Short-Term Missions - Glenn Conjurske
Short-Term Missions
by GlennConjurske
One of the ways in which the modern means of rapid travel have proved a curse to the church has been in the introduction of “short-term missions.” The advent of the modern means of travel has made it easy to travel to and from all parts of the globe. Modern inventions in general have made everything easy which was formerly difficult, but ease is a very uncertain blessing. It was God who made things difficult for man, as soon as man became a sinner, and was there no wisdom in this? Does the world know better than God? It is a plain command of God that the servant of Christ should “endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (II Tim. 2:3), but since the advent of a thousand modern inventions, there is scarcely any hardship left to endure. The effect of this has not been good. Hardship makes character, and tries character too. Modern times offer but little which will build solid character, and little to test it either. It is now easy to produce books, and easy to multiply copies of them, and the result is that the church is flooded with them, and most of them of little or no worth. It is easy to be a missionary in modern times, and this fact has of course lowered the character of the missionary in general. The time was when to be a missionary meant to devote one’s life to it. At the present day it may mean no more than a slight interruption to our normal affairs.
Very little is required of most missionaries today—-even of “regular” missionaries—-to say nothing of the “short-term” variety. In the days when missions were difficult, they were not attempted at all, except by those who possessed a high degree of devotedness, purpose, and commitment. Thus, though missionaries may not have been plentiful in those days, they were of the right sort. To be a missionary then meant sacrifice. It required a high degree of commitment.
It was nearly two centuries ago that the first missionaries departed from America for heathen shores. Among them was Adoniram Judson. In those days the trip to the field often occupied as much time as the term of service does today. Missionaries did not embark on that trip expecting soon to return. They did not expect to return at all, but to give their lives to the work. In 1811 Adoniram Judson, who was about to depart for the mission field, and who had proposed marriage to Ann Hasseltine, wrote to Ann’s father,
“I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure for a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of Him who left his heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness, brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?”
Ann Hasseltine had written herself in 1810, at the age of twenty, “I feel willing, and expect, if nothing in providence prevents, to spend my days in this world in heathen lands. Yes, Lydia, I have about come to the determination to give up all my comforts and enjoyments here, sacrifice my affection to relatives and friends, and go where God, in his providence, shall see fit to place me. My determinations are not hasty, or formed without viewing the dangers, trials and hardships attendant on a missionary life.”
How many missionaries would go forth on such terms today? Most of the hardships which she faced no longer exist for missionaries in the present generation. No moral heroism is required, and very little of commitment. Especially is this true of “short-term” missionaries. John Mark, who “went not with them to the work,” might have served very well in such a capacity, and would have been smothered with honors for his service, instead of the apostolic censure which his conduct merited. Many of the “short-term” missionaries today are young people—-high school and college students—-and their mission work is little more than a pleasure trip. That some of them are holy and devoted is no doubt true. We do not speak to reproach them in any way. We speak to censure the system which makes mission work as attractive to the carnal and the lazy as it is to the spiritual and devoted. But the carnal and lazy aside, how many of the very best of short-term missionaries are actually called of God and burdened for the work? If they are, why do they not devote their lives to it? If they are not, what sort of missionaries can they be?
When William Carey went to India, it was to stay there for forty years, and to die there.
In the same spirit Judson left his American homeland in 1812, not to see it again for more than thirty-two years, when the illness of his wife was thought to make the journey necessary. She died enroute. Those thirty-two years in Burmah were not years of pleasure, but of suffering and bereavement, of hardship and disappointment, and of loneliness and oppression of spirit, surrounded by the gloom of heathenism. When he had been in Burmah about twenty years, “He said…that he had never seen a ship sail out of the port of Maulmain bound for England or America without an almost irrepressible inclination to get on board and visit again the home of his boyhood.” It was self-denial to stay in Burmah, even over the urgent invitations of the mission board to visit America, but commitment to the work determined his course.
Robert Moffat sailed for Africa in 1816, and did not see Britain again until 1839. He then returned because of ill health, and to carry through the press the completed New Testament. His work in Britain completed, he returned to Africa in 1842, where he remained until 1870, when poor health and advancing age compelled him to return home—-a step to which the mission Directors had been urging him for years.
John Williams left his British home for the South Sea Islands in 1817, and remained there until he was eaten by the cannibals, in 1839. He once visited Australia, for health’s sake.
The title of George Turner’s Nineteen Years in Polynesia tells its own tale. When he returned home after nineteen years, it was for a purpose—-mainly to see the revision of the Bible through the press.
Griffith John visited his British homeland twice, during a stay of fifty years in China.
Dan Crawford published his Thinking Black in 1912. The subtitle is “22 Years without a Break in the Long Grass of Central Africa.” It was not necessity which kept him in Africa, but commitment, for this was in the days of steamships and railroads—-yes, and in the days of missionary furloughs also.
A few years prior to this Mary Slessor had written from the bush of Central Africa, to her Mission Council, “By the 2nd of January 1904 I shall have been out five years, and so my furlough would then be due, but as I have not the slightest intention of going to Britain—-I am thankful to say I do not feel any necessity for so doing—-I propose to ask leave from the station for six months, during which time I should, in a very easy way, try to keep up an informal system of itinerating between Okoyong and Amasu. … I shall find my own canoe and crew, and shall stay at any given place any length of time which the circumstances suggest, so as not to tax my own strength, and members of my own family shall help in the elementary teaching in the schools.”
What she proposed, in plain English, is that she should spend her furlough doing pioneer work in the African bush, at her own expense, providing her own outfit and crew. She was 53 years old at the time, and worn down by constant toils and frequent sickness. Yet she felt no need for any furlough in Britain. The “family” to which she referred consisted of a small troop of Africans, which she had rescued from one death or another, raising many of them from their infancy. Her request was granted, and she set off, writing, “It seems strange to be starting with a family on a gipsy life in a canoe, but God will take care of us. Whether I shall find His place for me up-river or whether I shall come back to my own people again, I do not know.” “My own people” refers, of course, not to the people of her homeland in Scotland, but to the Africans at her mission station.
Not only did she refuse the pleasure and comforts of a visit to her homeland, but refused even to return to the comparative ease of “her own people” at the established station. Her six months of itinerating were extended to a year, and when that was expired, and the mission board asked her to return to her station, she wrote, “Okoyong and its people are very dear to me. No place on earth now is quite as dear, but to leave these hordes of untamed, unwashed, unlovely savages and withdraw the little sunlight that has begun to flicker out over its darkness! I dare not think of it. Whether the Church permits it or not, I feel I must stay here and even go farther as the roads are made. I cannot walk now, nor dare I do anything to trifle with my health, which is very queer now and then, but if the roads are all the easy gradient of those already made I can get four wheels made and set a box on them, and the children can draw me about. … With such facts pressing on me at every point you will understand my saying I dare not go back. I shall rather take the risk of finding my own chop if the Mission do not see their way to go on.” She never returned to her homeland again, but labored on, living in what her biographer calls “her forlorn little shanties” in the African bush, often in sickness and extreme weakness, continuing her pioneer work for another dozen years, till she died at her post. In the heat of Africa and the gloom of heathenism she longed indeed for Scotland—-even to see a little frost in the cart ruts—-but commitment to the work kept her in Africa.
Christina Forsyth went to South Africa in 1886, at the age of 41, and remained there at her own expense in a lonely outpost for thirty years. When crippled by rheumatism and debilitated by age she was pressed to return to Scotland, “`I am just like Miss Slessor,’ she wrote to Miss Macfarlane: `I cannot tear myself away. Often in my dreams I am at home, and I invariably say, `Why did I leave Africa—-how can I get back?”’ At length at the age of seventy-two she retired to Scotland, for she had said, “I do not think it fair to occupy a place without being able for the duties.”
Written about the same time as Mary Slessor’s letter, Richard Lovett’s James Chalmers tells us, “The conditions of travelling and of life generally now are widely different from those which obtained in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. IN THOSE DAYS THE BULK OF MISSIONARIES IDENTIFIED THEMSELVES MUCH MORE CLOSELY WITH THE PLACE AND PEOPLE OF THEIR WORK THAN MANY OF THEM DO TO-DAY. A man like Benjamin Rice could spend over fifty years of service in India, and yet revisit England only once. And while there are splendid exceptions, like Dr. Griffith John, of Hankow, whose last visit home was in 1881, the custom now is shorter spells of service, and much more frequent visits home. This is recognized and allowed for in the regulations of the different societies. It is, perhaps, inevitable; but there is room for grave doubt whether it does not too often affect the work adversely. No one can have much experience of committee work in connexion with our great societies without feeling that the furlough system tends at times to develop human weaknesses. The facilities for return home are so great that the temptations to leave work on account of ill-health and other causes are greatly increased; and there is far more ground in some quarters than is desirable for the fear which Chalmers expresses—-that the missionaries of the past gave themselves more wholly to their work than some missionaries of to-day.” Yes, precisely. “Inevitable” or not, there can be little question that modern inventions, conveniences, affluence, and ease “develop human weaknesses,” and stand in the way of the development of character and depth and spirituality.
Chalmers himself wrote, “When we left home in 1866, I fully intended never to return. … I fancy the missionaries of the past thought more of their work than the missionaries of the present day. The latter seem to come out for ten years, even if they can stand the work so long, and the years and the months are counted, and often the furlough time is longed for.” And what would Chalmers say today, when the “regular” term of service is four or five years, when all the conveniences of civilization are found on the mission field, or carried there, and the work itself is the personification of ease in comparison with mission work in Chalmers’ day?
When compared with the missionary operations of the nineteenth century, it appears that all mission work at the present time is “short-term.” But it is not for me to condemn “short-term missions” in the lump. Were any man to contend that there is no good in them, I would oppose him. Yet as the old proverb says, “The good is the enemy of the best.” I speak only in general terms, comparing the mission work of today with what it once was, and I have not the slightest doubt that anyone familiar with the old missionary operations, who compares them with those of the present day, will be forced to say, “How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed!” The very things which the church most glories in today would have been cause for shame a century and a half ago. The spiritual ability, the moral heroism, the unwavering commitment which characterized the missionary operations of the nineteenth century are no longer required today, and in general are no longer found. It may be that if there were any call for the old-time commitment today, some few would rise to the occasion. We hope so. Meanwhile, modern ease and affluence have rendered the modern church soft and shallow, and those conditions prevail in its missionary operations as well as in everything else.
Not that there are no remedies for such a state of things. There is a remedy for every spiritual ill, but the remedies may be such that the present generation is little likely to use them. The first step towards a cure is to recognize the disease, and to that end I write.
Glenn Conjurske