For my fellow missionaries- long

Hi!

My preacher just got back from a missions trip to India. Now, all his preaching was done in conjunction with local churches. He went to several leper colonies as well, which had thriving churches. By thriving I mean they had a real heart for God. Our preacher was inspired by those dear people. He got back and said the people in the leper colonies looked happier than some of us did.....That was very sobering for us, too.

He was in a group of about 5 or 6 different men from America, and they said they saw many people saved. But I think it must have been different than those instances you cite, C4K, because all converts would have been handed over to the local church that they were working with on that day.

Does this sound different? I know my preacher, and I know he neither pushes people for insincere prayers, nor would he lead someone to the Lord and not provide contact info to the missionary he was with.

 

mima, you weren't doing badly until your last sentence, where you accuse "most of our missionaries" of being ineffective. Seeing that, I have to ask along with Paul, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand" (Rom. 14:4).

To those of us who have laid our entire lives on the altar for Jesus Christ, someone who comes out to Asia for 6 months, then runs back to America "for my safety," and makes the kind of judgement you have made is offensive. Why didn't you stay out here and go to jail for Christ?

 

Fellow missionaries, mima's last line was quite offensive to me. But I ask you to consider the missionary he says was in China for 13 years and never saw anyone saved. Assuming all the facts are correct, I have to agree that this man was an ineffective missionary. I mean, he wasn't in a Muslim country where his converts would be killed if they trusted Christ, he was in China where some wonderful things are happening.

Remember Adoniram Judson, who had to find his own language teacher, write his own grammar book and dictionary of the language, write his own tracts and translate his own Bible. And yet Judson baptized his first convert after 7 years on the field, not 13, and probably won folks to Christ before that. And Judson didn't believe in baptizing a convert until he saw due fruit in their lives! Think about it.

 

{Snipped - poster does not qualify to post in the Baptist only sections of the Baptist Board. Webmaster's rules require posters here to identify as a Baptist and attend a local Baptist church]

[ February 09, 2006, 03:53 AM: Message edited by: C4K ]

 

Knowwhatyamean, Mexdeaf.

I remember a missionary who came to my church to preach when we were in Yokohama. The church landlady lived upstairs, and I witnessed to her just about every time I paid the rent. This missionary grabbed her when she came down to say hello, said "Pray this after me," (didn't even use a witnessing plan that time) and then let her go. I'm sure he counted that as a soul saved on his next ministry report, but next time I talked to her absolutely nothing had changed.

The same man came up here to Hokkaido and went out visiting with our co-worker to the home of someone they had worked with for a long time. He did the same type of thing, so from then on the couple said, "We're going to Heaven because we prayed that prayer, so we don't need church," and they never came back.

I don't know that this is what mima is doing--I certainly hope not. I don't believe it is wrong to have a person pray a prayer--missionaries in Japan have been doing that for 100 years (which I can document). It's just the careless, "Here pray this, okay you're saved" approach that I think we all oppose. That approach, as seen in my illustrations, can actually harden hearts.

 

Hey guys, I am grateful for this forum and for you fellas. It is good to know that I am not the only one who has these feelings.

I once received an email from a Baptist Board member telling me how to use a "Free Raffle" to get people saved. This member used a car or money to get people to take a free raffle ticket and while they were there he had them pray. He said that 75% of the people who took tickets got saved.

This happens here ALL the time. Folks pray a prayer then consider themselves "safe" and their lives never change in ANY sense.

 

Okay, folks, mima gives his method of personal evangelism here:
http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/10/6067/2.html#000017

Not meaning to pick on mima, but if this is all he does, I think it is very important to say that he is not giving the Gospel. Of course the Gospel is, simply put, that Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification.

Returning to the OP, I think this is something that many pastors do not understand. It is a more difficult task to give the Gospel to a complete heathen than to the typical American WASP or even Catholic.

So many English tracts I've seen completely leave out the resurrection, as do many other presentations of the Gospel in English. I heard of a girl here in Japan who heard such a presentation and said, "Why should I believe in a dead man? We Japanese already pray to our ancestors."

 

Sounds good to me, bapmom. Sounds like your pastor is a good man who tries to understand the people where he is ministering, a vital qualification for being a missionary. Careful--he may get called!!

 

It does happen. I was deacon chairman and head of the missions committee when God called me .

 

Amen, brother. You can't steer a vehicle if it isn't already moving!

 

I left this post for sometime an returned to see that it has evolved into a discussion on easy believism. I thought the post was talking about missions and how pastors perceived us and the easy life we lead. What happened?

 

this area is so nice and relaxing on this board though, brother Mike.....I like hearing you guys chat and seeing constructive discussions.

btw, we're keeping our pastor... But he's sending out lots of missionaries too. Seriously, who knows, maybe one day he'll go to a foreign field also.

Preacher had no illusions of how easy missionaries have it, but India in particular really was a whole different world. He gave us some stories about the roads and the experiences he had just being driven around! It was incredible.

This Sunday night we are going to have an "India night" and he's going to show some of the slides he took while there. He said he's got 400 to show....he pared it down from 900! He'll be preaching while showing the pictures.....

February is our missions month, so we get to see some of our missionaries each week.

 

It is encouraging to hear of pastors who have a real interest in missions and are interested in how it really is.

 

Thanks for the prayers! We seem to have a very missions minded church, but we can always see improvement. And perhaps we will see some of the people respond to going to the field.

Sometimes, because we are a church full of poor people, we get caught up in thinking of our own worries and needs...which are real. But we need a reminder that even the poor people in America are rich in many other countries.

 

What happened was a well-meaning person named mima!