We have ignition

In the wake of a visit by long-term ‘career’ missionaries this week at Toongabbie Anglican Church, I am confronted by the question of what makes people interested and passionate about supporting missionaries, both in Australia and overseas. Many people become excited when they hear from the missionary’s mouth when they are amongst us, but I wonder: will they be as excited in six weeks? Six months? A year? I suspect, somewhat pessimistically, that there will be a fair drop in the amount of interest people have over time. The question then becomes, how to sustain that interest?

We discussed the matter for a short while in staff meeting. No amazing insights or brilliant solutions for now, but it was interesting to toss the question about and examine it. My current thesis (which is in no way complete or authoritative) is that, particularly (but by no means exclusively) amongst the younger generations, interest in world mission and missionaries serving cross-culturally tends to penetrate only to a superficial level, often focused on differences in sociocultural landscape. I have personally observed this on a few occasions, from talking to high school-aged kids about broad-scale world mission issues to hearing questions asked by older folk at our recent all-church prayer night. People are interested in and ask questions about the differences – what languages are spoken where you are? What is the shopping like in Cheng Mai? Where do you live? What is it like? Can you buy the same foods there? Do you miss Vegemite? Do they have iPods in Namibia?

Certainly not unhelpful questions, in the right context, and it is encouraging to see interest at all! But, I wonder if, for many, the interest stops at this superficial level of comparing differences between sociocultural environments and fails to hit the gospel ministry being done by the missionary.

Perhaps this speaks of the insular, self-absorbed characteristic of my generation, and/or reflects something of the prominence of overseas travel in these times (I read here that the number of ‘Generation Y’ kiddies spending significant amounts of time going overseas is increasing). If so, then it may follow that the interest in the surface-level details about the cross-cultural experience of overseas missionary work is, at least in part, due to the desire to experience difference in general. Indeed, one of the most popular words used in advertisements for holiday packages seems to be ‘experience’.

This could explain why short-term mission trips are becoming the new ‘rite of passage’ for many young Christians. The trend seems to be that people would rather go and experience another culture (and, hopefully, get a decent look and have a go at ministry in that culture) than give money to support long-term missionaries. This certainly fits with the experiential learning models, advocated by Kolb, et al., which focus on our extraction of meaning from direct experiences. I go to another culture and experience, and therefore extract some form of meaning. There are debates about the benefits of short-term mission trips which I won’t really go into here – they focus mainly on the impact on the national church in the cultures visited by short-termers, the difficulties associated with a short-termer’s ability to contribute in any real way to ongoing ministry, language barriers, culture shock, financial effectiveness, etc. Such debates explain why organisations like CMS haven’t been committed to supporting short-termers. Certainly, long-term missionary work is where the real harvest work seems to be: the long-termer has time to develop relationships, learn the language and culture, preach the word more effectively. But, there are sure strengths to the well-prepared, well-executed, and well-contextualised short-term trip.

As one who has been on two trips (arguably the second not being quite so well-prepared and -executed as the first), I am a bit biased, but I would say that the short-term trip does seem to represent one way, albeit an expensive one, to bring some enthusiasm back to the home church. Our trips to the subcontinent have ignited an ongoing connection with the children’s home we stayed with and have contributed to some increase in the prominence of world mission, particularly amongst the younger people – still, there is room for this to continue (and, as I am charged with the promotion of overseas missionary work as part of my traineeship, I’d better find a way to do so!).

But, I am distracting myself from the main issue. I believe that, in order to be truly excited and passionate about the work of God in other, farflung places, a person must firstly be truly excited and passionate about the work of God in general – as evidenced by a renewed heart and mind which long to serve their true Master. Only then will people really be interested in the work of our brothers and sisters overseas, and hence commit to prayer and financial support of those brothers and sisters. The barriers to such passion, then, are mostly founded in the patterns of this world, specifically in the younger generations. Better stop blabbing about those barriers and start looking for ways to overcome them!