Missions Textbook 54
Don't Send that Letter

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

Christians can be pretty nasty sometimes. Christian workers are not immune to this nastiness, and often part of the problem is territorialism. We had run into it in Graz and Styria and faced it again in Lower Austria. It is often extremely tempting to try to finally solve the conflict by writing a comprehensive answer in a letter, text, or email to express everything that cannot be said in the heat of a face-to-face confrontation.

We received several such letters, and they are not fun to receive. Floyd also wrote a few, but he rarely sent them. We learned that those letters can be quoted out of context and misquoted and then the disagreement is exacerbated rather than diffused. What Floyd would do was to write the letter, read it to me, and then burn it. Nowadays, of course, we have computers that save everything. We also have all kinds of social media, where we tend to hit the “send” key before we give our words a second thought. The best idea is to delete the file.

We also tried to follow principles in Matthew 18:15-20. Although this is about church discipline, it was also very useful in any conflict in a Christian organization.

Right before we left Graz and moved to Lower Austria, Floyd had coffee with the German missionary who had not wanted us to plant a church in “his city.” The two men had a long talk and hashed over the disagreements they had had. The missionary admitted that he was thankful we had planted another church in Graz that now had fellowship with his.

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

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