"The advance of the Kingdom of God historically has always involved some suffering and hardship. It's not something that's easy and so we know there will be sacrifice involved .... " Dr Bob Fetherlin, Vice President International Ministries, Christian and Missionary Alliance.
(This quote is from the documentary film All God's Children.
http://www.allgodschildrenthefilm.com/ )
It fascinates me that this quote has been posted here on Fanda Eagles this week. To those of us who understand the incredibly high price paid by the children of missionaries, who in some cases feel they were offered up on the altar as child sacrifices for the sake of their parents' ministry, the words of this man from the Christian and Missionary Alliance sound insensitive and even offensive.
But is this concept of sacrificing for Jesus an antiquated concept? Are there some who still believe that Christian parents need to consider sacrificing the well being of their own families, their own children, in order to reach others with the Gospel?
Read on. This very week I have seen these current sentiments expressed by a man named Brad Buser, who will be familiar to many from NTM background. Brad was a missionary with NTM in Papua New Guinea. He is no longer serving with NTM, but he runs a training school for missionaries in Tijuana, Mexico. Here are portions of what he posted just this week on the school's website. (Underlining added by me.) The entire piece can be read at:
http://us5.campaign-archive2.com/?u=11e ... 7812a7a770Is It Possible To Accomplish the Great Commission Without Costly Consecration?
Like it or not, we are all affected by our culture and peers. Even for the serious Christ follower, the values of our age have quietly dripped their way into the inner recesses of our hearts and values. Areas of safety, entertainment and ‘need’ for recreation, retirement, family expectations; all these have been affected. Having our minds and values renewed by His Word has never been more critical.
.... Was Adonirom Judson ‘over the top’? It’s a fair question. How we answer it though is revealing and CRUCIAL! ... Was Abraham REALLY ready to plunge the sword into his son Isaac on that altar on Sinai? ... Does God expect missionaries to bring their wives and children into harms way? Or have His expectations for His children changed? Is God asking, even EXPECTING, less from us today?
... In our casual age, have we missed a sense of dedication, consecration and compulsion that fences in the gospel messenger without a path of retreat? Paul speaks in Acts 20:24, “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me...” Are single missionaries alone meant to utter such things? Today there ARE missionaries who understand and live this out on every continent. Sadly, it is more common that ‘starting well’ is not followed by finishing well.
This is not an article on how to parent overseas (we DO teach on this at Radius), but we MUST instill in those who are gospel messengers a sense of consecration and dedication that enables him to see ‘harm to their nuclear family’ as one way our God has garnered credibility to His message. His own Son led the way in this and calls us to similar costliness [John 20:21]. Without this, missionary turnover due to ‘family reasons’ (rarely stated but all too common) will continue to decimate families moving towards a productive stage of ministry overseas.
Our God hasn’t changed, so the gospel worker, raised in a culture that esteems staying alive at all costs, wholeness and realization of potential (for us and our children) as birthrights, must prepare himself in ways previous generations may not have needed. ...
Paul’s ambition to NOT build on someone else’s foundation was complete, costly and not something he turned back from. From his cell, he would be able to say “I’ve finished the race.” There are still uncommon men and women who are convinced that giving their one life to see Christ named where He’s not been named is a high calling AND worthy of tradeoffs, if need be. Those are the type of folks we’re training; those are the types who are finding us. "There are still uncommon men and women who are convinced that giving their one life to see Christ named where He’s not been named is a high calling AND
worthy of tradeoffs, if need be."
Worthy of tradeoffs, if need be. That sentence is chilling to me.
What will the children of today's missionaries be thinking, saying and writing, 30 and 40 years from now? By then, the word "missionary" may not even be in use anymore. The term MK may no longer be relevant. But there are young adults being trained today, by Brad Buser and others like him, who are zealously buying into the notion that in order to convince God of their sincerity and devotion, they must prove it by laying their all on the altar of sacrifice.
Their all includes their children.
This is the PARENTS, buying into and making this irrevocable commitment. NOT the children.
I feel sick.
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