by James A. Tebbe
They came out with all the excitement of a new missionary couple. They had sent out prayer letters and had spoken to churches and small groups.
They came out with all the excitement of a new missionary couple. They had sent out prayer letters and had spoken to churches and small groups.
"We’ve been working with students for the past several years and that’s what we’ll continue to do when we get to the field," they told friends. "It’s difficult to get missionary visas, so we’re going as students. They’ll be more open to us if they don’t have us pegged as missionaries."
They lived in mission housing, sat on mission chairs, and slept on mission beds. "I had that charpai (rope bed) when I first came to the field," an about-to-be-retired mission colleague told them. The mission’s initials were painted in bold letters on one of the legs.
But the husband was there on a student visa rather than a missionary visa. His papers did not have to go through the capitol for clearance and he was relatively free to come and go.
Then he went to enroll in the university. One of the first instructors he met shook his hand, looked him in the eye, and asked, "Are you a missionary?"
Caught off guard, he responded, "No."
Did he lie?
This missionary’s experience was not unique in today’s world rapidly being populated by so-called tentmaker missionaries. In another incident, a missionary panicked when she was asked by the police if she were a member of an organization and she said no.
Her conscience bothered her so much that she left the mission, although she still keeps a Christian identity and works in the same country.
Because of incidents like these, more than one traditional mission agency sponsoring tentmakers has found that people do come to the point of leaving the mission because they have problems with their personal integrity.
NEED TO CHANGE
Jesus was from Nazareth and traveled no more than 75 miles from his home during his ministry. He did not need a visa. Paul, the first missionary, was a citizen of Rome and free to travel almost anywhere without a visa. Imperial Rome gave Paul legitimate access to most of the then known world.
The colonial powers gave missions a similar open door. In most places, missionaries could get into countries simply as missionaries, thanks largely to Western colonial rule.
More recently, however, the growing ethnic and religious consciousness and the development of an educated elite, to say nothing of national pride, have made newly independent nations more reluctant to accept outside volunteers. Tighter immigration policies in the West have also contributed to more restrictions against missionary visas.
Of course, in some places missionaries can operate pretty much as they always have, but this is changing and mission societies see the need to change also, or run the risk of being completely barred in the not too distant future.
Along with changing attitudes in host countries has come the emphasis on reaching the unreached, many of them in very hard-to-reach places. Therefore, tentmaking has come to the fore as a prime strategy, not only because of increasing restrictions against traditional missionary work in some countries, but because it is seen as a ministry in its own right (cf. Acts 20:32-35). But when we move from traditional missions to tentmaking, we open the door to tough questions about our identity and integrity.
LEARNING TO ANSWER
When confronted with problems like the ones cited above, our first line of defense is a prepared response. Wise answers help us to avoid compromising our mission and to maintain our integrity.
Therefore, it’s imperative to think ahead about what you will say. For example, I asked a colleague how he would answer the question about belonging to an organization. He responded: "I would say Yes and begin to list all the organizations I belong to: Rotary Club, Lions Club, educational or medical associations, churches, and so on."
It’s possible that something like this could have made it possible for the missionary cited above to remain with her organization. In the case of the missionary student, he could have asked his instructor, "What is a missionary?" Depending on the response, he could discuss the calling of every Christian.
When the scribes and Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with tough questions, he often changed the agenda instead of answering them directly. Nor did he tell them everything (cf. John 2:23, 24). Missionaries need not tell everything about themselves, either. God does not lie, but he does keep secrets.
Missionaries are not used to living under oppression and they are not trained to live in restricted environments. We have little idea of what it means to live "like sheep among wolves." A colleague of mine has noted that when it comes to answering in difficult situations, European young people are better than British, and the British are better than Americans, but East European Christians are best of all because they have lived under oppression.
THE PROBLEM OF INTEGRITY: A CLEVER ANSWER IS NOT ENOUGH
We must not stop with learning a clever answer. At a meeting on how to deal with the missionary student’s dual identity, someone gave an insight I found especially helpful. He said:
"It sounds like you are talking about missionaries who are pretending to be students. Is that really honest? When I was doing research for my Ph.D., I had a scholarship sufficient to support both my wife and myself, so I could live and do research in Calcutta for two years. We worked with our organization on a voluntary basis. We talked with our friends about our faith and there was never any question about our integrity."
The biggest problem our student faced was not that he was sleeping on mission beds, nor that his name was on the missionary address list. The real problem was that he had been assuring supporters back home and fellow missionaries that he really was a missionary.
The Ph.D. candidate in Calcutta had no such problem. He could easily answer No to the question about his being a missionary. Why? Because he had never told anyone that was what he was.
But in terms of ministry he was doing the same thing the other student was. He kept secrets. He did not feel that it was necessary to inform officials fully about his voluntary involvements. But he was not a missionary. Thus we see that one important facet of the issue of integrity is how tentmakers present themselves in their home countries versus how they present themselves overseas.
Unless the tentmaker can come to grips with this problem, he can do little more than talk about his "cover" and try in his small way to be as good a missionary undercover agent as he knows how to be.
However, if we simply accept this discrepancy between how we portray ourselves at home and how we present ourselves overseas, then we are guilty of subterfuge and deception. I believe that it is clear that we must be who we say we are, if we wish to be people of integrity.
The question of integrity arises, as we have seen, when missionaries feel that they must misrepresent who they are and what they are really doing. There is value in learning how to respond to questions and to try to turn the tables on our questioners as Jesus did. But learning what to say, or changing the name of your mission, doesn’t solve everything. We must be who we say we are.
Did the missionary student lie when his instructor asked him if he was a missionary and he said No? I think he did, because he really was a missionary in every sense of the word but visa status.
Such mistakes do not mean the end. His organization was in the process of changing and he was caught between the old and the new.
The challenge before us is to make our lives and organizations such that when that unexpected question comes, the flash response is one of integrity that does not deny Jesus Christ. Being who we say we are is much more than knowing a clever answer.
—–
Copyright © 1989 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.
