A Paltry Advertorial about a Silly Project
Response
scale to the task of missions is predicated on the strength of advocacy the
missionary project enjoys.
Regarding
the matter of the advocacy index enjoyed from today’s church, de facto response
to the plight of missions pleads for the verdict of a ‘Paltry Advertorial about
a Silly Project’. It makes no difference, whether the advocacy is published or
not; either is from the same leaning. A project earns its own value. Therefore
if the pittance we advance in after-thought is what the missionary project
earns with us, then we stamp it true that mission is silly or a nuisance in our
marriage to the world system, where in mobbish drive to lay up treasures and
monuments on earth, we mock the words of Christ.
Why a Paltry Advertorial
about a Silly Project
Once,
on invitation, I spoke at the mission week of a large church. When I thought I
had made a case in favour of the missionaries who were meant to be the centre
of discussion through the week, an influential figure stood up and said, “We
are all missionaries; missionaries in our working places and anywhere we find
ourselves as we shine the light of the gospel there.” I tell you the truth, the
whole church concurred. I discovered that the denomination holds that frame of
mind largely. The assertion is more insidious than it is innocent. Tell me; are
the missionaries serving at this body’s mission platform not a nuisance, since
there is nothing different about them? Then why all the adverts, announcement,
and mobilization about the week; was it to declare that we all are
missionaries? It doesn’t take an invited speaker for church members to tell themselves
that they are all missionaries. How would this people rise to support those we
know as missionaries, whom they see as making a peculiar claim?
In
another development, a respected elder with a burning zeal for missions
introduced me to a sister church to ours more than 200 kilometres away. As a
mission supporting church, they invited me to discuss the matter of support. On
my arrival in company of the elder from my church I was told the mission board
coordinator had travelled leaving no information behind about our appointment.
We were called to meet with the board of elders nonetheless. What would follow
was that I and my elder were given two thousand naira (N2000), equivalent of $5 each after service; an amount that covered
our transport back, with the additional promise that we would be contacted not
long thence. It is six years now, and since then it has been dead silence.
Once,
my Reverend was unable to meet up with an invitation to speak; so he considered
me to stand in for him and also got the inviting party informed. When all was
done, I was only honoured to be introduced as an Evangelist but not tried even
with ordinary water to quench thirst suffered while the talk lasted; I had to
get some for myself. It wouldn’t cross their mind anyway to not entertain my
Reverend, not to talk about dismissing him at no pain.
I
encountered two other such incidences from churches of the same lineage in all
likelihood because of the designation ‘Evangelist’.
Now,
I report here the encounter of a missionary seconded to a large church grouping
in an epic state in the north of Nigeria in 2008. A couple of years into his
service there, there was a conference of clergy and members which he attended.
There, he noted a freakish seating arrangement that set the Collared apart by
themselves, the non-collared apart by themselves but lumped together the
missionaries with church members. Now as a missionary attaché from a different
mission outfit he was given a treat to a seat among the priestly. According to
him that day he knew he had some little bile left in his chest. With
permission, he pleaded to know why at all seating the missionaries with church
members. He contended that the same missionaries went out to preach the gospel
to those who were then non-believers and won them to Christ and constituted
them into a church severally. Their members know them as their pastors and
this, true because they exercise that role among them. Now do the members go to
a conference only to be shown that their pastors are only church members as
they are? By so doing the missionaries are made out to be liars before their
members and the trust they have in them is harmed. Thanks to God, his counsel
was considered that day. But the critical line of thinking is that the
missionaries who are called by God to preach the gospel out there are
considered not ministers of the gospel by the display of the day, which could
only be true if they were ministering what is not the gospel. Also, the
segregative seating could be conceived as contrived to protect titles. The
chance for such conclusions to be sustained is strengthened by the fact that
the missionaries trained at the same institutions that trained their seniors
and more so their schoolmates who were already church pastors.
What
I consider as the most irksome of all is a case where a missionary on several
occasions in a given family of churches is nominated for election to the board
of elders. The missionary worships at one of the churches, but is directing a
non-denominational frontier mission agency. Missionaries are usually addressed
as Evangelist here. This Evangelist oversees missionaries and pastors of their
ministry in not less than fifteen local churches and mission stations in
several states in Nigeria and who perform functions as baptism, Holy Communion,
marriage, naming and burials on mission fields. Considering that even those
under his eye discharge the responsibility of ministry in such functions in
keeping with the call of God on them, and then all a local church somewhere
would see in this Evangelist is one worthy to be on their elders’ board; are
they not insinuating that they have spotted a birdie in plumes not its size,
which they must now garb to size?
There
is something mystifying in all this and so deserving of enquiry. There must be
something silly lurking in the background in the nexus of missions, the
missionary and the church.
Now,
if the place of missions is not silly here, then its operative, the missionary
must be silly, and must be so, vice-versa since the one affects the other. If
none of the two is silly, then it’s either that those calling for the
missionary/evangelist to be on the elders’ board are silly or are uninformed.
What else would make an individual call somebody else’s pastor or a Christ
called ministry to come and be his elder? The only time it can happen is if he
is ignorant, or he for private reasons trivializes the man or his ministry or
both, since either way, they are mutually affected. It’s a retort too blunt to
say he is obsessed with suave importance; isn’t it? I hope, am not coming
through the blinkers of sentiment or the stricture of parochialism. But how
else would a called ministry contemplate being voted for as an elder in a local
church? By both semantics and nomenclature they differ. While the one is cadre
status or nuclei, the other is an off-shoot. The one is by God’s placement, the
other appointive or elective by human instrument. The one is general service,
the other local. Simply put, they differ by design; the one gives parentage to
the other.
The
cadre of the gifts of men is neither elective nor appointive. Let’s take a
reading of the scripture at this point.
Ephesians
4:8-12 KJV
(8) Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on
high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men…
(11) And he gave some, apostles; and some,
prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
(12) For the perfecting of the saints, for the
work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
The
cadre of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastors and teachers (v11) is
variously called gifts of men, (Christ’s gift to the church, v8), ministry
gifts or body gifts. Their work is clearly specified in v12.
We
have yet one other window for more light.
1Corinthians
12:28 YLT
(28) And some, indeed, did God set in the
assembly, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, afterwards
powers, afterwards gifts of healings, helpings, governings, divers kinds of
tongues;
It
should be observed that the terminology used in v28 is hierarchical; 1st, 2nd,
3rd, -- afterwards, afterwards… Note that the offices of the evangelist and the
pastor are subsumed in the office of the teacher here. Remember that Paul
called himself both a preacher and a teacher of the gentiles though an apostle
(1 Timothy 2:7; 2 Timothy 1:11).
Down
the list in 1 Corinthians 12:28, you will see …helpings (helps), governings
(government/administration), it’s here you find the offices of the deacons and
elders who are usually subjected to election or appointment. Elders help in
governing or overseeing the local church, (1Timothy 3:1, 4-5).
Now
in the scheme of terminologies set in the above verses, where do you locate a
missionary? It’s easy; the term ‘Apostle’ and the term ‘Missionary’, come from
the same root meaning one sent away or forth with a mandate. Therefore a missionary
is at best an apostle, and at worst an Evangelist or preacher. Now, why can we
so say? Well, because the church adjudged early that Paul was a missionary
though an Apostle. And Paul’s own testimony concurs: (2 Timothy 1:11 Whereunto
I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles).
By
this strain the missionary or evangelist or preacher is called directly by God
and set in the church in the set of apostles, prophets and pastors and
teachers.
By
what means of reasoning, devoid of prejudicial neglect or protectionism can you
then sit over the missionary/Evangelist or preacher to elect him to local
church elders’ board? True, the Evangelist is not too big to be addressed as an
elder because the Apostle John called himself an elder, (2 John 1:1; 3 John
1:1) and the chief Apostle Peter said he was a fellow elder (1 Peter 5:1). The
issue is, how were they elders in the church of God? The answer is, the same
way your pastors are elders. Peter and John were obviously elders not by
election but virtue of their call. That is why you don’t elect the pastor to
the said board, he being a called ministry. Beloved, from the Bible there are a
number of ways somebody can be an elder; firstly, by a call among the gift of
men, secondly, by appointment or election and thirdly by age. Sorry there may
be other means I have not explored.
Alienation
is one of such humiliations that missionaries face at the hands of Christians.
At times certain individuals insist that no church member should support a
missionary directly, but through them or the church, a way most willing minds
wouldn’t go. This way, support is whittled down or in effect screened out.
Under wry faces, willing minds cave in since mission support is a matter of
pity upon a class of the pitiful when convenient after all. The motive behind
it all is not to be sought because it is hard by us.
True,
somebody may observe that churches go about the same things differently, and
that point is conceded to them. All the same, I’d like to humbly observe that
any devised administrative principle that is given precedence over biblical
principle is a reach to moderate the word of God in glamourizing our worshipful
doubts, the pride that humbles truth and love. We must remember that it was sheer
bureaucratic officialty divorced from the oil of truth and love that rattled
out the murder of the prophets of God, also of His son. Christ is thus humbled
among Christians in the missionaries they humiliate. It is no easy jibe then to
say that the advocacy index missions and its operatives enjoy from the Church
of today is a paltry advertorial about a silly project.
By
privilege from Christ,
Emmanuel
Boyi Mizzah, Missionary
Comments
Post a Comment