Four Reasons Why Missionaries Aren't Super Christians

When I first felt the inward push to become a missionary, I was 29 years old and had never before desired to be a missionary. In fact, if there was a job out there in the world that I definitely did not want to do, or felt was the absolute opposite of my talent, it was the job of being a missionary.

Apart from it having connotations of long, ankle-length skirts and scrubbing laundry by hand, missionaries also have a reputation for being ‘top tier Christian’. They’re the ones who have it together and have taken the Great Commission at its word and have actually left home and country for a faraway land, spreading the Good News and healing the sick as they go. And I was not that straight or that spiritually inclined.

However, as I started down this path of becoming a missionary, I began to realise that I was not the only missionary out there who didn’t fit this rather large bill. Here I’ve compiled four reasons why missionaries shouldn’t be considered Super Christians.

1. Missionaries don’t have some abnormal spiritual skill in order to be called by God.

I just want to clarify here that missionaries do need certain spiritual skills in order to survive on the field. It’s a unique calling and it requires unique skills. But to be initially called in the first place? I don’t think it takes someone special. Yes, I want to make some serious change in the world, and yes I want to better the living conditions of some disadvantaged people, but that’s no different from a lot of other people these days. Most people want to make some sort of difference in their world. Yes, I want to take my faith that’s been lying comfortably dormant under my fat western lifestyle, and actually utilise it. But when God was calling me to missionary life my prayer life sucked, my Bible was dusty, and my relationship with God was long-distance in every regard.

But He literally heaps grace on us. Grace to see the hurt. Grace to feel like we can actually make a difference in this huge mess. Grace to come into a place where we actually NEED him in order to survive. It’s all grace.

And you know what? It’s not a special type of grace that is allocated to missionaries alone. This is a grace that is gifted widely. I think we need to acknowledge that in order to start removing the “Christian tiers”.

2. Missionaries make just as many mistakes as everyone else.

Another flawed idea in our culture is that once we add ‘missionary’ to our list of job titles held, we can do no wrong. Missionaries might be at fault here for leaning into this narrative because admitting that we make mistakes might actually affect our support and financial backing. But I just want to say again for those in the back, missionaries are definitely not faultless. I’m still just as flawed as I was when we first stepped out and said yes. I’m still offending people and eating too much KFC and watching questionable Netflix series. Even typing that out I’m like, do I want people to know this? Are they still going to think I’ve got what it takes to go overseas and do the work? But the more I walk on this path, the more I’m confident of the fact that every. single. person. is fighting the same fight against their nature. Let’s be more open about it and walk it together. Let’s take these weaknesses from their dark little corner and air them out. They usually look smaller in the light anyhow.

3. Missionaries do not always have faith to move mountains.

Every day is a struggle to trust God. Maybe with more time and use, this might get a little easier. Maybe with the building up of faith success stories I’ll be able to move that mountain. But that is no different from any Christian struggling to see God act on their behalf. Sometimes the only difference is that as missionaries we’ve been forced into a position where we had to trust God otherwise hunger, otherwise failure. Again, only the grace of God puts us in these places and brings that character out. It’s no different from Christians all over the world working in their fields, doing the work they’ve been called to do, which leads me to the last point.

4. These thinking patterns undermine the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The cross-cultural work required of a missionary is no more holy than the farmer planting seeds in his field, or the lawyer suiting up for work, or the mum staying home to care for her kids. It’s all holy and it’s all worthwhile. It’s a dangerous precedent within the Christian faith to treat missionaries as ‘super’ or ‘better’ because it undermines the work that God is doing in all people and it discredits the place we give to ‘the least of these’. Jesus gave just as much honour to the people lowest in the system as he did to the people highest in the system, so why should we be any different? When we find out a missionary has sinned *audible gasp* the fall is greater than it needs to be. We’re all flawed and we all have characteristics that we’re not proud of, but that should never disqualify us from doing good. And as missionaries and other paid workers of the church, we can be guilty of letting honour and opinion become more important than the actual truth of the calling.

But let’s change that. Let’s all understand that we’re all on equal footing here and we’re all on the same narrow path.

By the grace of God.