MISSIONARIES: A PERSONAL VIEW (1)

I am writing this series on missionaries, which is an interesting topic. I know something about them, so many of my comments will be personal and reflective, including comments on some historical figures. I will also make some general observations about missions and missionaries. My experience always includes my wife and children, who have been a part of everything I have done. In my ruminations, you may even see some humor in the missionary life.

Missionaries are often put on a pedestal, where they don’t belong, or a few went into a boiling pot, for which they had no wish. Quite simply, a missionary is someone with a mission, a purpose to fulfill. In the Christian context, the mission is to tell groups that are culturally different from one’s own about the good news of Jesus Christ, how he came into the world to die for sinful people, was killed, and then rose again. It is a message of hope because of forgiveness, redemption, and resurrection.

Although the work of a missionary is most naturally related to a religious task like preaching and teaching the Bible, it does not have to be. A businessman, nurse, tradesman, or other worker can have a mission to fulfill and fit into the missionary profile as well. I need to modify the definition by saying “Christian missionary,” thus immediately adding certain additional facts. First, a Christian missionary represents (serves as an ambassador) the Christian faith; secondly, he or she is motivated by God to do the task; finally, he or she wishes to carry the message to benefit a particular audience.

Missionaries, to be at home in another culture and communicate with the inhabitants of that culture, most often need to learn to speak another language, one that may be very different from their mother tongue. In our case, we learned to speak two closely related Kewa languages, spoken by over 100,000 people in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The Kewa language has nothing in common with English, Indo-European languages like French or German, or most languages of the world. The Kewa people did not know English, and we did not know Kewa. So we learned by using a method called the “monolingual approach.” We had learned the basics of how to learn a language like Kewa, but it took years before we felt at ease speaking it fluently. We also needed to devise a written form of the language, based on our analysis of its phonology and grammar, its lexicon, and the culture of the people.

Missionaries need to understand another culture without judging it simply because it is different than their own. The Kewa culture was remarkably different than our Western American culture. The depth of our linguistic and cultural understanding influenced the range of our participation in the culture as well as the degree of friendships that we formed with the people. We were trying to learn the language as if we lived inside the culture, like a native speaker, rather than from outside, like an alien. Our goal was to have a view that was cross-cultural. Language and culture learning for a Christian requires faith, love, and hope, but the one we seemed to need most was hope. Many missionaries, probably most, go to another culture and foreign land in faith, not knowing exactly what to expect, but convinced that God is leading them in the venture.

They also must demonstrate charity because their motives and behavior will be tested and often found wanting. But most of all they must have infinite patience, hoping that learning the language and culture, living in an alien land, eating different foods, and viewing practices that are foreign and often distasteful to them, will lead to an acceptance and understanding of the message they represent. 

These attributes sound very demanding, and in some sense, they are, but in another sense, most are not different than what any Christian would need to do their job well. The most “religious” of the missionary’s attributes might relate to their “calling,” a term that sounds like they have an intimate relationship with God, much closer than the average Christian. This was certainly not our case.

Perhaps Joice had a calling because she always “wanted” to be a missionary. From the time of the first missionary conference that she had attended at her church in Pontiac, Michigan, until she set foot on land in Papua New Guinea, she somehow sensed (knew) that she would become a missionary. She had gone to the front of her church each year to answer the invitation of the speaker for those who felt God “calling” them to be missionaries. Her parents hosted many missionaries in their home, and in Joice’s recollection, the women always wore black, which she said she would never do.

My situation was entirely different. My home situation was not “Christian,” and I was not converted until I was about to finish my senior year of high school. I had never met a missionary. However, upon my faith in Christ, I wanted to be a missionary, although I didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because the young pastor who had come to our country church also wanted to do missionary work in Mexico (and later did). However, I had little interpersonal contact with the pastor after I left for college.

Karl Franklin