Who are the Missionaries?

How many missionaries do you know? They have sacrificed their home comforts and probably a much healthier pay packet to go to the furthest parts of the world to share the Gospel with those who have never heard it. They are God’s servants, out there shining light in the darkness. They deserve our respect and prayers. I am not questioning that at all that at all.

There are also those at home. There are ministers, pastors, city missioners, deaconesses, family workers, and youth workers. They are called out of the ordinary workplace to dedicate themselves to working for Christ. Again we need to support them and in many situations (not mine might I add!) pay them a lot more than we do. You hear people complain about the pastor getting a new car when there is no way they would be prepared to work for the kind of wage that the pastor works for. For some reason we think he deserves less because he is working for God. Bizarre? So we need to care for, affirm and look after those who are “good living (I hate that phrase!), for a living!”

And yet, I have a problem with the setting apart of missionaries and ministers and “fulltime” Christian workers. Perhapsmy problem is not that they are set apart but that we have not set apart everyone else. If a lawyer or social worker or teacher or shop assistant or secretary or plumber in your Church got a new job this week why should we not bring them to the front of Church and commission them into their service for God? Why do we feel that the people who missionaries come into contact with are more important to Christ than those that are met on the shop floors or schoolrooms or offices of Ballymena, Maghera, Enniskillen or Newry? Is mission to people at home something less? Are the people who reach them not all missionaries?

Of course they are and yet we have neglected them. We do not take their vocations seriously. We diminish their importance in the Kingdom coming and in the Great Commission. We belittle what God has made them. We haven’t spent enough time giving specific training and prayer and support. We have an imbalanced view of mission.

This error in some way lets the missionary at home off the hook too. A missionary goes to Nepal and he is focused on his task, so he is not likely to look around for the trendiest Church with the worship that suits or the teaching that is best. He is not likely to come away saying “I did not get much out of that service today, why do I bother?” He is asking where he can be of most use and how he can be of better use? And so here at home, are we focused on the needs of Churches around us, are we prepared to go where there is a need? Could we be called by God to go to an aging inner city Churches that need help, not from a minister or from an outreach worker but from someone who will come and get behind the Church’s paid staff to help them realise the calling that Christ has given to all who claim to follow him.

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