I don’t understand why people are capricious in their giving to missionaries. God prompts them to give to a certain missionary, and then they yank their support on a whim. A missionary would have to do something terrible for me to stop supporting him because if God prompted me to give, it would be disobedient for me to withdraw the funds. It is God whom I serve.
I hated the whole song and dance for people to throw a penny in the hat routine that I had to endure every time we went on furlough to the States. We visited one church after another, trying to prove that they should support us. My dad was an outstanding seminary professor, teaching Greek and New Testament theology to Spanish-speaking pastors all over the world. If we had to prove something, why didn’t the seminary students send recommendation letters about my dad? They could have easily done so, and I wouldn’t have felt like I was on display as a little girl, standing in front of churches.
One time while visiting a church in Canada on furlough, my dad spoke about all that was happening in Guatemala, and why the church should support us. After the service, my cousin’s daughter (who didn’t know that I was the daughter of the man who preached) said that my dad seemed like he was selling something.
Yes, that is what missionaries are reduced to: having to sell what they do. It’s stupid. Look, if God doesn’t prompt you to support a missionary, don’t support him. If God does prompt you, don’t be disobedient and bratty to pull away your support for no reason, just because you want more money in your pocket. All of our money belongs to God. It’s not ours. Many missionaries have had to leave the mission field because of capricious givers who disobey God.
On the other hand, missionaries do need to be making a difference in people’s lives. We should see God working. If God is not working at all, it seems like God wouldn’t have prompted us to give in the first place, though. In the Czech Republic, it sometimes takes 10 years of witnessing and hard work for one person to be converted. Even though God is working, there might be no conversions for years. But now, 12 years later, we see lots of soft hearts toward God that were not there a decade ago. God is definitely working.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if God initially prompts you to support a missionary every month, it is God that you are obeying. I think it would be easier if fewer churches who really know the missionaries could support with bigger amounts, so that the missionaries don’t have to drag their children on display to 30 churches that we had to visit every furlough to “peddle our wares” or prove that God wanted my dad to continue to serve at the seminary that he loved so much. Give to God and be faithful to follow through to support the missionaries that He wants you to support, and don’t forget to pray for them.
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Tags: Christian Living, giving, Growing Up as a Missionary Kid, money
How to Write a Mystery Story
We had a missionary come to our church last Sunday and talked during Mass. I agree that it is hard for them to beg. I also, agree with you that if God puts on your heart to help a missionary that you need to keep helping them as long as you can. What I liked about this missionaries talk is that he brought pictures, so that you could see how you would be helping them with your money.
Missionaries could send a slide show of pictures through YouTube to show how they can be prayed for and what they are doing overseas. The churches could show the slide show on a Sunday morning so that the missionaries don’t have to physically return to the U.S. just to try to raise money. I think that would be a great idea.
Missionaries do need to see their families in the U.S. once in a while, but it could be more of a break and not so much working to raise money.
With media, I agree.
My mother in laws parents came from the Czechoslovakia. He brothers were born there. She was the first born in the US.
I totally agree with you that we should CHEERFULLY give as God leads regardless of whether we “feel like it” “agree with everything” “see something” etc. The children’s obedience song has some very clear truths in it:
Obedience is the very best way to show that we believe, doing exactly as the Lord commands, doing it willingly. Action is the key, act immediately, joy you will receive; obedience is the very best way to show that you believe!
Having said that, I would like to present another thought. When I was growing up, I heard people talk about people being ‘called’ to be a missionary. In my mind, this meant that someone had to have some kind of superspiritual experience (i.e. a voice from Heaven, an angelic visitation or some other very specific message) and since that had never happened to me, I did not have to consider the possibility of being a missionary. Further, I thought that missionaries were some type of super spiritual people–something above mankind and just below angels. Clearly…that was not me.
Then, I met some real missionaries at a mission conference. It changed everything for me. I came to realize that missionaries are people. I came to understand that the main difference between any other Christian and a missionary–is obedience. It meant that I had to get real with my Lord and give my life to Him in a totally different way. It also changed the way I teach children—it made me talk about missions and His call to reach the lost more fervently. It made me pray for others differently.
So, while I can empathize with your need to not be dragged around and displayed–I want to encourage you to meet people and challenge people and especially….to talk to the children. Let them get to know you so that they grow up knowing that missions and obedience to our Lord and Savior is for everyone.
Insightful observations. Yes, everyone is called to obey God’s leading.
Ken Reddington (on Facebook) says:
The same thing happens with churches, too. They suddenly drop support of a missionary they’ve supported for years–so what’s the missionary supposed to do?!? One ‘trend’ (if you want to call it that) is the shift to supporting short-term missionaries instead of career missionaries–because ‘it’s more efficient’. That’s really a misconception; short-term missionaries canNOT get done as much as long-term missionaries. But when the short-termer comes home with glowing reports of all the people who became Christians, churches and individuals think that’s great. When actually, what they did was just ‘stir up the waters’ enough to get some people to sign a card saying they would like to learn more about the Bible. They didn’t really become Christians, but the short-termer thought they did and told his/her church that they did. So what happens is that the career missionary or the indigenous pastor are left ‘holding the ball’ trying to keep up a contact with all those people the short-termer contacted, but since they are already busy with other things, it often doesn’t happen and those people ‘fall thru the cracks’. It would have been much better if the short-termer came back to the field as a full-time missionary and followed up on those people ‘he/she saved’ (at least it wasn’t God who saved them! Tho he/she were instrumental in their wanting to learn more about God and the church).
I replied:
I agree. Churches shouldn’t be capricious either. They are short-sighted if they think a notch in the belt (a conversion) is all that matters. If nothing is done to grow those people spiritually over time, they will fall away because the “conversion prayer” ends up being some empty words blabbed into the air when Jesus never became actual Lord of their lives.
Ken Reddington added:
Another thing I don’t like is that to be a missionary nowadays you have to be a ‘circus clown’ in the States and drawn attention to yourself at supporting churches when often that is the direct opposite of what is needed on the field. I’m an MK from Japan and I know people who are naturally slow and careful, almost introverted in their ministry here in Japan and the people in the church they are working with are VERY appreciative of those traits. But when they are in the States, churches (and their mission) want them to ‘perform’, to be something they really aren’t. I’ve even seen some missionaries being told “You aren’t missionary caliber” by the mission because they were so quiet and understated in the States–when those are the very traits that can make you a GOOD missionary here in Japan (of course, there are others, like me, who are more forceful and boisterous, too!). It’s like you have to be two-faced–outgoing in the States and calm, cool and collected here in Japan. If the supporting churches had asked the members of the church the missionary was planting in Japan, they would get the glowing reports they wanted. But the missionary himself will not say that kind of stuff. Besides, it takes so long for anything to happen here in Japan. We are in our fourth church-plant in Japan right now. Of those, one church was folded into another one because there was no real movement in 5 years time. In our present church, we’ve been here 18 years (almost) and we have 5-6 people coming to church (besides my wife and I), but only two of those are Christians (and only one of them is baptized). I’m glad I’m an independent missionary not beholden to any church in the States (I work ‘on the market’ to make ends meet), because I’m sure churches (and missions) would say we are ineffective at what we are doing. Tell that to God! The two other churches we started are now totally in the hands of Japanese pastors and have their own land and building (something rare for many churches in Japan). So God IS using us and He IS doing His work here in Japan.
I answered:
Wow, God bless you. May God bring tangible fruit into your life to reward you for your faithfulness. Yes, I felt like a clown growing up. It was all such a dog and pony show. The whole thing just grieves me.
Sarah Burney (on Facebook) says:
Yep, I agree with Ken, and I remember the days of “put your kimono on and go sing a special with your brother” all too well! I didn’t like it as a child, but I realized that we kids were part of an all-too-meager arsenal. My dad wasn’t a good public speaker in English, and between the passel of dressed-up kids and the exotic stuff on the display table, at least he engaged the interest of many in foreign missions.
Rachel Burney says:
Gak. Display tables and the song. Not exactly things I miss.
Spencer Thornburg says:
This is some great discussion. I think many churches over extend themselves supporting lots of missionaries for very little and then they never really bother to get to know them at all. At my church here in the states we do all the support for 4 missionary families that we’ve sent out. When they come back it’s to give a report, rest and be ministered to themselves.
The other thing is that I don’t think people realize what it’s like to minister in another culture. I remember a short term missionary coming through our home onece and their plan was to spend 5 months in Spain and plant an church and go home “like the apostle Paul did”. By God’s grace (He used my dad talking to them) they ended up becoming FT missionaries, they did plant a church and have been used of God. People forget that ministering in a culture that already has a foundation of the bible is very different then ministering in a culture where you’re starting from “scratch”. Yes it is God who gives the fruit but the way it comes about (the means He uses) will look different in different cultures.
It’s good to be an MK in a stateside church where we can help people to see and understand that.
Shary Kroeker Hauber says:
Ken Reddington glad to hear you are independent. You are the kind of witness that shows people God. This is what all missions should be. Most missionaries work to made the home church happy or they don’t get support. What better way to reach people than totally identifying with the people. What if Jesus had taken a furlough every three or four years and just disappeared for a year?
I replied:
Shary Kroeker Hauber, the only problem is that there are some missionaries who are full-time workers (like my dad who was a seminary professor full time in Guatemala) who had to be supported by State-side churches alone. People are too poor in Guatemala to pay the salaries of the professors. There are other full-time positions where it is impossible to earn money on the side to feed your family. It would be nice if a seminary here in the States could support the seminary in Guatemala so that lots of individual churches don’t have to be pandered to in order to continue eating.
Ken Reddington continues:
This topic is so full of things I want to say, so maybe I’ll just take them one at a time. My dad was basically a ‘loner’, I think, and VERY poor at people relations (because of this ‘weakness’, he ended up studying psychology, ending up with a Ph. D., but that really hasn’t changed him. He might know the mechanism behind things, but he can’t change and be ‘people-oriented. It’s just not him) . On top of that, he felt that he could never ‘sell’ himself, so every time we were in the States for a ‘one-year furlough’, it always took us two years to drum up enough support to make it back (and even then, we were never fully supported to the level that the mission wanted. But that’s another topic!). Thinking back on it now, I think Dad should have just told ‘the people’ what God is doing and focus their attention on God and not on what he was doing in our little corner of the mission field. Evangelism in Japan is SO hard because they have no clue whatsoever what we are talking about, and everything they do is so steeped in Buddhism and Shintoism (tho they just pass it off mainly as ‘tradition’). So you will NOT see large numbers come to Christ (in our ministry, we had 4 people baptized in our first 10 years. And when we had 7 in one year(!), our eleventh year of ministry, we were overjoyed and jumping up and down and praising God for His faithfulness!). It’s just too bad that missionaries think (as do their missions and supporting churches) that they have to sell themselves.
Sarah Burney says:
It bothers me that I/we slip into the language of retail and prostitution to discribe our experiences. The U.S. (or other parental home base) churches shouldn’t be set up into an “us vs. them” comparison with M.K.s, but truth be told, that’s a natural way to think about it when we hardly ever are in one church for long enough to grow roots/marke friendships/begin to understand the points of view of those who have supported our families over the years. How do we work our way out of adversarial thinking?
I hadn’t realized how much my resentment had colored my experience until I was at a missionary recruit camp some thirty years ago, and a wise person confronted me with my poor attitude. I realized that I hadn’t put in the years with any Stateside congregation sufficiently to learn to forgive those who had wronged my parents (dropped support on a furlough year, etc., etc.) , but yet I was planning to tap into the resources of that same group of churches to send me off in turn. More than a little hypocritical, right? The Lord didn’t send me/us(at the time) for many reasons, but I can’t say that my sense of alienation has abated much.
Ken Reddington replied:
Sarah, your words “My dad wasn’t a good public speaker in English” hit a chord with me. Actually, it’s not how good someone is in English (or whatever language) or even how good they are in their ‘home’ country, the proof of the pudding should be in how they operate on the field. As I said above, it seems like you have to be an out-and-out extrovert who is not only willing but enjoys being a clown on stage to get money (at least it seems so) from churches in the States. I am definitely a full-blown extrovert, but what about people who aren’t? Actually, introverts (we are all a mixture of both anyway) have much to contribute, especially to an ‘understated’ society like Japan. And what about God’s calling? Tho perhaps a little out of context, Rom. 11:29 “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”. It is God who calls, not a certain church, mission or even the missionary themselves.
Ken Reddington continues:
My home church in Oregon had a crazy (at least to me) missions policy. Every year, they would make a list of all the missions and missionaries that everyone in the church supported and say that that was who they supported! The pastor had been a missionary in Brazil and had gotten ‘burned’, so he didn’t want the church per se to support missionaries (tho his friend, a Brazilian, was being supported directly. Go figure!).
Then that pastor left and a new pastor took his place–and, of course, the missions policy changed. This time they decided to actually support missionaries directly and they tried to limit the number of missionaries the church supported and called those missionaries ‘overseas staff’ and whenever they were back in Oregon, they would be treated as staff in the church and given enough support so that they didn’t have to run around all over to a ‘billion’ churches to raise support.
That made sense, and I think that’s what you, Spencer, are talking about. The problem was that the pastor changed again (in the States, it seems like they play ‘musical chairs’ with pastors, as they seem to change all the time) and then, naturally, the missions policy changed. This time they decided to only (or at least mainly) support denominational missionaries. But that created problems (as you can imagine) with those they had already supported so heavily. I know of one missionary family sent out from the church who were with an independent ‘faith’ mission that were told their support would be halved, then lowered even further. Since most of their support had come from my home church, they found it basically impossible to continue with the mission, but since God was still calling them to Japan, they came back out independently.
Of course, you can’t force a church to continue a policy they no longer believe in. And maybe it’s not such a good idea for the missionary to ‘put all your eggs in one basket’ (tho the original idea of the church wanting to support the missionary as much as possible is a good one, I think). But it’s just too bad that missionaries get the brunt of a pastoral change and they can’t do anything about it. Of course, being in a mission can help with that, as they don’t change policies that much. But is that really the answer? I don’t know. I’m just talking out loud I guess. But I think there has to be a better way. Of course, God IS faithful, but it sure would be nice if His people were, too!
Spencer Thornburg says:
Ken yea, I remember that my dad’s “home church” had pastors changing a lot. There were even furloughs where the pastor didn’t even know who my parents were and at times didn’t seem to care either. At the church where I am at state side, it’s more of a philosophy of missions. We believe that the local church should be the sending agency and the church (and the person being sent of course) recognizes the call and sends the missionary. It has worked very well for us, we do have some missionaries that we help with their support because they have gone in a “tent making” capacity but they needed help to make ends meet and they wanted a church to have ties with who could help them as well. I think I’ve explained it a bit simplistically but that’s the idea. You are right of course, it can be hard when the churches back home are constantly changing but it is good to know that you can always rest in God and His faithfulness!
Mary Kroeker Classen says:
I remember one missionary that was given the usual gift of having the message on Sunday morning. It was horrible, and I felt like leaving because he was struggling so hard to come up with a “3 point sermon”. That same day, in the evening, he was given an opportunity to share what his work was on the mission field (he was a hospital administrator) and it was so interesting because he was sharing his heart. Not all missionaries are preachers, and we shouldn’t expect them all to have the same gifts.
Forrest Gullion says:
In the late 40s, my father would do migrant farm work to make enough money to get to the next church to present himself as a missionary. In 1950 he went with the smaller part, when the denomination split. I can remember being hungry as a child. The church members in the Philippines would “feed us” when on visitation. Really do love that culture.
Here’s the interesting part. My father went to small churches when on deputation. He had many $15-$25 supporters. His support would be higher at the end of a four year term, than when he started it. Little churches will add to your support when they do better. Big churches will split a large contribution promised to one missionary, to support two. Another bonus is, new or smaller churches don’t need the slick dog and pony shows, required at more sophisticated big churches.
Sometimes he would get a letter from a church he never visited. It would go, when I was a child you were the only missionary that came to my church. Now that I have my own church, I have led them to support you.
In a way he trained churches and built his support from the ground up. It required much work and faith on his part. The easy way is to go for the packaged deal.
Bonnie Beckley Catlin says:
I just want to jump in here and say I remember enjoying deputation, and hated being left behind when I “had to go to school”. But we went as a family as much as possible, and I was blessed to be a part of our ministry – here in the US, and on the field. Being able to share our culture with those who had no clue was a privilege. I enjoyed singing with our family, and whatever else we did to share. I am blessed to be an MK!!!
Laura Geho Garcia says:
I think some of this anger really needs to be geared at our parents rather than the churches. I am blessed to say that the only time we sang a song was when my sisters and I wrote a song about missions and asked to share it. It was never expected but always welcomed. Our parents certainly always had the right to protect us and say “no”.
Ken Reddington replied:
I don’t know that what I feel is anger as much as a sense of sadness that it had to come to that. To me, it made no sense for us as a missionary family to have to (or at least feel like we had to) dance down the aisle of the church (in churches that thought dancing was sinful; so why did they let/make us do it?) with our yukata (summer kimono) on, etc. And then we had to sing as a family when we got to the front! Sure it takes a lot of guts for a monotone father to join his off-key wife and children who couldn’t sing together for anything in singing a song in Japanese! But is that what churches are looking for?!? My brother is the only one of us three kids that could carry a tune, so he had to stand between my sister and me because if he didn’t, we’d end up in a different key, or maybe even a different clef (who knows?)! I’m glad Bonnie enjoyed deputation, but for us, furloughs were a drudgery that had to be ‘gotten thru’. In a sense, I agree with Laura that at least some of the blame should go to our parents (if you can’t sing, then why do it?!?). I think that some of this ‘venting’ we are doing on this page is the result of the fact that we felt we couldn’t say this to our parents and we are ‘letting off steam’, finally.
But the ‘system’ that says they want to be entertained by the ‘exotic’ missionary is to me, wrong. Of course, I also think the modern idea of mega-churches with entertainment productions every Sunday to draw the crowds is wrong, too. Yes, you should try to do your best at whatever you do–after all, we are there in church to worship our King! But we are not in it for the show–church is not show business.
And as Paul said, we should not forget those individuals or churches who sacrificially gave/give so that we could/can be on the mission field. At the same time, tho, I think the ‘system’ needs fixing–at least tweaking. I am not here in Japan working ‘on the market’ (actually neither my wife or I have much income at present; we hope that changes for at least one of us from April, the start of the school/fiscal year in Japan) because I wanted it that way. I would have preferred to get at least half of our support from churches and individuals in the States, but feeling a strong call from God to the location we are now, we ended up ‘falling thru the cracks’ with missions, churches and other supporters. I think something needs to change, but I don’t think I can do anything about it because I am here for good, with very few chances to be in North America.
Laura Geho Garcia replied:
We could get into a whole different topic in the commercialization of the gospel (in the US and elsewhere). I just think that sometimes it was the missionaries themselves that created this atmosphere on deputation instead of the other way around. My dad was always involved in theological education in major metropolitan areas in Brasil. Why would we get up in front of churches in the US and pretend we were working in the Amazon with Natives? I know this would vary depending on the type of work each missionary did (some here maybe were with Wycliffe and were doing this type of work). I think where you hit the nail on the head with the commercialization though is that sometimes we believe that telling the stories of what God is doing is not enough. We don’t trust God and feel like we need to “spice up” what is happening to garnish that support. I’m not saying that this was the motivation for all missionaries but I think it is a human condition. If we stop and trust God and tell His story of what He is doing, HE will work! After all, isn’t that what we are preaching?
Ken Reddington replied:
I agree, Laura. Just telling what God is doing should be enough. The problem is, tho, that America (and other ‘home countries’) is so numbers-oriented. As I have said before elsewhere, in Japan, things just don’t happen so fast. Of course, that doesn’t mean that God is not working. He is! But both the churches we visit and the missionaries themselves tend to want numbers. If I had been fully supported by a church or even a mission, I don’t know what they would have done with me. In my first 10 years of ministry (the first two years on my own, before we got married), I baptized 4 people. Of course, that was when I started 3 churches from zero (and by that time, ten years, one church had to be folded into another one), but if I had had to ‘defend’ my numbers, I don’t think I could have done it! Now, praise God, the first church I started has about 35 members (so, larger than the average church in Japan) with a Japanese pastor and its own land and building (which in Japan, is really something!). And the 2nd church has 9 members, but it has a Japanese pastor and its own land and building. And we are starting our 4th churchplant in our home (tho one room is designed to be the church).
Along with this is misguided notion that missionaries might have that they have to ‘sell’ their ministry, so they perhaps might try to embellish things to make it more ‘palatable’ to numbers-oriented churches and missions. I think that’s where you are right, Laura. The missionaries themselves think they have to do something to ‘make’ people and churches support them, so they go for the ‘song and dance’ routine. My parents were always with the people, living in homes just like the Japanese (tho our home culture was definitely American). So our displays of how Japanese dress, etc., fit right in. But, looking back, I think we could have just trusted God, shared what we were really doing and let the churches decide if they really wanted to support us or not. Of course, that would have been scary (as it was, we always had our one-year furlough stretched to two years because we could never ‘drum up’ the money to come back), but isn’t that living the life of faith?
Bonnie Beckley Catlin says:
Some good comments here, and I agree. YHVH IS our Provider, and when HE calls, HE provides ALL we need to accomplish the task HE gives us. The mission culture in our growing up years had many flaws, and our parents were human, and I’m sure often felt stuck between a rock and a hard place, and many times may have lost sight of their Rock.
We need to remember that we often see others’ faults easier than our own, and hindsight is always 20/20, vs. being in the middle of the forest, so to speak. There was alot of pressure on our parents, and we need to forgive alot, just as we need to be forgiven.
Also, those of us who only experienced the childhood version of missions don’t really have a good perspective on what it was like as parents in that position. But it is good to evaluate and see the problems, so we can help our families and maybe our churches see a better perspective – from our point of view, because of what we have experienced and learned through living it on our level at the time.
Penny Kuehlman-Diel says:
We never had to perform but it was bad enough having to stand and be introduced by dad, then having him making embarassing comments. Ken Reddington, I totally understand where you are coming from with ministering in Japan. People here in the States juston don’t understand what it’s like trying to witness to people who unless they are really taught, just think it’s another god to just add to the one’s they already worship. It doesn’t help when you have a missionary who would badger people until they prayed and then write back to the States about how many people would be “saved”
Ken Reddington replied:
Penny, I have heard of people who exaggerate the results of their ministry in Japan (and other places, as well). Of course, God knows, so there is really no reason to do that. I had a similar experience. This wasn’t Japan, but I worked at the Portland Seamen’s Center as my Christian Service assignment as a freshman at Multnomah School of the Bible (tho they’ve changed their name now). The director of the Seamen’s Center was an interesting gentleman who always gave glowing reports to his superiors. Sometimes there were a thousand sailors ‘saved’ in one month! But when I started helping out there, I realized it wasn’t what it seemed. Since at the time, my Spanish was still good, I could talk with the sailors from Spanish-speaking countries and of course, I knew Japanese, so I found out what was happening. What it was was that we would take the Seamen’s Center bus to the docks and pick up sailors and bring them downtown to the Center. Of course, for most of them, we were just a ‘taxi service’ to give them a ride downtown and off the ships. When we dropped them off at the Center, the director had everybody come up to his 2nd floor office. There, he proceeded to ask them which language they spoke and gave them a copy of the Four Spiritual Laws in their native language (or a language spoken in their country, if the exact language didn’t a translation of the 4 Laws). He had everyone sit in a circle around him and he had them read out loud the 4 Laws in their language (I think he was Greek, so he understood Greek and English, but I doubt if he could tell if they were really reading the actual words or making things up!). Anyway, after they finished reading, he would ask “Do you understand? Do you agree?” And everyone would invariably say “Yes” whereupon he would give each sailor a “Certificate of Salvation” signed by him…and they were ‘saved’! He could only fit 10 or so in his office at a time, so the sailors took turns going up to this office and ‘getting saved’. Then they would come downstairs, maybe talk to us a while and then go ‘out on the town’. They would usually come back drunk and be taken back to their respective ships (we had a curfew of 10:15 pm at our dorm(!), so we had to go back to school before the sailors came back to the Center). Anyway, I would talk with the sailors as they came downstairs and ask them what they had done upstairs. They would basically say that they had no idea what was happening upstairs, but would show their certificate to me. When I asked them if they believed Jesus, if they were saved, they would say that they didn’t know what I meant by that. So basically it was a farce! And even if they had thought they had been saved by going upstairs to the director’s office, it would be confusing for them when they tried to go to church in their home country. After I stopped helping out there, I heard that they fired that director because they finally caught on to why there were so many ‘salvations’. I’m sure having to read the Four Spiritual Laws in their own language was not bad in and of itself. But he confused the issue by giving them that ‘Certificate of Salvation’. If anything, HE saved them and not God! And, of course, that doesn’t work. I hope and pray that at least some of them have actually had the chance to meet the Savior. It all goes to show that you really need to know how a person is receiving what you are trying to tell them. As MKs, we know that things can easily be misunderstood. I hope we are making sure people are really understanding us when we speak.
Forrest Gullion says:
One missionary had an extreme case of European explorer complex. No mater where he went, it wasn’t evangelized until his visit. Huge swaths of the Philippines were opened to Gods word according to his news letters. After awhile it didn’t surprise his colleagues to read how instrumental he was in founding their ministries. What was truly amazing is he seldom left Manila.
Penny Kuehlman-Diehl says:
My parents were asked by a pastor one time why it seemed that this particular missionary got more “results” than anyone else.