Itsara

Our friend Phil wrote this post on a few things he’s heard Christians say to or about missionaries. Phil and his family are also missionaries here in Thailand from Switzerland. They live in Chiang Mai and, among other things, work with some of the hill tribe villages in the surrounding mountains. Here’s one of the things he’s heard, and his quick response:

2. Missionaries steal the resources of the local church.
One of my favorites. What shall I say. Whose resources are they anyway?

Go ahead and read the rest. We’ve talked with Phil about this stuff before. In talking with folks that have been missionaries out here for a while, we’ve discovered just how blessed we are to have such a supportive family back home. We keep hearing horror stories about what various churches and missionary organizations are requiring of people.

We’ve always said that we were coming out here no matter how much support we had - it just so happened that there were lots of people who wanted to help us. But we always wondered what we would do if someone said, “We’ll continue to support you, but you have to raise X amount of money,” or “We’ll support you, but you have to live in America 1 out of every 3 years,” or “We’ll support you as long as you can make X converts per year.”

I can understand the intent behind these, and I can imagine the bad situations that might have required such things, but if someone tried to push what we considered to be an unreasonable expectation on us - in exchange for their money - I would probably say (as respectfully as possible), “Thanks, but in that case we’ll pass. God’ll take care of us.”

On the other hand, any skeptic can easily point out that I’ve not yet had to rely solely on God’s provision. Perhaps I would change my tune if it meant the difference between making X converts and forced fasting. But at this point, I don’t think so.

I should note that I don’t think all expectations or requirements are unreasonable. If Coast asked us to (for example) keep a detailed account of all our spendings for their own tax purposes, I would consider it tedious but not unreasonable. What’s more, to my mind it would be helping out my family. The stories we hear are worse things though. A church researching missions in Southeast Asia and deciding a budget that a family must raise in order to go - when living in Thailand will actually be half that much. A denomination requiring 7 years of “missions training” and then denying the person who went through this the country they feel God is calling them to, but rather assigning them a domestic pastorship.

For the interested, Bruchko is a fun read on a missionary who was denied several times, in several places, the very thing he was certain God was calling him to. He went on his own and found God to be far more dangerous, and far more faithful, than anyone bargained for.