How NOT To Do Missions

With examples from your favorite missionaries

This is part of a series about the effects of Radical Christianity on our expectation of what the faithful Christian life is supposed to look like. Read part 1, part 2, and part 3 to get up to speed.

If a missions agency or board tells you that you are not yet ready to go to the field, go anyway!¹

I began to ask how I could prepare to go to a country thousands of miles away, of which I knew practically nothing except that they needed people to tell them of God’s love for them. I was told that I must offer myself to a certain missionary society, and eventually I went to this society’s college for three months.
By the end of that time the committee decided that my qualifications were too slight, my education too limited to warrant my acceptance.
[...]
Eventually I decided to return to London, get a job as a housemaid and earn enough money to pay my fare to China.
[...]
I set off from Liverpool Street Station at 9:30 A.M. on Saturday, October 15th, 1932. As the train drew out and I caught the last glimpse of my loved ones, I felt very small and insignificant. Like Abraham and Moses, I had left all behind me and was moving out into a place unknown with only God to help me.”

Gladys Aylward: The Little Woman by Gladys Aylward pgs. 8-17

It’s okay if you’re not a member of a local church. The Church isn’t really that important to the work of missions.

“On the eighteenth of July the word of the Lord came unto me saying, ‘Go to Ceylon.’” The CIM [China Inland Mission] people were horrified. Was she well enough to go? Did she know what she was doing? Why Ceylon? How could she go alone? Only the last question was settled. Another missionary was making the voyage and would look after her. Forthwith Amy booked a passage for Colombo. Off she sailed on July 28, sure of one thing: He goeth before. “Only whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest in this most solemn way will understand at all,” she wrote--pages and pages of explanations to the homefolk who would worry about their “Keswick Child.” It never once crossed her mind that she needed counsel, let alone permission, from those who had sent her.

A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot, pgs. 99-100

Most early missionaries did not partner with the local church in their missionary endeavors, but rather with parachurch mission societies. In fact, in missionary biographies you will find almost no mention of local congregations. This is, in part, because of some hyper-Calvinist beliefs that led many ministers of the time to consider missionary work unnecessary. William Carey, the founder of one of the first missionary societies, was famously told by his Baptist contemporaries, “When God pleases to convert the heathen, he'll do it without consulting you or me.”

Still, it has taken hundreds of years of course correction for modern missions boards and agencies to adequately partner with the local church to help individuals discern their “call” to missions, commission them, support them, and offer them accountability, as is the model set forth in Acts 13-14. Many missionaries today continue to work without the oversight and partnership of a specific, local “sending church.”

Don’t listen to the advice of your local partners. You definitely know more about their country and culture than they do.

After several weeks of refusing to leave her village in China ahead of an impending Japanese invasion, because “Christians never retreat,” a Chinese soldier brings Gladys Aylward a poster.

I stared at it. “Wanted: Ai-weh-deh” was printed on it, together with three other names. “Any person giving information which will lead to the capture, alive or dead, of the above mentioned, will receive a reward of £100 from the Japanese High Command.”
[...] I sat on alone, not knowing what to do. Then, late as it was, I went to the mission hall and consulted an elder.
“You must go, Ai-weh-deh, you must go,” he said firmly.
The women who were there wept. “Oh, don’t leave us; you are our mother, don’t leave us.”
I went back to my room, my mind in a turmoil. I burned all my papers and photographs, but I still did not know what to do. I did not want to throw my life away for nothing, and I knew the Japanese would have no mercy on a “wanted person.” But did God want me to stay with my people and help them? I got out my Bible and prayed and prayed, “O Lord, tell me what to do. I’m all mixed up. I don’t know if I should go or stay; please tell me.”
I opened my Bible, and the first words I read were “Flee ye; flee ye into the mountains; dwell deeply in hidden places, because the king of Babylon has conceived a purpose against you.”
That was enough for me. I had no more doubts; I would leave the next day. I went to bed and slept peacefully. Early in the morning I was up and ready to be off. I called to the gateman, “Get my mule ready, and take me down the road.”
“No mule will get out of here today, Ai-weh-deh. They are here; they came last night. Come and look.”
I looked through a peephole in the gate, and there, on the roadside, sat the Japanese soldiers washing their feet.
[...]
I [...] started to run across a field. Then the Japanese saw me. Bullets splattered all around, and there was a great deal of shouting. I fell down. The bullets came closer. I pulled off my thick padded coat, and rolled under a bush. The bullets riddled my coat, but eventually I crawled out and ran on again. I fell, got up, ran, crawled and climbed, but eventually the firing ceased, and I sank down utterly exhausted.

Gladys Aylward: The Little Woman by Gladys Aylward, pgs. 84-85.

Make every effort to get into as many dangerous situations from which God can rescue you as possible. How else will people see and understand the power of God?!

See above. And most other devotional-inspirational missionary biographies.

Don’t go on furlough or accept any indulgent creature comforts like medical care or adequate nutrition. Self-deprivation is the mark of true holiness.

“Spent the day in a very weak state; coughing and spitting blood, and having very little appetite for any food I had with me; was able to do very little, except discourse a while of divine things to my own people, and to some few I met with. Had, by this time, very little life or heart to speak for God, through feebleness of body. Was scarcely ever more ashamed and confounded in myself than now. I was sensible that there were numbers of God’s people who knew I was then out upon a design, or at least the pretence, of doing something for God, and in his cause, among the poor Indians; and they were ready to suppose that I was fervent in spirit, but O the heartless frame of my mind filled me with confusion! O, methought, if God’s people knew me as God knows, they would not think so highly of my zeal and resolution for God as perhaps they now do! I could not but desire they should see how heartless and irresolute I was, that they might be undeceived, and ‘not think of me above what they ought to think.’ And yet, I thought, if they saw the utmost of my unfaithfulness, the smallness of my courage and resolution for God, they would be ready to shut me out of their doors, as unworthy of the company or friendship of Christians.”

The Life of Rev. David Brainerd by Jonathan Edwards, September 6th, 1746

A letter written early in June assured everyone that she [Amy Carmichael] was feeling fit again, having allowed herself the luxuries of butter on her bread and milk in her tea. These dainties were supposed to do what the unidentified black liquids and sea-slugs did not seem to be doing--put muscle on her…

When she came to after the fainting fit she found herself  “environed by wet towels, doleful faces, and a general sense of blurs.” Then she remembered that she was expected at a meeting. No “weak-minded nonsense” must interfere with that. The power of Christ, while it did not exempt her from momentary lapse, would enable her to carry on. She banked everything on the promise of Isaiah 40:31, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength… they shall walk, and not faint,” took herself by the scruff of the neck, marched herself to the meeting, and spoke. It was a late meeting, followed by a long talk with a woman who came to Christ. There was no doubt in Amy’s mind it was worth it.

A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot, pg 96

Don’t worry about how your commitment to this work will affect your family. God comes first, so don’t let your wife’s hysteria distract you.

Then in 1794, soon after the Careys moved from the Sundarbans jungle to Mudnabatti, 5-year-old Peter died of dysentery. For Dorothy, the grief, combined with her physical ailments, pushed her over the brink of despair. Her mental condition worsened—though not enough to preclude marital intimacy, since in January 1796, Dorothy gave birth to another son. Three months after the birth, William wrote: “My poor wife must be considered as insane, and is the occasion of great sorrow.” Another missionary described her as “wholly insane.”
[...]
But as the years passed, her condition worsened to the point that Carey confined her in a locked room. He worked on his translations, according to an observer, “while an insane wife, frequently wrought up to a state of most distressing excitement, was in the next room.”

A piece on William Carey in Christianity Today.

If you have any doubts about whether this is all worth it, it is!

“The first part of the book [No Graven Image] addresses the American evangelical vision of missions; the second deals with the American evangelical vision of God. The themes of the novel are those that had populated Elliot’s letters and speeches for month: the dishonesty of “the Gospel Business” about God and about life; the church’s attempt “to give a more satisfactory answer” to life’s big questions than that offered by the Bible. Her study of the prophets--Ezekiel, Daniel, Habakkuk, John--had compelled her to write what she saw: that evangelicals had set up a false god and would go to great lengths to keep it on its pedestal, that the true God would go to any length to knock the idol down.”

Elisabeth Elliot: A Life by Lucy S.R. Austen, pg 398

Elisabeth Elliot wrote No Graven Image, in part to wrestle with whether missions was “worth it.” The book is honest, but gives no tidy answers. However, the backlash against the novel was fierce and she never wrote another work of fiction. It seems that she may have spent the rest of her life using her writing to convince herself and others to abandon those kinds of questions altogether.

Beauty in My Heritage
Time got away from me this year and I didn’t get around to making ma’amoul for our Easter celebration, but I was absolutely thrilled to see this article in Christianity Today highlight their symbolism. If you want to try these delicious nut and date filled cookies you should be able to find them at most international grocery stores that have a Middle Eastern section.

Beauty in The Gospel
I’m sure this is not a unique experience for those of us who are parents, but the stories of Holy Week came alive for me in a new way this year as I relayed them to my nearly 3 year old son. He is far from understanding enough to make a decision about Christ for himself, but we keep walking the road together, and I pray that the One who is a blurry speck on the horizon for him now will one day be close enough to not just understand, but to love. For now, this is his summary of Easter. “Jesus was in the tomb, then he went to the door and said, ‘I’m outta here!’” He is risen, indeed!

In pursuit of Beauty,

1. Obviously, these headers are satirical, and while I am highlighting some of the more egregious examples of these errors, I do believe that they are characteristic of devotional-inspirational biographies as a genre, which I address here. I have also chosen to share full quotes from my sources, instead of paraphrasing or offering much commentary, so as to avoid introducing my biases. You can decide for yourself if this genre of biography has perpetuated these errors among missionaries.