Missions

I recently read Revolution in World Missions by K.P. Yohannan. It’s an excellent book and I would recommend it to anyone. Not that I full agree with everything he says, but he brings up some serious issues that the western church needs to stop ignoring and face head on.

K.P. begins the forth chapter:

As I changed planes for Dallas at JFK International in New York, I was overcome at the sights and sounds around me. Those of us who grow up in Europe and and Asia hear stories about the affluence and prosperity of America, but until you see it with you own eyes, the stories seem like fairy tales.

Americans are more than just unaware of their affluence — they almost seem to despise it at times. Finding a lounge chair, I stared in amazement at how they treated their beautiful clothes and shoes. The richness of the fabrics and colors was beyond anything I had ever seen. As I would discover again and again, this nation routinely takes its astonishing wealth for granted.

As I would do many times–almost daily–in the weeks ahead, I compared their clothing to that of the native missionary evangelists whom I had left only a few weeks before. Many of them walk barefoot between villages or work in flimsy sandals. Their threadbare cotton garments would not be acceptable as cleaning rags in the United States. Then I discovered most Americans have closets full of clothing they wear only occasionally–and I remembered the years I traveled and worked with only the clothes on my back. And I had lived the normal lifestyle of most village evangelist.

He’s goes on to say more and to talk about how this affluence has effected the church as well. The basic point being this: God has blessed us with incredible wealth, but are we being wise stewards of that? We waste what God has given us on temporary luxuries, and have little thought to saving up eternal riches. Why are we living the same as the world? The point is not that we should all sell everything and live in poverty, but the more I look at it, the more I realize how wasteful we are with what we have. I think anyone familiar with environmentalism would vouch for that. What if we were to change our life style, find a way to conserve our resources, then use those resources to aid our needy brothers and sisters around the world.

I have more to say about this book, but it is on a different topic so I’ll save it for a different blog.

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