The Trigger: Overseas Missions

O My Soul:

William Carey is often called the Father of Modern Christian Missions. He was an idealist, a pragmatist, a thinker, an adventurer, a translator, and compassionate of others with the Word of God.

I'm not a Baptist but I do identify with a character like William Carey.

I love the idea of Christian missions, my wife agreed. I like to travel especially off the beaten tourist path. Translation is important. The Christian Bible is translated into many (not all) but most languages in the world. Those people know the accounts of the Bible but not the "What does this mean?"

So, I have a lot in common with William Carey.

I did not go into foreign missions completely naive. Even in hindsight, I was well prepared. I was aware that the greatest stress for missionaries was other missionaries and not so much the culture in which they make their new home. That and many other things about living cross-culturally was the stuff I was already aware.

I went through a battery of psychological tests. The results recommended that I would do well. I was resilient. Blah, blah, blah.

The romance of recruitment is also nice. Church officials taking my family out for dinner. Strategy meetings to plan how I might be incorporated into the goals of the mission in a country or region. Recruitment and raising support in congregations is what I call the "Rock Star" experience. Missionaries have it as a perk whenever they are back in the U.S.

I never ever thought that mission work would be a trigger to move me from childhood depressive episodes to long term clinical depression along with contemplating suicide.

The trigger for my mental illness, my clinical depression and anxiety, was my overseas mission experience.

Future posts will focus on how the events of those years as an overseas missionary triggered a God awful depression from which I am still recovering.

until then

Hope in Christ &
God bless you.

-oms

Weeping Over Christian Missions

O My Soul:

The darkest part of my depression was experienced overseas as a missionary.

The prevailing attitude within the missions leadership of my church body (even just a few years ago) is that you are either tough enough to handle the abandonment and abuse...or not. That may sound harsh, but as I have talked to more and more former missionaries both inside and outside the circles of my own church body, a similar pattern appears.

So, when I ran across this little article about a heart for missions earlier this morning, I experienced more thoughts and feelings than I can express in a single post. But here are a few:

I don't have the heart to be treated like a rock star visiting supporting congregations only to ask for more money. I don't have the heart to watch young college graduates lose their soul to another world religion. I don't have the heart to find another short-term missionary in a brothel. I don't have the heart to teach English to the neglect of the Great Commission to baptize and teach. I don't have the heart for planning, and more planning, and then re-planning strategies to convert the world to Jesus when at the heart of the problem is that we missionaries don't acknowledge sin in our own hearts nor in the hearts of those to whom we have been sent.

A warning to anyone praying and thinking about serving in Christian missions. You will be romanced (recruited) sweetly (aggressively) by mission leaders. It feels pretty good. But, if in the next few years you prove faint hearted in the midst of the stress that will come your way, don't be surprised if you are tossed away like a used hag.

We who have gone that way are legion... and forgotten.

Well, Jesus remembers and continues to weep over Jerusalem. It is written:

   
⁴¹ Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, ⁴² saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. (Luke 19:41-42, New King James Version)

Let us pray,

Father God, remember the baptized and save us, even me, according to Your promise; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

And may God bless your soul.

-oms