Missions Textbook 42
Missionary Lifestyle - a Role Play

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

Lifestyle is the way you use the cultural elements available to you. This is all encompassing: money, food, clothes, rights, recreation, housing, cars, etc. When you move to a new culture, you will have to determine what you consider essential and what is non-essential. This will be determined by how much money you will have at your disposal, the living standard of the nationals with whom you will be working, the ministry you choose, and even the lifestyle of co-workers. For example, when I spent a summer in Iran, I learned that one of the missionary wives had contracted hepatitis. The other missionaries decided it would be better for that family to move to the northern part of Teheran, where it was cooler and the air was cleaner, even though it was more expensive. Lifestyle will also depend on the wishes and needs of your family.

There are five basic lifestyle options:

1.     Pure Hedonism. Just say “yes” to everything. Buy anything you want. This choice assumes that you have enough finances to live anyway you want. You might think about the implications that this lifestyle will have on your co-workers and the nationals. Is your target audience the wealthy? If not, your extravagant lifestyle will separate you from the common people, and you will eventually leave that field thinking that the common people are cold and closed to the Gospel. How will this approach affect the nationals who don’t understand your motivations? Does this lifestyle promote the Gospel, or does it promote the missionary?

2.     Economic Pragmatism. Buy what you want if you can afford it. This option is just one step below Pure Hedonism and comes with the same problems. Your income might be lower than a co-worker’s income who also buys all he can afford. How will that affect your attitude toward him? You might fall into the sin of jealousy. How will this approach affect the nationals who don’t understand your motivations? Does this lifestyle promote the Gospel, or does it promote the missionary?

3.     Ministry Pragmatism. Use all your tools to reach out and live in a style consistent with those to whom you are ministering. Most missionaries practice this approach because they want to identify with the nationals economically in order to avoid jealousy in either direction. It requires enough income to reach the target audience and a consistent budget to keep things under control. How will this approach affect the nationals who don’t understand your motivations? Does this lifestyle promote the Gospel, or does it promote the missionary?

4.     Purposeful Self-Denial. Choose to live on a lower standard than you can afford for the sake of those to whom you are serving. This approach is often overlooked because most people, even missionaries, want to live as comfortably as their conscience will allow. The disadvantage is knowing that you can afford more, and you want more comfort. The advantages require a deeply embedded mindset of serving others over personal comfort. How will this approach affect the nationals who don’t understand your motivations? Does this lifestyle promote the Gospel, or does it promote the missionary?

  • We can give more (2 Cor. 8:1-3).
  • We can avoid being mastered by things (1 Cor. 6:12).
  • We know heavenly riches exceed earthly ones (Matt. 6:19-21).
  • We can escape the temptations of riches (Prov. 30:7-9).
  • We can identify with the reproach of Christ (Heb. 13:12-14).
  • We can minister to worldwide poverty (Prov. 19:17; 22:9; James 2;15-16).

5.     Pure Asceticism. The “Just say no” mentality. Even if we need something, we can live without it. This viewpoint is commendable but comes with some hidden pitfalls. When Jeff, who was planning on serving in Albania, first came to Austria, he wanted to rent one room and to sleep on the floor. We told him that although people in Albania might live that way, he would not have any ministry in Austria – even to Albanians – if he lived too frugally. Self-righteousness can creep in and cause you to look down on others who choose a different approach. Self-denial can begin to equal godliness. Should you train your children in frugalness by denying them things that are necessary? How will this approach affect the nationals who don’t understand your motivations? Does this lifestyle promote the Gospel, or does it promote the missionary?

Missionaries from the West have always assumed that missions will naturally and most effectively flow from the politically, militarily, and economically powerful centers toward those dominated and impoverished areas. There are, of course advantages to the rich nations sending missionaries to poorer nations. The earliest missionaries in the book of Acts, however, were Jewish nationals from an obscure, impoverished, occupied country that was little more than a backwater of the Roman Empire. Even today, destitute refugee believers are taking their faith with them into the wealthy countries of the West.

In recent decades, there has also been a trend to convince the wealthy North American and European churches to consider sending the missions budget to missionaries going out from churches in South and Central America to countries in the Middle East. The money goes so much further, and the missionaries do not have such a struggle to live simply because that is how they live at home. Because family is so important to these people groups, they often don’t stay on the mission field as long because they miss home. However, as we have been emphasizing often, it is not necessary for missionaries to stay for decades. They need to go, learn the language, evangelize, baptize, train, plant churches and turn those churches over to the nationals.

Here’s a list of thoughts every missionary needs to consider:

  • Where do our priorities lie?
  • Are we more interested in personal comfort or ministry?
  • Do the missionaries take part in the social life of the nationals, or do the missionaries spend their free time with other missionaries?
  • Can the nationals afford to spend recreation time with the missionaries?
  • Do the needs on the field define our level of lifestyle or does our home culture decide that?
  • Should our children share the experiences of the rich or the poor?

Seven Motivators

Use the following seven motivators to help you define your missionary lifestyle.

1. Self-Comfort: Does Jesus tell you to live in opulence or in abject poverty or somewhere in between?

2. Family Protection and Security: With what level of crime on your field are you comfortable? Terrorist threats? Do the nationals lock their doors? How important to you are your property rights?

3. Children’s Education: Are you comfortable to give your children the level of education the nationals have? Do you want your children to receive your level of education?

4. Living Standards: Should you seek to have the best of things, the worst of things? What effect will your material possessions have on the nationals?

5. Health: What quality of health services do you want for your family? How much are you willing to sacrifice the health of your family for the ministry? What are the costs of health insurance, car insurance, savings for emergencies? Should you prepare for retirement? How will you prepare for retirement? Are you planning to retire? Who will have to take care of you if you don’t financially prepare for retirement?

6. Efficiency: How convenient do you want your lifestyle to be? What will provide you with the most efficiency in your ministry?

7. Resources: How big or small is your budget? How much do you need to choose each one of the five lifestyle options listed above?

A Role Play

Determine your lifestyle by carrying out the following project. If you already know where you are going, you can modify the location to fit your situation.

1.     Get together with a few like-minded friends who might like to do a role play with you about the mission field. Or perhaps you already have a team, and you should do it with them.

2.     Everyone read Eighteen Barrels and Two Big Crates.[1]

3.     Pick a city in a foreign country where you might like to work as a missionary. Either get a map of the city or look up the city on the internet and draw a map of everything in that city. Give each person one or two items to research. Study the city. Find all the following in that city:

  • Center of old town
  • Center of new town (if there is one)
  • Transportation lines into the city and within the city: airports, trains, trams, busses, boats, taxis
  • Government offices, both national and the consulate of your country
  • Waterways and lakes; bridges for different kinds of traffic; boat traffic (if any)
  • Industrial areas, factories
  • Schools: elementary, secondary, university, international
  • Medical centers from local clinics to doctor’s offices to hospitals
  • Religious centers of different faiths
  • Shopping areas: food and clothing, mega-shops and local shops
  • Parks and playgrounds
  • Wealthy residential areas
  • Poverty-stricken areas and slums
  • Homeless areas
  • Landfill and garbage dumps

4.     With your group, put together an imaginary missionary team who will work together in that city. You and your family are the only real people on this team. You can include another family with or without children, or some young or old single people. Keep the team small, no larger than a dozen people.

5.     Answer the questions under all seven motivators for yourself and your family, then attempt to answer those questions for the rest of your team (or let them answer the questions if they are not imaginary). A few other considerations: Airline flights, rent (will vary within the city), food, clothing. The list goes on.

6.     Decide where you are going to live in that city, and justify your decision based on #’s 1-4 above.

[1] http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/eighteen-barrels-and-two-big-crates.

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

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