Playing Mission Games
Plugging the Hero Gap
Jim Reapsome
Saturday, December 21, 2002
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Playing Mission Games
Plugging the Hero Gap
Saturday, December 21
Q. What's happening to the career missionary force?
A. After World War II, a flood of new missionaries created a numbers bulge now tapering off through losses by death and retirement. Mission agencies aren't sending out enough new people to take their places.
In the last half century, our churches and schools have grown larger and richer. Our agencies' brochures, ads, and websites are slicker than ever. InterVarsity's student missions gathering at Urbana draws 20,000. Hundreds of thousands have visited and worked the field for two weeks or so. So mission agencies should be overwhelmed with applicants, right? Wrong!
Why is this happening?
Before Christians will consider serving God in a missionary vocation, they have to know their Bibles. Theologically, the compelling urgency to take the good news of Jesus anywhere has been undercut by doubts about the uniqueness of Christ and the necessity of personal repentance and faith for salvation, and by the overwhelming public pressure to treat all religious beliefs as equally valid.
Our cultural imperatives demand that we take care of ourselves first. We get the best education, jobs, and homes and build the finest churches. Meanwhile, the rest of the world can scrape along as best it can. Prosperity has subverted Christ's demand for self-denial and seeking God's kingdom first.
Those now retiring won't be replaced until we strike at the heart of what keeps us from obeying Jesus Christ and lay everything on the line for Him.
Jim Reapsome formerly directed the Evangelism & Missions Information Service.
Adapted from World Pulse (March 8/02, www.wheaton.edu) by permission.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
November/December 2002,Vol. 5,No. 6
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