#missions

The Worst Baptist: Apollos and the Nature of Missionaries

“It is helpful to consider this story, as it is the main example we have in Acts of what missionary preparation and sending looked like when it did not directly include Paul. It is easy enough, if all we talk about is Paul’s work, to put his work in one category and our own in another; the case of Apollos contradicts this tendency.”

“We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also ourselves.” -1 Thessalonians 2:8

Once upon a time, I was sitting on the steps of a soccer field, trying unsuccessfully to get two young women to open up to me about their lives, the absolute mess that our bible study was in, and the reasons behind their jealousy of a couple other girls in the community. They suspiciously gave me meaningless answers and turned up the music so I couldn’t ask anymore questions. 

But I was a woman on a mission  

….or rather three separate staff members told me in no uncertain terms that someone needed to talk to those girls and it had to be a girl who spoke Spanish (literally only me). Also I was pretty sure God was calling me to do so as well.  

So it was a bit of a forced mission but I was no less determined for it. 

As the beginning of the conversation wasn’t going well, I decided to start praying that God would soften their hearts towards me. And then he spoke to me: “How are they supposed to be open to you when you haven’t been vulnerable with them?” 

That’s the mentality we often have when we try to love and minister to others. We expect people to trust us without giving up any part of ourselves to them. Yes, we can tell them that we’re trustworthy and that we believe in God, but if we don’t sacrifice our own comfort zones, can we truly become frustrated when the other person seems unwilling to open up and discuss life with us? 

In 2 Thessalonians, Paul tells the church of the Thessalonians that he, Silvanus, and Timothy loved them enough to share the gospel, but also to share their own lives. This is true community- sharing God and sharing ourselves, and that has a price. Sharing ourselves is scary; it means being weak, and being honest, and trusting others. Not too comfortable an idea. 

So here’s the end of that story on the steps of a make-shift soccer field: 

God asked me what I was willing to give up to follow him, and I said everything. 

“Let’s make a deal,” I told the girls. “You can ask me anything you want and if I answer honestly, then I get to ask you a question in return.” 

You can assume that they started with the most personal question that could. When I answered honestly, they were so shocked they forgot that only 30 seconds ago they hadn’t trusted me. It was a dangerous game, but I was prepared to pay the price to build community. That game was the start of a 3-4 hour conversation that was centered on real struggle and real questions about God. It was worth every secret I had to give away. It was not only the first time those girls were honest with me, but it was also the first time that they had ever wanted to be. It was a 180 degree change in those relationships, and as a result, my ministry. They changed my heart and I hope I showed them real love in return.  

So you want to do discipleship, ministry, mission work, community building, activism, etc. Be genuine. Be authentic. Be honest. Be vulnerable. Be trustworthy. Be smart. Be faithful. Be ready to give it all. 

-31Women (Beth) 

This post is 2/2, you can find the first “The Price of Unity” here

Clickhere for a story about my summer serving as an intern in El Salvador. Bad news: It’s not a super happy story and I pretty much failed. Good news: It’s a beautiful story about God and his faithfulness anyway. 

-31Women (Beth) 

The Space Shuttle Discovery, the shuttle that launched the Famed Hubble Telescope into space, and flew 39 missions to space. The shuttle is so much larger than I thought it was. What an incredible piece of engineering and technology.

the-library-alcove:

the-library-alcove:

How many mass graves and extinct cultures are needed to convince Christian apologists that missionaries and missionizing are inherently xenophobic?

The answer is apparently always, “At least one more.”

It just like… look. If your religion has an explicit instruction of belief that it needs to take every other religion out there in the world, wipe them out, and replace them with itself, that religion is xenophobic. And the people who engage in the fulfillment of that process are xenophobic.

It might not be as explicitly nasty a xenophobia as ethnic genocide, but it’s still an instruction to commit cultural genocide.