A few days ago the guys in the missions track were told that none of them should be foreign missionaries on account of being too young. He said that a person should stay in America with a congregation and gain maturity then proceed into the mission field. He said you should have gray hair before going into the field.
Needless to say, the men took offense to these comments. Immediately they went into defense mode and some became belligerent in their responses (at least in my perspective). But what if this man is right; what if these guys are not ready? I believe most of them are. But at the same time, some of them simply are not. They are spiritually immature and thus I can see where this man was coming from.
However, in defense of these gentlemen, that man (in my opinion) had no business saying what he said to them. To me it seemed like he made a statement he himself did not believe in. Think about it: he was taking to a bunch of guys, anxious to go into the foreign mission field, in a school whose main focus is to prepare men and women to go out into all the world to proclaim the gospel. Not to prepare them to wait ten, to get experience in the States, only to lose zeal for foreign mission work. Further, this is a school with the Adventures in Missions program for teens and kids in their early twenties. And while I have my critiques of this program, this is still a program of the school, and here is this man saying he does not think people of this age should go into the foreign mission field. His statement is that only gray heads belong on the mission field. Well guess what, there aren’t too many gray heads stepping up to the plate so how about the young, whose zeal for the Lord needs direction, and whose passion for the lost in so high. What about the ones screaming, “Here am I, Lord, send me?”
While in some of sense I agree with him, there is a point at which sometimes your opinions are better kept to yourself, especially in a missions class full of preaching itching to be let loose into the world. Some missionaries need maturing, others just need to be sent. You cannot make a blanket statement about all young missionaries.
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2 comments:
Do you think that maybe this guy was emphasizing that missionaries need to be marutre rather then gray haired. I think that you might be taking what he said way to literal, but I was not in the class. I absolutely agree with this guy that those who choose missions need to be mature in their walk. I also think a huge sign of maturity is the way one handles opinions that they don't agree with. Think about it.
Sorry if I offended anyone. I just think and know personally that you are going to get a lot of opinions in ministry that offend you, challenge you or you don't agree with. It is important to trian yourself from the very beginning to handle those comments with wisdom and maturiy. Being able to take them as good reflection tools and realize that maybe sometimes we do need some work in areas that we didn't realize. I appreciate all of your guys' passion for missions. We do missions on the domestic level (aka youth ministry) and understand that opinions wether solicited or not are a part of the job and the way we handle them are as much as a part of our ministry as anything else.
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