Alexis and I were talking recently about the idea of missional living - living a lifestyle of serving others for the purpose of fulfilling God’s promise of blessing in their lives. We got to thinking about this lifestyle while we were taking a missions course earlier this year, and during that time we learned some surprising things about our motives for doing so.
We had thought of missions or a service-oriented lifestyle as being primarily one where we would go to some peoples that were in need of our assistance - seeing ourselves as God’s gift to the world, so to speak.
Putting it that way, of course we see now how arrogant such a view is 
So, lately we’ve been rethinking that idea of missional living. A pivotal moment in our thinking about missions came when we talked with Glenn Schwartz, who literally turned our thinking upside down with his lifetime of insights into the problem of dependency in overseas missions.
Put simply, the problem can be stated thus: when group A goes to group B and fulfills a critical need for group B through resources or other material goods, group B becomes dependent on group A.
In the spiritual realm, the way Glenn Schwartz puts it is that group A has effectively stolen away group B’s ability to grow in faith. Group A has stripped group B of the dignity they deserve in being able to grow in their dependent faith relationship with a God who is looking to empower and dignify group B as His royal people. Glenn has personally seen this happen several times, and he has also seen some astounding miracles of faith when a particular group B has been disconnected from group A, either voluntarily (some amazing examples in West Africa) or involuntarily (the church in China).
It has gotten us thinking about being rightly motivated for a lifetime of serving - if we view the people we serve as being people who desperately need us, we are likely motivated by a need to be glorified as their saviors. However, if we view the people we serve as being people who can “do it” on their own, and we step up to serve them in whatever way we can help them, that’s probably a more God-focused view of serving.
I think the former view is a power-trip motivation, while the true recklessness in serving comes when we fall in love with those we serve, so much in love that we don’t even view it as “serving”, we see it as simply a joy being there to rejoice with them when they accomplish their dreams! When we love them so much that we don’t see our own “assistance” as being anything major in comparison to what we know they can do on their own.
I think that’s true love - and it holds true even in the context of interpersonal relationships and friendships. If you love someone, you believe in them, you believe in their dreams, you believe they can do whatever they set their hearts to, and you want to support them and help them in whatever way they ask you to.
If you instead treat them as if they needed you, and if you get mad when they show their independence from you, that’s not love - that’s abuse.
Mind, I’m talking here about empowering people to achieve the dreams God has already set in their hearts. Sometimes there is a need to exercise what is known as “tough love”, but that’s in a different context - and we should all strive to be wiser about knowing when to draw the distinction rather than jumping to conclusions
So… now Alexis and I are thinking of what it would look like to serve recklessly, looking for contexts to love others truly rather than abuse them into feeding our power-trips. It’s rough!! It’s surprising how many things we want to do for others only to feel better about ourselves rather than truly loving those we help.
And it’s surprising how little it really takes to love and serve others. Sometimes they don’t really want you to help them do something - they just want to know you think they can do it. And sometimes just because you can help someone by giving them what they need doesn’t necessarily mean you should - sometimes the best thing you can do to serve someone is simply encouraging them, listening to them, and loving them for who they are and who they want to be.
I think God takes it pretty personally when we abuse the people He places in our lives, people He wants to grow in their knowledge and dependence on HIM, not on us. I think God doesn’t find it very funny when we manipulate people by our gifts to love US instead of encouraging them to love HIM in their own journey of growing faith.
For it is such a long journey…
May 30th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
… a long journey indeed.
I kind of think the best (concise) approach to this problem is for any overseas missionary to go to a people group with the view of “working themselves out of a job.” That is, not having as the end goal a group of identical needy baby Christian converts who are overly dependent on their parents, but rather as raising up children who will become self-sustaining and mature. And in a healthy relationship, it’s not like the bond will be broken… but the child won’t need a babysitter anymore. Any parent who starts to raise a child and doesn’t consider the day when the child will be on his/her own is, frankly, not a very good parent. (That’s not to say anyone should go to a new nation with a condescending attitude, i.e. “you’re all children”, either. And there does have to be a healthy give and take to continually establish mutual respect.) I should show you the “this is where I live” video sometime… heehee… you might enjoy it, actually.
May 31st, 2006 at 5:13 am
Thanks, Claire, now I’m curious about the video but you’re gone for the summer which means Alexis and I have to wait
And you know how good we are with waiting, yeeeeeesh 
Hey, good point and parallel with parenting - I wanted to add also that I wasn’t particularly thinking of overseas missions, but serving in general, even “here”.
What if our neighbors are the people group God has called us to - would they take kindly to us seeing them as needy people in need of US as savior-neighbors. Carry the context forward - savior-friends, savior-coworkers, savior-diners, etc.
I think the child analogy is a good one, and helps get at the deeper dynamic. Let’s take it one step further - what if the peoples we serve, whether overseas or next door (or both), aren’t really children in faith but are actually on deep journeys of their own with a mysterious God who hasn’t revealed Himself to them fully in Jesus yet? What if our role isn’t to “parent” them in faith, what if that’s God’s role and what if we are only along for the ride as humble servants?
What if our calling in serving them is not so much to guide them onto the way we think their journey ought to be lived, with us as their shepherds, but to listen to their lives and seek the unique threads that God has already laid in their hearts that lead to Him? Threads that He has plans for, in His time, to come to fruition for His glory?
June 3rd, 2006 at 12:29 am
Great post, Hari. In fact, so great that I read halfway through and felt that there’s no way I can process all this meaning at once, so I’m going to give the first half time to sink in.
Issues like this always remind me of the Cheap Trick song:
June 6th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
brilliant observation! how difficult to see our own motives, but they are the thing that God looks to. even if we (I) do some amazing work (or perhaps “amazing work”?) for the Lord, it displeases him because He is not the center of glory; I am.