Around this time last year, we suggested 7 tips for the aspiring missionary, based on the lives of famous missionaries from history. It seemed a valid principle at the time, but on reflection, perhaps they would have given different advice had they been asked themselves.
So here I have collated some tips about how you might want to go about your missionary ventures, from the very people themselves.
- Image may be NSFW.
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Before you head off, you’ll need to build a network of supporters. Jerome (of 4th century Bible translation fame) cautions: ‘That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.’ So if you’re doing the rounds, make sure it doesn’t make you rounder. [Ed: Not my joke: direct your blame elsewhere.] - Once you are ‘on the mission field’, Adoniram Judson thought that less news was good news: ‘Permit us to labour on in obscurity, and at the end of twenty years you may hear from us again.’
- Swedish missionary Fredrik Franson had valuable advice about the various skills you will need for your work: ‘If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray; and if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray.’ It’s more economical too.
- Many a missionary has been short of funds. It can be a good thing, especially when managing a team, as Hudson Taylor explains: ‘I am in great straits for funds. I am happy about it. The Lord may take away all our troublesome people through it and give us true-hearted ones instead.’
- Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.On to the big decisions: choosing what to wear. ‘As to matters of dress, I would recommend one never to be first in the fashion nor the last out of it,’ says John Wesley. In case you need sartorial assistance, follow Wesley’s own example on the right (or pick up a second-hand copy of Vogue). - On the subject of health, we turn to C. T. Studd, much experienced both in illness and evangelism: ‘True religion is like the smallpox. If you get it, you give it to others and it spreads.’ It’s certainly one explanation for his sickness.
- These words don’t make God’s mission seem very glamorous. It could even make you feel rather unimpressed with yourself (especially with the extra pressure of dressing fashionably). Jim Elliot has words for those occasions: ‘We are a bunch of nobodies trying to exalt Somebody.’
If you would like to join a current mission worker’s support team, you can get to know some Wycliffe workers. They will almost certainly send their updates before the whole 20 years have passed!
Disclaimer: It is possible (although not likely) that some of these quotes have been taken very slightly out of context. Wycliffe takes no responsibility for misapplied advice (although Wesley’s is still a good idea).
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