Aged Observations

More and more it is my experience that I’m one of the old guys at meetings I attend. Like my idea of doctors, policemen, and teachers, missionaries were supposed to be older people. I walk thorough hospitals these days to see Doogie Howser around every corner. Police patrol our streets not looking old enough to drive, much less to carry a sidearm. Teachers occupy our children’s classrooms, looking like they themselves are not quite ready to graduate. It is a shame that those who authorize such people have stooped so low as to rely on such young people.

Now I’m finding missionaries are that way. I have lived with an image of missionaries as graying and balding. I usually think of the men that way, too. However, I’m being forced to reexamine my assumptions. In Chiang Mai I am surrounded by young people. They are carrying babies around, like my sons will be doing in a few weeks. Yet, here they are, seminary graduates, experienced field missionaries in their late twenties, choosing to follow a call in their lives that has removed them from family and friends, and often, from the safety of home.

I listened over lunch today to a couple who are living in the Far East with their young child. They could be any young adult couple from UBC. They are both graduates of Texas A&M, he in agriculture and she in chemical engineering. They have learned the language and are seeking to develop a business, helping farmers export oils extracted from plants, coffee, and a few other products to the U.S. This is all that will allow them to serve as missionaries. Missionaries are not allowed in their particular area. A sign greeted them as they drove into their city for the first time: “Christian Evangelism Not Permitted.” All they can do is build relationships, help people, and wait for them to ask about their faith. But if they do not plant their lives here doing that, these Muslim people will not know of the grace of Jesus Christ. So they are planning to spend their lives in this place.

I sat with another pair from Texas. She gave birth to a tiny girl last week in Chiang Mai and his mom is here helping with the little one. He is a recent graduate of Truett Seminary in Waco, and she is trained as a social worker. They are investing their lives in a place that has similar restrictions. They are seeking to be the presence of Christ in a place where Christ is not otherwise named.

O.K., I did exaggerate some. Not all of them are so young. Each morning at worship someone has been selected to recount their Journey with Christ so far in their lives. On Friday, we heard from Macarena (like the dance), an Hispanic woman from Texas who, with her husband, Eddie, and their two teenagers, have recently gone to India to work with an unreached people group there. Tsunami relief has occupied most of their days in recent months.

On Tuesday we heard from David and his wife, Ruth. They were business people in Georgia. He had built a multi-million dollar lumber retail business and she was in international banking. Responding to something God put in their souls, they left that for two years to work in Hong Kong. He sold the business and she resigned. Their two year stint is up this month and they will be returning, reluctantly, to the States. You should have heard David describe God’s work in their lives during these two years.

And today, Erika spoke. She described in great detail her struggles with her faith following the tsunami and the ways in which the wave devastated her world. She told with tears how God has worked in her life through all that.

I am sitting each day with physicians and counselors who are not themselves missionaries. They are part of what is called the Member Care Team. These missionaries on the field have access 24 hours a day to doctors, therapists, child psychiatrists, and others in the U.S. These are professionals who volunteer their time to provide member care for these in Asia. They make an effort to come to Asia every so often to be with these servants in their homes or at meetings like this one. You have to be invited to be part of the Member Care Team. I was pleasantly surprised by this. I did not know that CBF had this dimension to their missionary efforts. I do not know of anyone else with such a system of support.

One of the Member Care Team lingered after lunch to speak with me yesterday. He is here with his college aged daughter. His wife had surgery just before he left and was discovered to have a cancer discovered too late. She insisted that dad and daughter make this trip and have some time together, while she wanted a week to sort through her own future, which appears to be greatly foreshortened. The agony of this servant of God was deep as he described what he and his wife of 34 years were now up against.

A physician and his wife, who is a therapist, responded to some of the teaching time by sharing their own story with me. They are part of the Member Care Team as well. Twenty years ago, while they themselves were missionaries in Asia, they lost a twenty-one year old college student son to depression and suicide in the U.S. The compassion the two of them have for these missionary families is palpable. They would do anything for them.

My experience tells me that what is true among these Fellowship missionaries – passion, commitment, sacrifice, struggles – is true among many who leave family and friends for the sake of the gospel.

The people I have spent much of my summer with – Rod and Connie Johnson, Larry and Sally Pepper, Gary and Cheryl Price, and these many Fellowship missionaries in Asia, are folk that deserve our support in every way possible. Lifestyles that reflect some significant sacrifice to provide financial, prayer, and personal support are called for. These are paying a price for what they do. And they are doing it with such passion.

Today I heard a presentation about the current efforts to take the Gospel to the whole world in this generation. Missionaries are going FROM Central and South America, Asia, and Africa by the hundreds to live their lives among those who do not yet have access to the truth of Christ. Google “Ethne” and see if you can find something about this movement of God.

Listening to all that raises for me questions about our role in all this – yours and mine. We have a goal in our vision statement that calls for 80% of us to have a cross-cultural mission experience by 2010. Talk that up among your friends, among the people in your WBS classes or your small groups. Find out who has already done that. Ask when others are planning to make that happen in their lives. Who owns a passport?

If you want more info about becoming involved in a mission experience that would make a difference in both your life and the world, contact Timothy Woods. Go to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship website and look for info on volunteer opportunities. Don’t worry. You are not too young. And you are not too old. Apparently God is willing to use all who are willing to go.