Focusing on Missions

"My friend Matt Hogg, who was at The Laborer's Institute with me several years ago, wrote this. He's from Australia, but just got back from a few months in Nepal and I guess felt like challenging some people..." (Matthew Ables)




"Why are we trying to encourage people in our churches, whether they be teenagers, young adults or adults, to go on missions trips? Why do we have or want to have a focus on missions, especially global missions? We, and all responsible Christians around the world, should be trying to put an end to this tendency. Don't we realise what we are encouraging our partitioners to participate in?

Don't go on a missions trip! You will be forced to eat food you don't like, and probably can not even identify. You will be cold when you want to be warm; hot when you want to be cool. You will have to sleep on the floor, and sometimes not inside a house. You will get blisters on your blisters, cuts, sores and stings. You will be tired, thirsty and hungry. You will get sicknesses, viruses, diarrhoea, constipation and other abnormal body functions. You will have people in your personal space, in your face and under your skin with no place to go to escape. You will live with people who don't speak your language, and you won't speak theirs. You will offended by the way they smell, dress, act and live; and the feeling will be mutual. Missions should be avoided at all costs.

To be focused on missions is to be looking beyond yourself, beyond your little corner of the world. If you do that, then you put entire country economies at risk. Western society is heavily supported and indeed is built upon a foundation of materialism and capitalism. If you turn your eyes from yourself to care about others, you are no longer supporting the consumer-driven market economy that millions rely on.

With a world-view that is broader than just yourself, you might actually be able to help another human being, with nothing expected in return. You will be counter-cultural. You will be fighting against the rest of society. You will be a rebel, a non-conformist, a revolutionary. You wouldn't just be an influence in the lives of your friends, family, and work-mates, but an influence to cultures in your own country and others.

If you were to go overseas on a missions trip, your life might be radically altered. You might give up the "American dream", your parents dreams, your church's dreams, to give your life for people you don't even know. You might come back and spread that kind of world-view with those around you. You might begin to believe the lie that other cultures are valuable and can make a contribution to the world. You might believe the heresy that people who "do church" differently to you are Christians.

Can you see how disastrous missions would be to our very way of life. Taken to it's extreme, you might actually begin to seek after God. You focus might be taken off of yourself and redirected to obeying God, and obedience would spelt disaster for religion. You might become, heaven forbid, a devoted follower of Jesus!

"Teenagers must be challenged by the Great Commission of Jesus Christ - challenged to dedicate themselves to the fulfilment of Christ's mission on earth. They must be helped to understand the church's program in missions throughout the world. They must be helped to understand the political and social power at work on the fields and against which the Christian Gospel is struggling. They must be given the chance to help solve the problems of repression, ignorance, and superstition that they might help the downtrodden to find opportunity to find life, fulfilment, and redemption in Christ." (Education for Missions, How to Organise a Missions Program in the Local Church)

"World Christians are day-to-day disciples for whom Christ's global cause has become the integrating overriding priority for all that He is for them. Like disciples should, they actively investigate all that their Master's Great Commission means. Then they act on what they learn." (David Bryant, In The Gap)"