Sharing our faith is scary.  I just spent the better part of today being scared out of my mind that some of the locals might figure out that I’m a missionary.  It’s not a fun feeling.  I live in a scenario where if people find out that I get paid to evangelize them, then I’m probably toast.  Folks back in the US of the As might not like the fact that I don’t walk around saying I’m the Apostle Paul here on a journey, but they probably also wouldn’t like it if I blew any chance of interaction with the locals considering that they give hard earned dollars to put me here.  But that’s another post.

In this post I’m thinking about what it means to share our faith, specifically some of the practical issues at hand in terms of vocabulary.  I spent so much of my time in church in America using the Christian lingo to describe my spiritual journey that I often don’t know how to dump the crazy talk when I’m talking to people that don’t have the same vocabulary.  In America, we’re usually afraid to share our faith because we’re afraid people will think we’re crazy.  Often, they have good cause to think we’re crazy.  We sound crazy!  Think about it.  I have joy in Jesus even when I’m not happy.  God’s grace is helping me day by day.  What in the world are you supposed to think that means if you don’t use the words joy and grace on a daily basis.  What about the word charismatic.  That word means wildly different things in and out of the Christian subculture.

I have this theory.  I think we spend so much time inside the Christian subculture trying to show our Christian subculture buddies how holy we are that we use all these Christianese terms to really amp our holiness.  Then, in our daily lives, we don’t go near those words.  When we’re with people outside the Christian subculture, we describe ourselves and life in ways that don’t include those words and therefore we don’t talk about our spirituality to the people that might benefit most by seeing that we’re not all that shallow after all.

One time I almost threw a party, a party where all my Christan friends would meet my non-Christian friends.  Almost.  I froze.  I freaked out.  I had no idea how my Christian friends would act in front of non-Christians.  I’d never seen them in the real world.  What if they brought all the crazy talk out into the open with my normal friends?  Don’t get me wrong, my desire was that my non-believing friends would encounter Jesus while rubbing up next to my Christian friends’ lives, but I just didn’t know if any of the parties had the right vocabularies to make such a connection happen.  Maybe they did.  I’ll never know.  I’d like to think it would have been amazing, but if I really believed that, I would have thrown the party.

Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that is hard to put down in a prayer request email or monthly report to supporters.  Noone wants to write about how their team (encharged with proclaiming the truth and living as salt and light) is dysfunctional on a pretty regular basis.  And when you try to write about it, it’s hard not to sound judgmental (another thing that doesn’t help) and you find yourself dealing with some people who just want the juicy details (again, not helpful).

Bottom line, if you pray for some missionaries (and man I hope you do), pray that they and their teams would have the courage, strength, and willingness to seek and practice redemptive and compassionate conflict resolution, daily.  We need those sorts of prayers.

I was reading an update from a missionary I know.  They talked about how their new building adds legitimacy to their ministry.  I didn’t like reading that.  I can see the point and even appreciate it.  It’s not that different from my desire for legitimacy.  But I can also see the dark side of that.  Of thinking we need buildings and stuff to make us legit.  It seems like the early church didn’t find it’s legitimacy in those things. I’m wondering if Jesus was into legitimacy.  Did he seek to be found legit?  I’m not sure.  Certainly he was, but did he seek that?  Not everyone thought he was legit.  Does legitimacy help the Gospel go further?  Yeah, I think in some cases.  I’m just not sure about seeking legitimacy.  In thinking about this, I’m reminded that we’re all illigetimate children.  Bastards of the world, so to speak.  But I’ve found adoption as a sibling of Jesus, and you can’t beat that for legitimacy.

I gave my condolences on behalf of the church, and made my exit.  To be honest, I was unprepared and didn’t know what to do.  I felt terrible and said I was sorry.  I can’t remember if I left an info packet at the house or not.  It’s all kind of a blur in my memory.  I do know that after leaving, I continued on with my efforts at distributing my info packets.  At the time, I thought, well these things happen.  Some people do fall through the cracks in a large church, and that’s okay because the really important work of the church is still going forward and happening.

When the pledge cards came in, the total cost of the building project had not been pledged.  I thought my pastor had said, back before the pledge drive began, that we wouldn’t continue forward if we didn’t have the full cost of the project pledged.  Well, when the full cost didn’t get pledged, the topic of what to do next came up at a business meeting, one of the few I ever happened to attend.  The pastor seemed a bit reluctant to move forward, but some of the elders in the church said we had to move forward, we’d already done too much. There’s now a church building, and church debt, and an economic recession.  I hope there has been some church growth, but I honestly don’t know if there has been.

I wish I had spoken up at that meeting, and voiced my concern about how it didn’t seem like the church was doing what it had said it would do.  I wish I had spoken up against going into debt.  I wish I would have spent time in prayer about the whole building issue, as my pastor had asked the congregation to do.  I did none of those things.  I can’t point a finger, because I have some of the blame for this coming at me.  I was fully and completely part of the system that sent someone asking for money to the door of a dead woman so that a bigger building could be built.

As the church, I think we’re supposed to be known by our love for one another, not by our big beautiful buildings.  We’re commanded to love God and others before loving ourselves.  There’s a story in the NT about not building bigger barns.  When Jesus said he was leaving, he said he was going to prepare a place for us, and he didn’t ask for cash.  When the roll is called up yonder, it won’t be time for your pledge card.  It will be time to see if we’ve found our identification with the person of Jesus.

It’s not because I don’t like the organization, or the people, or the guy that would be my boss (He’s a great guy, and working with him would be a perk).  It’s not because I don’t like the work I’d be doing.  It would be pretty rewarding and lies within my current skill set.  It’s because it seems like I’m qualified to work in the “real world”.  You know, the “secular world” or “the place where a lot of real people that I spend my time trying to get to know” hang out.  So why wouldn’t I go there, to the place where I can have more interactions with people that don’t know this Jesus guy is great? So once I remembered this, I spent about a week trying to convince myself that I’m crazy.  No such luck.  And I ultimately turned down the job.

I don’t have anything against being a missionary, and I’m still going to be one for a while now (my current job isn’t done yet), and I might even someday find myself again in this full-time missionary gig.  I reserve the right to be wrong.  But right now it’s hard for me to say, “Yeah, you don’t have to have a seminary degree, and you don’t have to be paid to follow Jesus” when I am paid to follow Jesus in an organization that says I need seminary credit.  I think I’m supposed to take a crack at living this life following Jesus with fewer guarantees, just like the people I seek to minister to now.  I feel like Jesus has taught me so much about what it means to follow him, and that I should try to actually put that to use, and for me, right now, that means not being paid to minister to people.

But who knows, maybe I don’t yet fully understand what’s going on here.  Maybe God will show me something else a few months down the line.  He’s cool like that.  Really cool.  So I’m going to try to just go where he takes me.  You see, the only con I could find with the new job offer was that I wasn’t sure God was taking me there.  Recognition? Yes.  Some financial security? Yes.  Working with quality missionaries?  Yes.  Increased trust in God?  Maybe not.

I hate dishonesty.

My parents’ church has reached the point where the money that is given to the church doesn’t match the amount that needs to go to upkeep, personnel, and to the missionaries they support. They’re talking about selling their current building and getting a smaller one to meet in. It’s been 12 years since the building was full during a Sunday service. Most Sundays since then, the attendance has only been one tenth of the facility’s capacity. Truthfully, they could all meet in someone’s home without being that crowded.

I know of a missionary who has become the pastor of a dwindling congregation in this part of the world.  He’s waiting for enough of the congregation to die off so that he can do things the way he wants.  They are all older and resistant to changing anything about the way they do church, but they want a pastor.  The missionary thinks he needs a building and facilities in order to reach the area.  I wish I were making this up.

For me, these situations pose questions.  But what are the answers?