The case for missions

Below is an attempt to weave together a number of different ideas that have been on my heart over the past few years of missions mobilization and now as a long-termer on the field. It is for all the special people out there who have the seed of missions planted in your soul, and who are trying to chart a path to your destiny in the nations.

Part 1: Ask the right questions

If we ask the wrong questions, chances are, we will arrive at the wrong conclusions.

After years of pondering my own missions call, and endless conversations with others who struggle with their own, I have come to believe that most of us have followed the wrong trail to a spiritual no-man’s land in trying to chart our path to the nations.

It is time to stop asking: Am I called to world missions?

What’s wrong with this question? First of all, we are starting from an extremely limited point of reference – myself, with all my unique idiosyncrasies, neurosis, fears and cultural conditioning (a large part of which is not biblical). Pondering the question of whether I am called to missions is like being dangled back and forth like a yo-yo. Some days when all is going well, when my spiritual gifts are being affirmed and ministry is great, then yes, I am called to missions. But on other days when ministry is boring, people are difficult, the bills are piling up and our peers move ahead, we change our minds and question our call. And so we swing from one end of the spectrum to another, constantly influenced by the ever-changing circumstances we find ourselves in.

By starting from an extremely narrow and limited perspective, it’s no surprise that we often think ourselves into a spiritual dead end and to a point of moral paralysis. Like Newton’s law of motion, spiritual creatures at a point of paralysis will remain trapped in such a state, indefinitely – until and unless we start to do things differently, one of which is to ask different questions.

So for a start, for God’s sake, stop asking if you are called to missions. Consider this instead: How can I give God greater glory with my life?

Allow yourself a few moments to ponder this question. Suddenly, everything has changed just by changing the question. It is like turning the final corner of a long and tedious trek up the mountain, where fog blocks your view, to suddenly stepping on the summit, with a panoramic view of the valley below on a beautiful cloudless day. Suddenly, there are so many possibilities, and the sky truly is the limit. There are so many ways I can give God glory with my life. It is a freeing and exciting thought. It is no longer about me and how I happen to feel about my elusive call at any given point. It is about all the multitude of ways I can give God glory!

Now the challenge is to give God greater glory. I believe you are genuinely trying to give God glory where you are now, as a student, a professional, a husband, a mother, a sister, a son. Yes, God is glorified through your faith and obedience in your current station of life. But go a step further – how can you give God even greater glory? The answer may be different for each one of us. Years of pondering this question led me to pursue world missions unequivocally. You may or you may not be led to the same conclusion, and that is fine. But if you do discern a missions calling and have always wanted, deep down to glorify God in the nations – then I hope pondering this question will inject such a sense of hope and freedom in your spirit and give you the confidence that yes, stepping into missions is the right and worthy thing to do with your life.

And if that is the motivation to go into missions – to give God greater glory – will He not come along and bless and guide you in your subsequent decision making about where exactly to go, what to do and how to get there?

The second question that we could then ask is this: In light of how God has uniquely gifted me and blessed me, in light of all the quality educational and professional training He has put me through, where am I most needed?

Allow the Holy Spirit to guide your conscience. There is a strong moral and ethical dimension to this question, and I urge you not to quench the voice of your conscience. Are you more needed where you are now, in a place of prosperity and at the height of self-actualisation, or somewhere in the developing world, where resources are scarce and the basic needs of the multitudes are going unmet?

I was recently invited to share about life as a missionary to a group of young children between the ages of three to 10 in church. Children’s work is not my gifting, so I genuinely struggled with what to say and how to say it. In the end I talked about sharing. I told the children that a missionary is simply someone who wants to share with others.

We often understand sharing as giving people some of what we have. That is certainly part of it. But I have come to see that there is another important dimension to sharing that we often neglect.

Over the past few years of being a missionary, I have sometimes wondered what I should do after my time on the field is up. I have often considered going for further education to equip myself to teach and train future missionaries. Once, in the midst of dreaming about furthering my studies, God asked me, “Do you need an education more, or would you say the Timorese people need it more?”

The question stopped me in my tracks. Do I really need another degree? It wouldn’t hurt and it would help in my career development, but surely, surely, the Timorese need for education outweighed mine. They need me to stay and teach them more than I needed to go and be taught. My conscience told me that it would be wrong to use up more resources to bless myself, when there was so little to go around for my students.

And so I came to understand that sharing also means willingly forgoing what is within your power to grasp to enrich yourself, to enjoy, so that others who have a lot less can have just a little bit more. It is to take less of what you are perhaps legitimately entitled to by virtue of your citizenship, qualifications, family background and abilities so that others can have something of what they need more. In my case, it is to not use my abilities to secure opportunities for further studies but choosing to live with the community where I can hopefully bless others who need an education so much more desperately than I do.

So a third and related question to ask is this: What are you legitimately entitled to that your conscience tells you to forgo so that others who have so little can get a bit more?

I don’t know if you have noticed that I have not even mentioned the biblical mandate God gave us to make disciples of the nations, and to serve the poor and needy. I personally feel that the case for world missions (and by that I mean both the spiritual and social aspects) is so strong even just from the moral and ethical view. Sanctified common sense and a conscience guided by God tell me that world missions is the worthy and honourable thing to do. How much more when we consider the commands of God that is binding on us who claim to believe?

So perhaps it’s time to stop asking if you are called to missions. Consider instead: How can I give God greater glory with my life? Where am I most needed? What can I give up so that others can have a little bit more?

Part 2: Don’t ask unnecessary questions

Asking the right questions will invariably lead you to a crossroads. You must choose, one way or the other, or risk going in circles. Delaying the moment of decision does not make it go away.

Now, I believe that the endless going around in circles would cease if we would give God a blank cheque to do as He wishes.

But that is often the last thing that we dare to do. Instead, it seems that all the “obedience” we can squeeze out of ourselves at any one moment is conditional.

Our “obedience” is conditional because we present God with a list of pre-requisites that He must fulfill before we will obey. Our need to control and to know what is ahead paralyses us. We are literally dis-abled, utterly unable from taking a step into the unknown. We wait for a high-resolution, full colour, stereo sound vision of what the future looks like before we would even take one concrete step out of our comfort zone.

But this does not seem to be God’s modus operandi, if we look at Scripture and history. Abraham was told to go to a land that God would then show him and Jackie Pullinger got on a boat without knowing where her destination was. Others who had made plans often ended up halfway across the world from where they wanted to go. William Carey dreamt of going to the Cook Islands but was sent instead to India. David Livingstone was thwarted from going to China when the Opium War broke out and ended up in Africa. And aren’t we glad they did? How different would India and the African continent look without these two men of faith?

So it’s reasonable to conclude that having concrete plans about where we want to serve God, or being absolutely clueless about the future does not matter. If we believe that God is sovereign and all powerful, then how does my knowledge of my future plans (or lack of) increases or diminishes God’s power to guide me and keep me in His will? And if it doesn’t, why are we continually tripping ourselves up over specific details of where to go and what exactly to do?

Also, if we truly believe that all of life is sacred, that God is to be honoured in every place, all the time, in every way, then does it matter which country we go, what sort of ministry we undertake, so long as we do everything as a love offering unto the Lord, in a spirit of honouring the leaders we are accountable to and the people we want to serve? Is God not equally honoured by me going to China, or India, or Africa, as I do so in an expression of faith?

There is another sense in which our obedience is often conditional. Lately, I have been reminded of something that C S Lewis wrote. He singled out courage as the greatest of all the Christian virtues. That’s because courage is at the heart of all virtues. Without courage, he wrote, all the other virtues would give way during a crisis of faith and count for naught. For example, if I love you, but have not courage, my love will waver once trials and tribulations come, for I lack the courage to stand firm in a raging storm. At the first sign of possible risk or danger, my love will vaporize and I will desert you. The same is true for all the other virtues – they will snap at the point of testing if we do not have the courage to do as we ought to at the moment of decision.

And so, if we lack courage, we are truly in a bind, for all our supposed piety will wither at the onset of any crisis. We end up telling God that we will obey Him, but again, we present Him with a list of petitions that essentially mean – Let me skip over the hard bits that I can’t face and then I will obey.

Provide me with a salary of $_____ per month (fill in your preferred amount) and I will go.

But my child, You will forfeit the joy of being surprised by all the ways I will provide for you.

Supernaturally eliminate my parents’ opposition to my desire to go into fulltime ministry and then I will go.

But then you will be forever stifled in your capacity to communicate, never quite learning to describe the desire I have planted in your heart to go, into words that can reveal my glory to your loved ones, whom, by the way, I love deeply too. That showdown you fear so much, I will use to strengthen your faith, and birth a new intimacy with your parents, one free from your fear of disappointing them and their fear of losing you.

Convict my boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/children with thunder and lightning from Heaven that we are to go together, and then I will definitely take the next step.

If you cannot first summon up your free will to obey Me as an individual and do what is right before Me, how can I trust You to lead someone else into My destiny?

Contemplating all the reasons why we can’t and won’t go wearies me to my bones. The list is never ending, and that thought scares me, because I know that any one of those conditions to obedience can trap a prospective missionary into inaction for a lifetime. And tonight, hours after I accompanied my mother to the funeral of her friend, a lifetime seems so short. She died at 49. Now that I am in my thirties, 49 doesn’t feel so far away.

There is a time and season for everything under the sun. There is a time to seek God’s face, to respond to altar calls and hear His voice that calls us to the nations. Then there is a time to weigh our ministry options, seek counsel from mission practitioners, attend missions events and go on short trips. Then there is a time to decide. You will come to a fork in the road. You must choose if you will go, or you won’t go. Postponing the decision won’t make it go away.

Mark my words: You will come to the same crossroads months and years later. But the difference would be that…

[a] you would be fatter and/or balder
[b] your knees would start to hurt and/or your blood pressure would be rising
[c] your monthly financial commitment will be twice as heavy compared to five years ago
[d] your ageing parents would be in poorer health and you would find it twice as hard to leave
[e] you are doing so well in the marketplace that surely, you aren’t called to missions at all
[f] all of the above

By not facing up to what we must confront, we are simply prolonging our crisis of faith. But because we know by now how to bypass these inconvenient crises, we backtrack in our journey. We continue to answer altar calls, run from one missions conference to another, go on short trips to assuage that guilty conscience…and respond to yet another altar call. And so on, and so forth, until mediocrity becomes the only way of life and God’s call a distant, suppressed memory.

Never forget that in not choosing, you have already chosen not to act on what God has already made clear. In establishing this precedent, subsequent obedience will be that much more difficult, because you have grown accustomed to not obeying. Asking for more time to process will not make much of a difference. A spiritual crisis demands a spiritual response. What is needed is a decisive turnaround by the will – to obey that which God has made clear, and to trust Him to answer all the other questions in His timing.

Part 3: Don’t ask premature questions

Those who have decided to go will often struggle with just how long to be away. If you are called to long-term missions, please don’t try to water it down to a short-term experience. Now don’t get me wrong. Short-term trips have great value if properly organized and executed together with long-termers who are strategic in how they deploy short-termers.

But let’s get real. The job of making disciples of all nations cannot be finished by short-termers alone who can only stay for weeks and months at the most. To think otherwise is like trying to buy a Gucci bag with a dollar. We must pay the price if we want to see the job finished well.

I’m going to set the bar high here, and to challenge all who want to go to trust God to decide the length of their stay and not put a self-decided limit on their term of service. My question is this: If we trust that God has called us to the field, why do we not trust that He will speak just as clearly when it’s time to go? When we allow ourselves to decide the length of our stay, are we not actually saying that our wisdom and judgment surpasses God’s?

To be very honest, the first year of missionary service can often be a terrible experience. Mine certainly was! Experts have come up with a table to measure stress, the effects of which are cumulative over a year. The table lists different life events with a corresponding points of stress. The death of a spouse chalks up a maximum of 100 stress points. A change in financial state is awarded 38 points, and change in residence comes in at 20 points. Based on that table of life events, first year missionaries may experience stress levels over 400 points, exceeding the level for mental and physical health.

Now imagine such a highly stressed individual trying to make a clear-headed decision on how long he or she should remain in the very environment that has in large part contributed to the high level of stress. This highly stressful period is merely a phase that if properly managed, will pass and bear fruit. But if we choose to rely on our flawed human judgment and decide for ourselves how long we are to stay in the field when we are in a state of extreme stress, chances are we will choose to pullout at our lowest point.

There is a Chinese saying that goes like this, “When the bitterness passes, the sweetness will come”. I think that applies to the first year in missions. It is a bitter and stressful year. But it will pass, and the sweetness will come in God’s perfect timing. To go home after the most stressful year is to give up before the sweetness comes. That is a great pity.

To put it simply, if you want to create something of value, it will take time and great effort. You can cook instant noodles in three minutes, but not a banquet fit for a king. My personal opinion is that going into missions with a fixed term rigidly in place (especially if it is less than 3 years) can make things very difficult. I have seen many missionary friends struggle to produce results in a short time, often having to sacrifice the most important components of cross-cultural work, like rigorous and intentional language and culture learning. Moreover, it takes time to discern the character of the people you want to develop and disciple, not to mention the oft-forgotten fact that the local people are testing you out as much as you are testing them!

Then, there is the issue of being fair. Isn’t it ironic that we constantly expect God and others to be patient with our faults but expect quick results in those we disciple? We value and desire our mentors and leaders to be faithful, to always be there for us, but we directly or indirectly tell young believers coming to faith in difficult circumstances that we can only be there for them for such a limited time.

So if you really believe that God is trustworthy and knows best, why not give Him a blank cheque and let Him decide how long you should stay in the field for? God honours faith. As you give Him the blank cheque, He just might speed up the work supernaturally.

That has been my experience so far. We were supposed to concentrate on learning language for the first six months but looking back, God was expediting things in the background. We bumped into our current language helper on the streets one day, just as we were hitting a plateau with our language learning. This happened within the first three months of our arrival, just before our first visa run out of the country in October.

Alfonso de Jesus, our excellent language helper giving a motivational talk to our students.

Around the same period, we also found our local man of peace who invited us to teach in his neighbourhood, Bairo Pite. Classes began in November 2007. In the process of teaching there, we grew convinced that Bairo Pite was truly the right home for Cocoon. So on 1^st July 2008, we moved lock, stock and barrel to live in this same neighbourhood. Exactly nine months later, we got the keys to an ideal house that is now the Cocoon library, a short walk from our home.

Students hanging out at the Cocoon library.

So for all of us who struggle with how long we should stay on the field for – God truly knows what is best. He who called you in clarity to go will also call you to leave when it is time to do so. And between now and then, His grace will preserve you. That is the simple truth of the matter.