Are Missionaries
„ i x O
by T. Norton Sterrett
to his clothes and to what is. going on around the country. He could have more time for recreation and social life. Of course he could. But he can’t forget—at least most of the time— that the price of a new suit would buy 3,200 Gospels; that while an American spends one day in business, 5,000 Indians, Chinese or Africans go into eternity without Christ, So when a missionary comes to your church . . . remember that he is likely to be different. If he stumbles for a word now and thefi, he may have been speaking a foreign tongue almost exclusively for seven years, and is possibly very fluent in it. If he isn’t the orator you want, he may not have had a chance to speak Eng lish from a pulpit for a while. He may be eloquent on the street of an Indian bazaar or an African market. If he doesn’t seem to warm up as quickly as you want, or if he seems less approachable than the youth evangelist or the college professor you heard last week, remember he’s been under a radically different social system since before you started high school, college, or business. Maybe he just forgot to brush up on Emily Post. Yes, the missionary is un balanced. But by whose scales? Yours, or God’s?
you talk about jive, he looks puzzled. When you mention Elvis Presley, he asks who he is. You wonder how long he’s been away. A ll right, how long has he been away? Long enough for thirty million people to go into eter nity without Christ, with no chance to hear the Gospel. Some of them went right before his eyes, — when that flimsy riverboat turned over — when that epidemic of cholera struck — when that Hindu-Moslem riot broke out. How long has he been gone? Long enough to have two sieges of amoebic dysentery; to nurse his wife through repeated attacks of malaria; to get the news of his moth er’s death before he knew that she was sick. How long? Long enough to see a few outcast men and women turn to Christ. To see them’ drink in the Bible teaching he gave them. Long enough to struggle and suffer with them through the persecution that devel oped from non-Christian relatives. To see them grow into a stable band of believers, conducting their own wor ship, and develop into an indigenous church that is telling on the commu nity, Yes, he’s been away a long time. So, he’s different; but unnecessarily so, it seems. At least he’s in this coun try now; he could pay more attention
A re m issionaries unbalanced? Of course they are! I’m one of them. I ought to know. A missionary probably begins as an ordinary per son. He dressed like other people, and liked to play tennis and listen to good music. But even before leaving for the field,.he became “ different.” Admired by some and pitied by others, he was known as one who was leaving par ents, prospects, and home for—a vi sion. Well, at least, he sounded vi sionary. Now that he’s come home again, he’s more different. To him some things — seemingly big things — just don’t seem important. Even the World Series or the Davis Cup Matches don’t stir him much. Apparently he doesn’t see things as do other people. The chance of a lifetime—to meet Tosca nini personally— seems to leave him cold. It makes you want to ask where he has been. Well, where has he been? Where the conflict with evil is open and in tense. Where there is a fight, not a fashion. Where clothes don’t matter, for there’s little time to see them. Where people are dying for the help he might give, most of them not even knowing that he has the help. Where the sun means 120 degrees in the shade! Not only space blit time, too, seems to have passed him by. When
THE KING 'S BUSINESS
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