doing, never hearing anything other than not bad, and certainly not having the time, or skills necessary to do anything if someone was to say, "You know what? Right now my life is falling apart."

One of things that has been pressing hard on my soul the last few years in Oaxaca has been the question of development.  How, in a Christian context, can Adventures in Life come alongside people in a way that not only provides relief when necessary, but also development to make that relief long lasting.

What I am talking about here is a way for short-term mission to see long-term impact in the lives of some of the poorest people in Mexico.

Last week I was at a meeting with leaders from about 20 different communities from the mountains around Oaxaca.  Places with names like Eloxochitlán, La Raya San Pedro and Llano de Cedro.  These are people who work hard to provide for their families and communities in areas where electricity is spotty at best and water, if available is never clean enough to drink.

I listened as a dedicated group of Christian activists with whom I work in Oaxaca shared about opportunities to have clean drinking water and not only to get some fish, but learn how to fish.

We shared about Sawyer Water Filters, answered questions and then moved on to the subject of fish, specifically, tilapia.

Adventures in Life was in the process of setting up a hydroponic garden and tilapia farm the leaders were told.  In this "farm" regular people can raise up to 200 tilapia at a time and have tables full of fresh vegetables like lettuce, broccoli and tomatoes.

You could sense the excitement in the room from the leaders of these communities.  Many of them returned, at great time and expense, later in the week when we were up and running.  Lots of people, they told us, had heard about this, but they had never seen it in practice.

Government leaders, colleges and university representatives from around Oaxaca were showing up at our demonstration farm to see how, not to give people fish, but to teach them to fish.  And then came the biggest question... Why?  And each time, Pastor Chable was able to explain that we are trying to live out our call to love one another as God has loved us.

Next week I will be in some of those very communities with Pastor Chable.  We've been invited to come and speak to the town councils, and to different groups of leaders about what we are doing and how together, people can learn to fish.  Few of these people are Christians and most have a pretty jaded view of both the Catholic and Protestant church.

The problem with Christians and development has been that historically we have failed to connect that aid and help to the living Gospel of Jesus.  This is the hard word work that us in country missionaries must do.  It is our part of the unwritten contract between long and short-term mission.  

Short-term missionaries come to help us and support our ministries, oftentimes through development projects and we then take that development and the Gospel message to areas where we have learned to communicate within the local cultures.  

It is wholistic Gospel missions work.

It's not just about fish... it's about teaching people to fish... and then being "fishers of men!"

Please be praying for AIL Ministry and our efforts with Pastor Chable to do just that in the next few weeks.

Mission and Presence... the power of being there...

This came across my electronic desk in Oaxaca today and I felt it was well worth sharing.  If you can get past the drama, there are some good points in here.



As one of those guys he talks about who serves in the field, I certainly share his concern for funding the work we are trying to do.  I also like his idea of raising money for the field and have written on that before here.

But in spite of all that he says that can be considered good, he misses a central point.

Jesus himself believed in the power of presence.

If our mission work, both long and short-term, settled for just sending money, how would the body practice the presence of Christ.

Certainly Jesus could have healed Lazarus from afar, yet for some reason he felt there was value in going.  He felt there was value in his being among the people to do His work.

I am reminded of a conversation I had years ago with a woman named Maria in the village of Camalu, south of Ensenada, Mexico.  She told me to remember that I could come any time I wanted to their church.  Thinking I understood, I nodded my head in agreement and said thank you.

As I got up to leave, she grabbed me and explained what she was trying to say.

Maria wanted to make sure that I knew we didn't have to come and do anything.  Our simple act of being there reminded them that the God of mission was God everywhere and that was a huge encouragement for this small local church.

Our presence reinforced to them the truth that the God they worshipped in Camalu, was the same God people worshipped in Los Angeles, China, France, or Australia.

Just as when Jesus could have stayed where he was and healed his friend, many times we can stay where we are and enable mission.  And we should!

But there are also times when we must go... for the body there, and for the body here.

Remember, while money is important, and us in field folks can always use more regular support, your presence is invaluable to both us, and those we serve on the field.

Church Missions... Is It Time to Rethink Our Approach?

Maybe it is time for us to reroute our global mission GPS.  Like a car stuck in midday traffic in Los Angeles, there has got to be a better route to where we want to go.

For years the Christian Mission Movement has been focused on sending people abroad to preach the Good News of Jesus.  Those missionaries, in the spirit of earlier times when funerals were held prior to departure, dedicated their lives to one place, one people, and one mission...sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are still a few of us out there, but more and more people are sensing God’s call to worldwide mission are choosing to give only part of their lives instead of the whole enchilada.  This is the short-term mission movement.

This is presenting the church with a profound opportunity to rethink and reframe its philosophy of sharing the Gospel, both here and abroad.

Failure to do so will surely result in lost prestige, influence, and a weakening of our message that we could have prevented if only we had seen the coming storm and decided to make the changes necessary to stay engaged in our rapidly evolving cultural world.

Here are my suggestions, gleaned from years of on field experience and conversations with long and short-term missionaries from around the globe. 

Accept the reality of short-term mission [STM].  Many churches and long-term missionaries still look at short-term mission with a jaded eye.  Short-term mission is still being judged by the mistakes of its youth and this is unfair.  While not perfect, many organizations and people connected with short-term mission have worked hard to improve, and are making real substantive changes in the way they carry out their ministry.  

A great example of this are the US Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Mission.  The standards call us to understand that STM is not about us as goers, but those we are trying to serve.  Isn’t the view that STM is primarily concerned with their own participants one of the main criticisms of the long-term in field missionaries?

The STM community is not going away.  Rather than engage this community in a critical way, wouldn’t a more effective approach be to encourage and join in the process of improving the largest group of cross cultural missionaries in the world?  I believe the answer is a resounding yes!

Recruit and develop a new breed of long-term missionaries who understand the realities of, and can embrace the improving short-term mission community for the good of the Kingdom.

Let me explain.  With the current global networking environment, long-term mission will never again happen in a vacuum.  We need people in the field who understand this and are committed to working together for the success of the local church.  

Here is what that might look like.  Instead of working to develop his or her own personal ministry in another country, the new long-term missionary will see their mission as one of supporting and standing behind local leaders to help them become more effective for Christ.  

It is the approach Henry Blackaby championed 15 years ago.  Sadly missionaries today, both long and short-term do not value partnership with others and prefer to work independently, continuing to pursue their own agendas.  

We should expect long-term missionaries to be a encouragers like Barnabas.  Someone who can encourage the local leaders and also sees it as his mission to help mentor and facilitate the hundreds of thousands of short-term missionaries who for whatever reason, are only going to give 2 or 3 weeks of their lives each year for global mission.

Everywhere I go in Mexico, pastors and leaders tell me they can do the majority of reaching their people for Christ, they just need a little help and encouragement for some of the heavy lifting involved in their Herculean task.

Finally, use short-term ministry to fund long-term mission work that supports the STM movement.

Imagine the impact we could have if we developed a more effective way for these STM participants to support in country churches and missionaries.  The empowering effect that this would have on in field ministry, through encouragement, targeted resources, and enthusiasm cannot be overestimated.

I written on this before and am convinced that short-term mission holds the key to financing long-term global mission.  Research shows STM participants are more connected to the field, more enthusiastic givers and more likely to grow into long-term missionaries themselves.

Father Knows Best went off the air long ago.  It is now way past time for the Christian Church to rethink and re-imagine our global mission and leave Jim and his family behind.  The days of missionary Bill and the kids waving goodbye from the deck of the good ship Endeavor as the congregation weeps will never return.

Isn’t it about time we adjusted our mission strategy for dealing with this reality? 

  

Supporting the Mission... a radical approach to a growing problem

I have often felt that short-term missions held the key to funding long-term missionary work around the globe.

Thinking about this, I struggled to discover a way to connect the dots.  

No more!

Dr. Larry Hovis of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina gives us a clear path to exactly what I believe can be the key to our ongoing missionary witness across the globe. But only if our churches and both career and short-term missionaries are willing to see themselves as interconnected as part of the global mission of the church. 

The Challenge

We are seeing a decline in long-term mission giving that predates the worldwide financial crisis.  In the early 2000’s, both the American Baptists and the Southern Baptists were experiencing significant declines in their ability to sustain missionaries in the field.

Both of these historically robust missionary minded denominations were bringing more people off the field than they were deploying, primarily due to a lack in funding.

Yet as that was happening, the short-term mission movement continued to grow, both in participants, and its ability to get funded.  

Little Johnny was showing an ability to reach out and into the wallets of his friends and family for his short-term journey to Uganda in a way the career missionary can only imagine.

The simple fact that someone spends his or her life on the field, halfway around the world, means that they do not have the personal relationships here in the United States to leverage into real support.

And they should not be expected to!  Yet that was quickly becoming the new model for funding long-term missionary support.

If our career missionaries are doing their jobs properly, the majority of their closest relationships should be in the countries where they are serving, not the United States.

To ask these dedicated men and women of God to return to the US and drive around begging for support from thousands of people they only see once every four years is almost unconscionable.

What Should We Do?

This is where Dr. Hovis’ idea comes into focus.

He suggests that every short-term mission team that visits another country should raise double their cost, and give that extra money directly to the in-field host receiver or career missionary as part of his support.

WOW!

Imagine the impact of an idea like this on our global missions movement.

On-field host receivers and career missionaries, serving the constantly growing short-term mission movement would see an immediate increase in support.  This, I am sure, would lead to better relationship between these two divergent styles of ministry, and would finally cement what has been an uneasy, though necessary partnership.

Over the years, we have seen a hostility towards short-term mission, often from on-field career missionaries.  There has been this belief that the STM people not only are engaging in useless feel good project ministries, but that they are also sucking needed financial resources from “truly important missionary efforts” done by the long-term missionary.

I refuse to see short-term mission in competition with our longer term global missionary efforts.  I have always believed the Kingdom would be better served if we merged the two sides of this coin for a greater good.

A Radical Idea

What if career missionaries acknowledged the real accomplishments of short-term missions and changed their methodology to one of acceptance and even joy at the prospect of working together for His Kingdom?  

What if the short-term mission teams acknowledged that without the career missionary preparing the way for their week long journeys, short-term mission could not exist and that as such, they have a calling to support that ministry, not only with their presence, but financially?

Perhaps Dr. Hovis is onto something.  Using the incredible ability of little Johnny to raise funds not only for his personal journey, but for the larger missionary calling of the church.

It’s a radical idea and one that I believe the church ignores at her peril.

Will we continue to place unrealistic financial burdens on our missionaries in the field, or will we empower and expect the short-term mission movement to become part of the solution to our current missionary retreat?