I Am Not a Missionary

Lily Fluharty ruined my makeup. 

I stood in the office bathroom washing off the smudged remnants of mascara I had carefully applied just a few hours before. Bare faced, I stared into the mirror a little less professional now, than when I showed up for work.

Lily Fluharty is a CCWM Missionary in Bolivia. The words of her August newsletter had profoundly wrecked me. 

I shouldn’t be this easily disturbed by missionary stories….after all, I once was one.

Missions ruined my own life about fifteen years ago. 

When I say that, it creates discomfort in people, but I’ve grown to allow for the discomfort. 

The ruining. 

For me, it was the ruining of a life that included my little house in a lake community. The lilac bushes I had planted right in front of each window making the house in spring smell like heaven. The privilege of dear family members within daily physical reach. He chose to end that story, when He called our family to another nation, to a place far from the midwest, to a people  we were so unlike and yet somehow accepted by. We were sent in a jolting plot-twist ordered by our loving Father God to Go. We stayed in our new country, Mongolian, living in the slum district for eight years. We were powered by the unified force of the Church, who wholeheartedly supported the sending.

In those days, we were missionaries, and it simply felt like a ruining of the old me, it was a whole and complete crushing.

The ruining comes just before the rebuilding. 

Our own sending was a rewriting of a story that included all things new.  Spoiler alert, if you don’t know our family’s Mongolia story….it was wildly confounding. In many ways it was the living out of  1 Corinthians 1:27; 

We were the called fools who saw God work despite us, in extraordinary ways.

Because of God, a former small business owner and I, his soccer-mom wife, experienced directing a community project, in a neighborhood of the suffering poor, becoming the advisor for a home that protected abused and abandoned girls.  Perhaps most surprising of all, planting a church among an otherwise unreached area. The relationships we built, the love we experienced, the miracles we saw…none of it would have been possible without first being ruined. 

There was a definitive line between who we once were, and the missionary life we experienced. 

A before and after, the kind that produces awe. 

And then, He called us to return home. 

And this leads me to the bathroom mirror. 

Wiping smeared mascara from my cheeks, a result of reading the words penned by a missionary, who was in the prime of her call. In her letter, Lily detailed the lives of four of the children she is near, and the ways God is sending her forth to touch those who suffer daily. She is sent, called, left her life in Minnesota to Go to the streets of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Lily too, was ruined by missions.

Her letter ended with, ”Will you please  remember to pray for the children?” 

The tears, why? I wondered.

What was driving my high emotional response to Lily’s letter?

I could identify a mixture of remorse and a sinking understanding. 

Remorse for the times I wished missions away, while I was in the middle of it, because I was selfish, exhausted, and tired of being on the front lines. So I wished for a normal life that felt more centered, stable and simple.

Understanding, that today, in the here and now, I am a director of a missions sending organization, a children’s church teacher, an Awana leader, a pastor’s wife, a missions podcast host, a good friend to many, a daughter, sister, mama and a grandmother…but, I am not a missionary. 

A Missionary is something unique and specific, and I am no longer counted as one.  A good rule of writing is to choose your audience before you begin. The more narrow your audience, the better your message will be received and understood. 

I recognize that I’m unable to narrow my audience today as I pour my heart onto the keyboard. I’m wishing to reach the hearts of a wider group, casting my writing net out into an ocean way too broad my writing coaches would tell me. Even so, I’m going to try to communicate effectively to two groups, uniquely called to two specific tasks.

I’m writing to the missionary, to acknowledge your ruining. To tell you, it is good, and beautiful, and right for you to be so ruined. The ruining of the old life will effectively launch you to accomplish the new thing God is doing with your life today. It is beautiful to come alongside the suffering. Beautiful and horrifying, and only God can walk with you through the dark places He calls you to go. 

But I am also writing, to the sender, the rest of us in the kingdom of God. I want to draw you in and tell you how important you are in the mission story. Without our senders there is no sustainable goal. Without us, the missionary goes home. We are of equal value and desperately needed, but despite the message many well-meaning teachers may tell us…all Christians are not missionaries. 

A missionary is one who is sent, who is called. The word, which we won’t find in the Bible, is derived from the latin, Missio. Missio is equivalent to the Greek apostolikos which we do find in the scripture, it means Apostle—sent one—sent out— We can trace the etymology of apostolikos it is a biblical word meaning someone sent by a local church to bring the Gospel forward. In it’s definition we find terms such as, "send away, send forth," from apo "off, away from". It is important, we hold onto words and keep their meanings. If we don’t , we risk blurring it all together and missing the value of each specific gifting listed in Ephesians 4. 

I wipe my face clean and walk back to my office. 

I am not a missionary, but I have good work to do.  And so, my dear, Christian brothers and sisters, do you.