Mission: Uncomfortable

Tonight at church, five people with a past in mission work were invited up to the front to be publicly questioned about their mission experiences by Jacob. Four of them were very happy to help. One was not. Can you tell which one?


That’s right – the one who looks like a grand piano just landed on his escape vehicle.

I felt like such a fraud. There I was with all these heroes who’d worked with people all over the world, while my claim on the word ‘missionary’ was simply that I worked in an office. Oh I’m not belittling the value of what CBA does, just that my swivel-chair was a long way removed from slumming it in Calcutta. Mind you, I think that juxtaposition was exactly why I’d been asked onto the panel – to expand people’s awareness of where the mission field was.

I'd brought a prop with me, which was that everything I was wearing had been given to me by someone at some stage.

I also had a pat soundbite that I’d come armed with, which I never plucked up the courage to use. It was so obvious, that I thought someone else was bound to say it, so I never got around to it. I’d wanted to say that the mission field was in all walks of life, and that we (everyone in the room) were all missionaries.

It just sounded a bit too crowd-pleasing, that’s all.