The usual warning: this may be more honest than people expect.
These past few weeks I've really been struggling hard with issues of self-doubt and particularly doubt in my own ability to do this job. Basically I have been feeling like I am a bad missionary. Well, knowing that God wants this bad missionary in Japan, I set about thinking why I feel like this.
Basically my doubt has come from three ideas:
Each of these three ideas are untrue. I think we all work to a set of implicit assumptions, and until we set them out explicitly, we don't really question whether they are reasonable or not. And so I'm going to explore my assumptions now, not because I think they're right (I don't) but as a first step to exposing how wrong they are.
First, I know what a missionary ought to be like. Deep down I believe a missionary is primarily an evangelist. A good missionary walks into a coffee shop and starts sharing the Gospel in a natural way with the waiter. A good missionary barely goes a day without explaining to someone why Jesus died for them. I don't think I've ever explained to anyone why Jesus died for them in my life. Therefore I am a bad missionary.
Actually, of all the missionaries I know, maybe one or two fit that description. But I feel like they're doing it right, and I'm not, and I feel guilty that I'm not like them. Therefore I am a bad missionary.
I also believe that a good missionary is a people person. I remember part of my Bible college course doing a short-term mission in Cambridge; we'd run coffee shops, invite people in from the streets, get to know them, and tell them about Jesus. A friend from college was doing the same mission and one night after the coffee shops shut I asked her how it was going. "I hate it," she said. "It's all about people. God's called me to be a missionary and I realise I don't like people." I know where she's coming from. It's not that I don't like people. I'm just not very good at them. Therefore I am a bad missionary.
Since I have such a high regard for evangelism, I tend to regard a lot of the work that I do right now as peripheral. Working on the field website or the field newsletter is "support work", which in my own mind is of less value than evangelism. Even preaching, which is what I spend most of my time doing, or leading house groups, I see as "church work". Because it's not "pioneer evangelism", I don't actually respect a lot of what I do.
Or so the logic goes. But I don't think my initial assumptions about what makes a "good missionary" are correct. Evangelism is just one area of mission work. When I'm reading or writing about Bosch, I can argue forcefully that mission is pluriform, that pretty much anything is mission. Intellectually, I know this full well. Intellectually, I disagree that evangelism equals mission. But that's actually the deep-seated assumption that I'm working with and why I end up feeling that I'm deficient. This is a Bad Thing.
I know a guy here who is a missionary. His calling from God is to work in the office of a Christian school. Poor guy, he gets no respect at all. He's even continually having to convince his church that he's actually a missionary. But that's how he sees himself, and rightly so. If I can say that about him, why can't I say it about myself?
Second, I feel like I have to work and strive to turn myself into that image of a missionary that I hold. Part of this is my own natural drivenness and work ethic. I've written about that before. I do tend to find a lot of my self-worth in work, and I know that's not a good thing.
Not all of this is from within myself, however. Yesterday I had a Skype link-up with my church, and we left the call running after my interview ended. So I could hear the preacher say how much they were expecting great things from me, and how much they were anticipating me making a huge impact in Japan in the future. I'm glad of the vote of confidence, but it does add to the pressure I already feel.
I've been learning a lot from Ecclesiastes recently. It's a strange book, but it's ultimately about someone who realises that chasing after fame and fortune is never going to satisfy, and we should learn to be satisfied with the work that we do and the life that we lead. Intellectually I know - heck, I've just preached - that there is no need to strive, to want to satisfy oneself with ambitions rather than where you are right now. But my work ethic and my deep-seated assumptions subconsciously tell me the opposite.
I have dreams of planting many churches, of raising up leaders, of seeing Japan impacted for the Gospel. And dreaming is not wrong. But I keep feeling challenged: If God wanted me to stay in one church, preaching a sermon every week, building up the disciples, for the rest of my missionary career, would I feel satisfied? I'm still trying to answer that question.
I have been studying Vories, who had a huge impact on Japan. But at the end of his life, he saw himself as a failure. That is the problem with chasing after ambitions; you will never be satisfied. My job right now is to learn to life not to my own expectations, nor to the expectations of others, but, in the words of my old Bible college's motto, "whatever thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy might", and in that, find satisfaction. Anything else is like chasing the wind.
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