One of the biggest hurdles to participating in cross-cultural, often overseas, Christian ministry is the necessary step of fundraising money for this vocation. I’ve heard it before: “I never, ever want to ask people for money” and, “I would do ‘missions’ if I didn’t have to raise support.”
As Loretta and I embark on a journey that will take us out of the country with Wycliffe Bible Translators, we walk straight into the heart of this protest. Trust me, the protest is the loudest in my heart and my head. Often projected as voices of others, the demeaning voices are in fact my ego, my self and self worth turning in on itself:
What are you doing?
Why are you wasting your time?
Why don’t you get a job?
Did you just get a Master’s for nothing?
How are you going to provide for your family?
As a father-in-waiting, the last has been the most devastating. And yet through closed doors (to jobs), through Loretta and through various Spirit-promtings, I am slowly…very slowly settling in the reality before us this next year: work. Specifically, the work of fundraising for our mission with Wycliffe and ultimately for the Kingdom of God. It is work that doesn’t pay a wage, doesn’t have strict hours, and doesn’t, at all, fit the current lexical understanding of work. In the eyes of many, it is life without work.
One of our colleagues reminded us that raising support for one’s living, opposed to working for a wage or ‘making money’, is just about the most “counter cultural thing we can do.” I think this has been true throughout the ages and particular now in our postmodern, Western, go get ‘em, you work for what you’ve got mentality. We’re capable, able-bodied, well educated and well trained Canadians! Our personal middle-class, immigrant DNA wages war against the idea of relying on the hard work of others. We hate, and I mean hate, depending on, relying on, and putting trust in anyone but ourselves.
But the precedence has been set. Somewhat surprisingly, in the ‘work’ of the Levites, the Apostle Paul and Jesus himself, we see different models of modes of life without work, wage or salary according the world’s standards. Join me in the next few days, as I’ll be posting some thoughts and reflections on those specific examples. If you consider yourself a ‘missionary’ hopefully it will encourage in the current ‘work’ you do. If you financially support missions and missionaries hopefully it will give you some insight into the important work you are participating in. If you are considering, or rather hearing, the call to ‘missions’ which requires fundraising, maybe, just maybe, this will begin to get you over the hump and propel you forward to a life which is lived utterly and completely in-dependence of God for your every supply and need.
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