Missionary Weakness & Isolation

Dear Prayer Supporter,

Allow me to share a personal secret. One of my prayers as I write these reflections and as I send out my prayer updates is that God, in His mercy, would speak through these words to call some of you to be missionaries. I know not all are called, but the harvest is so great, and the laborers are humiliatingly few.

Partly because of this secret ambition, I was deeply concerned to read an update from a missionary friend of mine. In it she confessed to her supporters just how weak and wretched she was. Her motivation to write such a transparent letter was simple—God’s power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:8-10). As I read of her struggles to love as Jesus loves, her candid introspection did not disturb me. However, the emails she received from friends and family back home shocked me. Some told her she was being too hard on herself. Others voiced their concern that she must not be doing well.

What concerns me about her supporters’ reactions is that they appear to have elevated missionaries to a super-Christian-spiritual-elite status. I fear that those who embrace such a mentality can justify, in their minds, dismissing their own involvement in mission work.

This myth could not be further from the truth. Many of us have heard the cliché "God does not call the qualified; He qualifies the called." This is true. But I want to go a step further. As I continue to read the biographies of some very weak missionaries whom God has mightily worked through, I have noticed a common trend. They loved much because they never got over how God could love such a wretched creature as they. For example, William Carey’s tombstone reads, "A poor and wretched worm; upon Thy kind arms I fall." And David Brainerd’s journals are filled with statements like the following: "Oh, that God would humble me deeply in the dust before Him! I deserve hell every day for not loving my Lord more, who has, I trust, loved me and given Himself for me....I see myself infinitely vile and unworthy....No poor creature stands in need of divine grace more than I, and none abuse it more than I have done, and still do....I felt myself such a sinner all day that I had scarce any comfort....I never before thought there was so much spiritual pride in my soul."

God is looking for men and women who realize they are powerless and dependent children. In what way is God asking you to carry out His Great Commission? We are all called to make disciples. Many of us try to weasel our way out of obeying God’s call on our lives with excuses like: "But I’m not good enough", or "I’m not gifted that way." Ironically, what we use as an excuse, God views as a necessary qualification…the admittance of our complete dependency upon Him.

And so, as I continue to pray for God to raise up missionaries who will labor to see people and communities transformed in Christ, I, like my friend, sensed God prompting me to write about an area I have struggled in…namely, missionary isolation.

Missionary Isolation

"I have told my missionary friends, noble as you are, you have isolated yourself from the people you want to serve." Since I first read these words from Mahatma Gandhi six months ago, I have not been able to erase them from my mind. Honestly, they scare me. Numerous nights I have tossed and turned trying to fall asleep while these words echoed hauntingly through my mind. They disturb me because even though I don’t want to be like Gandhi’s missionary friends, when I reflect on my time in Los Angeles, I realize Gandhi might say the same thing about me.

Oh sure, I could comfort myself by rationalizing that I am seeking solidarity with the urban poor by living amongst them. After all, Jesus didn’t commute from heaven to earth each day. No, He "became flesh" and "dwelt amongst us"; He was "constantly involved in dust and dirt, pain and people" (Viv Grigg). Certainly Gandhi was only referring to missionaries who drive to work each day while living in isolated, luxurious mission compounds located miles away….Right?

Yet, when I am honest with myself, I must admit that living amongst the poor is not the same as becoming a companion to the poor. I have met many missionaries who intentionally moved into impoverished, urban neighborhoods, yet still lived in isolation from the neighbors they wished to serve. I have been one of them. In Los Angeles, I lived in an apartment building owned by an urban ministry. All the residents were missionaries. Half of the people on my block were missionaries. I know many of their names; even some of their pets’ names. Yet, I would be hardpressed to name any of my other neighbors on the block.

This is why Ghandi’s statement to missionaries disturbs me. For I naturally gravitate towards those who think and act like me. This tendency, when left unchecked, naturally leads to complete isolation from non-Christians and even Christians who aren’t likeminded. The longer one has been a Christian, the more likely his/her friendships with non-Christians have dwindled, and thus left surrounded by a Christian bubble.

And so, in a prayerful attempt to learn from my past mistakes in preparation for Vancouver, I have come to realize the following: Incarnational ministry (living amongst those we are called to serve) is not the end goal. Rather the incarnational approach is a means to deepen solidarity with those God has called us to love. We must never mistake the means for the end!

Jesus has not called me to just believe in His incarnational example (i.e. Jn 1:14; 2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:5-8). Nor has He merely invited me to admire its effectiveness. Rather, Jesus is beckoning me to follow His downward journey of becoming a friend to the "least of these" by "dwelling amongst them."

Though contemporaries who both lived in India, I doubt Ghandi ever knew Amy Carmichael. For if he had, Ghandi would have met a Christ-follower who had prayerfully wrestled her way through the temptations of missionary isolation. Amy Carmichael waged war against her fleshly desire to live comfortably amongst other missionaries in a compound. She fought this battle armed with prayer and Scripture amidst the ridicule of her missionary peers.

I want to end with some quotes from Amy Carmichael that have greatly motivated my efforts to befriend the poor by living amongst them. May her words stir your hearts as well.

"I would rather live in a mud hut with the people around me than among English people in a bungalow," Amy told Thomas Walker. "You could not stand it for long," responded Walker. To which Carmichael replied, "I would rather burn out than rust out."

"Philippians 2:7 states, "He made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant." Pray that we may get down to the bottom of that verse. Then we shall be in a position to ask our Indian brethren to come down and join us for Jesus’ sake. Pray that we who are His sworn soldiers abroad may throw our kid gloves to the winds and FIGHT!"

"The saddest thing one meets is the nominal Christian. The church here is a ‘field full of wheat and tares….O to be delivered from half-hearted missionaries! Don’t come if you mean to turn aside for anything…Don’t come if you haven’t made up your mind to live for one thing—the winning of souls."

"If there were less of what seems like ease in our lives they would tell more for Christ and souls….We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home and meant to stay as long as we could. I don’t wonder apostolic miracles have died. Apostolic living certainly has."

And finally, as I prepare to join Servants To Asia’s Urban Poor in Vancouver next week, please pray Amy Carmichael’s petition to God over my life (and yours!): "Please give us the grace to follow Your downward mobility, and not just admire it."