Missionary Pedestals

This is perhaps a strange post to make as a missionary—and maybe it is a foolish thing to write down and put out into the world—but I have been feeling convicted recently to make it incredibly clear that I am NO BETTER THAN YOU. I am not a better person. I am not a better Christian.

I realize that this could ring as false humility, so let’s see if I can clarify.

Me in Madrid, can you feel the discomfort?

I never wanted to be a missionary. In fact, after a fateful trip during college that ended in a tearful call to my mom begging to come home, I never really wanted to leave the United States. I definitely didn’t want to work in ministry, especially after seeing everything my dad went through as an associate pastor at a relatively large church in my hometown and then as planting pastor of his own smaller congregation. I saw the ugly side of church that we often don’t want to admit exists (but come on, we are all people, things happen).

But God apparently has a sense of humor. He put a guy in my life who forced me to think about what God was really saying to me….

And God continues to challenge me to listen.

I think one of the largest reasons I didn’t want to become a missionary was because I had this strange perception that missionaries are these super-Christians. I mean, they leave everything they love behind to go to foreign lands (often lands without air conditioning or Super Target, gasp!). I love Super Target and missionary life felt far beyond my reach and spiritual maturity.

The thing is, I didn’t pull this perception of “missionaries as Super-Christians” out of thin air. It’s baked into western evangelical Christianity. We worship our pastors and our missionaries and forget that we are ALL called to exactly the same thing. (Matthew 28:19-20, Matthew 23:8).

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not calling for a wholesale change in church makeup. I don’t want to abolish full-time ministry positions.

I believe there is validity in people dedicating their full attention to capital “M” Ministry. I believe pastors with Seminary degrees and deep knowledge of the Bible are indispensable to churches as helpers and leaders.

But, I don’t think that a certain degree or vocation makes one person more holy than another—or any better.

We need to take a hard look at our churches and what we say we value versus what our actions say we value. The Gospel Jesus preached looks a lot different than most of what I’m seeing preached today. In fact, it scares me how similar our modern churches sound to the churches he chastised (Matt 23). And our megachurches today where you can just go and be invisible or focus inward definitely look different than the churches Paul was writing to encourage, where communities gathered and shared and expanded (Acts).

It’s weird for me to write this because, in many ways, this system benefits me. BECAUSE people revere missionaries and see me as doing God’s work (which is true but hopefully so are you!) they choose to support me financially, which allows me to do this thing I love and feel God has asked me to do. Sometimes it’s easier to just allow people to hoist me up onto that pedestal. But in reality, it’s a precarious pedestal upon which to sit. I don’t want to be there. And I don’t believe God wants me to be there. So, by tacitly allowing it to happen, I am actually being disobedient to Him—and that is not ok.

So, let’s stop putting missionaries and ministry leaders on pedestals, and instead focus on what God is asking each of us to do right where we are. We are all an important part of his body and ministry on this earth. I’ll keep knocking that “holier than thou” pedestal down, and hopefully, you will too.