Leaving Congo suddenly on a "refugee flight" gave me an enforced period of inactivity and reflection. As return to Kinshasa became weeks and finally months, we began to reflect on our experiences, trying to suggest ways for more effective mission in future.
Most missionaries then were good at their jobs, fine surgeons, inspiring teachers and the rest, but many failed to impact the local churches. They will be already forgotten, with little place in the memories of Congolese people, unlike our "ancestors" in the 1800s and early 1900s, many of whom are still "remembered" vividly.
People often talk of someone who is frequently late saying: Jane will be late for her own funeral! Today many of us are the opposite, so focused on future results that we miss the present: We'll be early for our own funerals!
Modern missionaries are task oriented. There to do a job. We count achievement in terms of successful operations, classes taught or sermons preached. And we forget to be present now, fail to waste time chatting to people, getting to know them. Yet real mission impacts a people, preparing the way for the Holy Spirit convert the hearts, minds and lives of individuals.
Another symptom the modern drive for quick results is time learning the language and culture. In the "old days" this took years, by the 70s it often took only months, today "language learning" may only be allowed a few weeks annually. The deeper need to learn the unspoken languages of the heart has too often been forgotten altogether.
When Jesus visited Bethany, Martha was task-focused, readying rooms, preparing food and generally getting the necessary jobs done. Her sister Mary was idling, sitting at Jesus' feet listening. To our results-driven, efficiency-minded, modern eyes Jesus praises the wrong sister. When poor over-worked Martha crossly complains: "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." Jesus says nothing about her tone, but replies: "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."
It is so easy to be focused on the important and miss the essential!
Our society, and so we ourselves, are task oriented - getting things done matters. A popular organization system is even called Getting Things Done™. We respect numbers and are suspicious of vague "relational stuff". Numbers provide a clear measure of success or failure. We are busy people. We seldom have time to look deeper that the surface. Image is (almost) everything…
This attitude carries over into mission and church. However many lives are saved through successful operations, however many students pass exams through fine efficient teaching, if lives are not CHANGED through personal encounter with the Lord, which comes through personal encounter with the Christian believers who are "missionaries", our mission has failed.
This was true in Africa, and it is true in NZ. A church may double its "church service attendance" figures, run hugely successful programs, the music team may even compose songs that get radio airtime, but still fail in its real mission.
Today, "doing" matters more than "being", results are the measure of success. A church whose attendance has slowly fallen, has "failed". A few broken people restored, a handful of Christian workers supported and encouraged, or children nurtured to mature faith (but move on to other, often bigger, churches), are difficult achievements to measure. They count little against the dreadful failure to attract more people and grow "the church".
I chatted recently pastors who: have nursed a hurting congregation through pain to wholeness, have worked tirelessly in a local school doing that "deep mission" which prepares the way for the gospel. Without such work the materialist Western world is a hard and stony place to plant God's seeds. Instead celebrating faithful witness and enjoying lives well and Christianly lived, they expressed sadness that others see them as "failures". For their little churches have not grown, though the kingdom of God has come near many lives through these ministries.
Does our drive to achieve, to efficiently and effectively get the job done,
mean that the church in the West has managed itself into being early for its
own funeral!
© Tim Bulkeley, 1996-2002
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