As pastor of Sardinia Baptist Church, I got a cold call today from a town two hours away - a missionary-to-be looking for financial support to get him and his family to the mission field.
I admired his gumption, but as we talked, I had more and more questions.
Let's call him Joe.
Joe needs to raise roughly $11,000 per month to put his family on the field. That's pretty steep!
And the mission field?
Hawaii!
Joe might have an easier time if God was calling him to the French Riviera! At least that would be overseas.
Joe wants to plant churches there among the local Japanese community.
I asked, "Have you ever planted a church?"
No.
Are you working to plant a church among the immigrant community where you live right now?
No, but I am very active in my home church.
Are there already churches among the Japanese living on Oahu?
Yes.
Shouldn't they be the ones planting new churches? Why is an outsider better suited than a local Christian? Could the local believers be trained in church planting by you going on a short-term trip?
There were no good answers for these questions.
I was talking to Melissa over coffee after she got home from school. She had another question I hadn't even thought of:
Why doesn't Joe just take a job in Hawaii and plant a church on the side?
I am all for missions, of course, but my time in Haiti gave me a healthy skepticism when it comes to missionaries and their sending organizations - their competency, motivations, and methods.
Sometimes missionaries end up on fields where they have no business. And lots of money is flushed down the drain. And damage done to God's Kingdom.
All because nobody asked the hard questions.
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