Coming ‘Home’: When Missionaries Come Off the Field

[Crabtownboy]

Interesting but sobering article.

They were so vulnerable and wounded, barely able to look me in the eye. They’d gone into missions directly after college, bright with hope and the thrill of obedience. With sincere love and determination, they’d adopted an unreached people group. Thousands of dollars had been sacrificed for their language study and living expenses. And here they were, three years later, looking so lost and alone, feeling all the weight of their supposed failure.

http://christianstandard.com/2013/11/coming-home-when-missionaries-come-off-the-field/

 

[SolaSaint]

I wonder how many missionaries are treated like the soldiers returning from war? I think we as the church should welcome them as returning hero's. They are in a more important spiritual war. Why not meet them at the airport with cheers. When we have them speak at our churches, why not encourage them instead of just having them show slides and give a pitch for more funds? We should fill their pockets with cash. IMO

 

[faithgirl46]

praying for our missionaries in Jesus Name.

 

[John of Japan]

Interesting but sobering article.

Thank you much for this link. The article was deeply moving to me. We've been in Japan since 1981, and it's scary to think of someday moving back to the homeland. (We don't know when or how that might happen.) I've known many missionaries who experienced the moves made in the article, and it can be very traumatic for them. Just recently I talked to a man who had been in Asia for 21 years, and he told me how difficult the move back and to a different ministry had been both for himself and his family.

The wife and I just finished watching Tom Hanks in "The Castaway," and oddly enough this secular movie has many of the same themes as the article for the main character after he leaves the island where he had been stranded, and is rescued (in that order). The main difference is that the missionary has seen precious souls come to Christ and influenced others, so there are beloved people the missionary leaves behind. Note the last line of Robert Frost's famous poem:

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

[John of Japan]

I wonder how many missionaries are treated like the soldiers returning from war? I think we as the church should welcome them as returning hero's. They are in a more important spiritual war. Why not meet them at the airport with cheers. When we have them speak at our churches, why not encourage them instead of just having them show slides and give a pitch for more funds? We should fill their pockets with cash. IMO

Thank you for this good word. In many churches we are second class Christians.

 

[Greektim]

I wonder how many missionaries are treated like the soldiers returning from war? I think we as the church should welcome them as returning hero's. They are in a more important spiritual war. Why not meet them at the airport with cheers. When we have them speak at our churches, why not encourage them instead of just having them show slides and give a pitch for more funds? We should fill their pockets with cash. IMO

Good words!!! Pastors, are you listening?

 

[exscentric]

When on deputation I read a poll of a fundamental university - it classed offices of the church. The missionary was below the janitor 100% of the time.

I was also the janitor at our church. I spoke one evening and quoted the poll and finished with "I guess that makes me a social climber." Yes, in jest but it sure was quiet