Top 5 Reasons Not to be a Missionary
By: Sarah Granger
If you have sinned, fallen short, made mistakes, or otherwise screwed up your life in any way, God cannot possibly be calling you to serve Him! Look at Church history: St. Paul, persecutor of Christians; St. Augustine, hedonist; St. Francis of Assisi, rebellious youth – the list goes on and on. These Saints made serious mistakes, and as a result, God simply could not use them to witness the Gospel. Their lives made little or no impact on the world because they had messed up before they decided to give it all to Jesus.
I personally considered my past a possible “out” of serving as a missionary. When God called me into missions, I had gone through a divorce and felt like my past would create a stumbling block for the people I ministered to. The priest at my mission post simply said, “God called you here, Sarah, and I don’t see anyone else standing in line to serve these people. If you don’t, who will?” As I shared my brokenness with others it became evident I was not the only person with a messy past trying to serve the Lord, to follow Jesus. Witnessing to God’s faithfulness in spite of my mistakes somehow worked out, but don’t take my word for it. See if God can work with whatever you have holding you back. Who knows? You might end up like poor St. Ignatius of Loyola, who, because of his gambling and carousing as a youth, was only able to catechize and convert thousands and founded a passionate missionary order.
Being a missionary prevents you from planning for the future. You have no money. You have no retirement plan. You can’t save up for your children’s college funds. You are basically admitting that this world has nothing for you and banking it all on the World to come. This is crazy. Pretty much everyone in the world agrees it’s a bad idea.
When I was a child, I heard people telling my parents (who were missionaries) over and over again that they were shortchanging us by not planning for their children’s futures. They ignored all this well intentioned advice and continued living in poverty, serving the poor, and giving any extra money away to people who were starving or sick, instead of wisely saving for our college education. My brothers and sisters and I suffered from their lack of planning for our future. We all went to college on full scholarships (except for Simon-Peter who is mentally handicapped), and graduated with honors. My parents refused to plan for our future and just gave everything to God, who for some absurd reason decided to make sure their children’s futures were provided for.
3. Your Children:
If you have children, you can rest easy knowing that there is no way YOU are called to be a missionary. Being a missionary can be dangerous – developing nations are places of poverty and disease. Furthermore, your children probably don’t want to leave everything and be missionaries. Seriously, would God call you to subject your kids to hardship? What did He do with His only Son? And if your children aren’t sure about being missionaries, how could you in good conscience bring them into missions? What are you going to do next – force them to eat vegetables, do homework, take baths? Kids know what is best for them, and you should always listen to them! If they grow up serving the poor in mission, they will never become normal American teenagers.
Sadly, I have seen this play out in my own life. My oldest daughter, Alyse, doesn’t like to hang out at the mall like a normal teenager. Instead of shopping, she enjoys bringing her clothes on mission trips and leaving them for the poor. Instead of planning a fun spring break trip to the be
ach with her senior class, even though we are now living in the States, she is spending her time and energy fundraising to bring her class to Mexico on a mission trip. My middle daughter, instead of saving up money for the new camera she really wants, decided instead to give to the Heifer Project and buy some struggling family she doesn’t even know across the world a goat. A goat!? Because they grew up serving Jesus, surrounded by poverty and hardship, they don’t understand that they should just focus on themselves and what they want. They really are weird. This is what I get for forcing them to be missionaries.
4. Your Desire for a Spouse and Children:
Okay, so you don’t have a spouse or children – yet. A surprisingly good reason NOT to become a missionary. In case you didn’t realize this, missionaries have very limited social lives. They are so focused on preaching the Gospel and serving the poor that they don’t have time to hang out in fun social situations and look for spouses. Oftentimes, they rarely interact with eligible members of the opposite sex for months at a time. If you are single, you obviously should not throw away your young, single years serving God when you could be searching for the ONE.
A few years ago I lived in Spain with four other lovely single women. All of us hoped to be married and have children someday. Instead of doing the sensible thing and staying in the United States, where awesome Catholic single men who want to be missionaries abound, we trusted our futures to God and went to serve Him on the other side of the world. God is so sneaky, though! He sent our husbands to meet us on mission trips. Four of us are now married to amazing missionary guys, we have four beautiful babies, and one of us is still happily serving the Lord as a single girl. What if we had stayed where it made more sense to be instead of throwing our lives away serving Jesus? It’s almost like if you give your plans to God, He really cares about them and gives you the desires of your heart.
It’s pretty safe to say that being a missionary will not mix well with any plans that you already have for your life. It’s hard to get that next promotion on the mission field. You almost definitely won’t end up with the vacation house you always dreamed of. Don’t be a missionary, because God doesn’t care about your plans. He has his own plans for you, and if you surrender to Him, you will be stuck with His plan. Jeremiah 29:11 confirms this: “Behold the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for woe, plans to give you a future full of hope.”
History bears this out. Look at all the saints who went out to preach the Gospel and had their plans destroyed. St. Peter probably had plans to be a successful fisherman, instead, he ended up the first Pope. Mary probably had plans to have a quiet, happy life in Nazareth, instead, she is the Queen of Heaven and Earth. My Dad, a successful lawyer, wanted to be District Attorney, instead, hundreds of families in unheard of places like Malaybalay, Philippines, and General Cepeda, Mexico, credit his preaching with bringing them into relationship with Jesus. I planned to quietly raise my family in Abbeville after my divorce, and instead we have travelled Mexico, Belize, Spain, Portugal, and England together preaching the Gospel, serving the poor, and loving every minute of God’s crazy plan for us. I don’t even remember why I wanted my plan anymore, that’s how much God destroyed it. Don’t be a missionary, or He may do the same to you.
Read More from The Granger Family’s Blog
This still isn’t convincing for me. I’ve only been a missionary in the United States in my own state living in for 3 months. A very. challenged area. I’m sick of how rude and disrespectful people are here despite my attempts to do whatever is right. I’m sick of neighbors downstairs smoking weed and slamming doors at all hours of the the night despite being talked to over and over.I’m sick of doing Bible study for 8-16 kids per week and feeding them when I barely have money to feed my own child. I’m sick of my daughter picking up bad habits that the other kids are doing. Amd marriage? Yea, right. The only men interested in me are Muslims and non-believers or believers that are by no means attractive or take care of themselves as I do. God just wants my daughter to be forever a fatherless rape child. I’m sick of this ghetto atmosphere. I don’t care if God wants me here or not the truth is I don’t want to be here. Thinking about reverting back to Islam since Islam is what keeps showing up in my life. Then I’ll be an Islamic missionary thank you very much. Amen.
Hi, and thank you for posting to our mission website! I can hear your pain and struggle in your email, and I hope the you will let me extend a loving hand across the miles – one missionary mother to another.
My first thoughts after reading you heartfelt message is that the Church loves you and cherishes you – you should not feel so forsaken in your ministry! Especially considering your beautiful child that is involved in mission with you – your family is, of course, your primary mission field!
I don’t claim to know anything about your situation, but does your missionary organization know of your trials and concerns? What support have you got in your ministry? Do you have a mission partner, regular community prayer, a priest/religious under whose direction you work? All of these things are so crucial to lay missionary activity (especially for a single mom). You need to be filled so that you can, in turn, pour out God’s love to your mission post.
We all have to embrace the cross, but at the same you should not feel so alone and overwhelmed. Although there will be suffering and trials, you should also feel peace and joy in fulfilling the great commission to “Go out to all the world and proclaim the Good News!” The Church stands behind her missionaries so that you can BE the Church to your post. You should not feel so cut off from the Body of Christ.
I am praying for you, and I hope that you feel comfortable writing back. Until then, may God bless you and bear you up!!
This post is repugnant at best.
God calls us. Jesus didn’t say to his disciples,
“Hey guys. So listen, I don’t want you to leave everything because that would be dumb. You do your thing and I’ll do mine.”
So daughters being charitable is taboo? I mean, come on. When one sees the world as a conformist civilization, said person will realize that Gods calling defeats all others. If on has never sinned, they can’t e a missionary? Everyone sins. News flash.
It’s almost sacrilegious to say if you have sinned you can’t do Gods work. Only Jesus was without sin.
It’s not Gods plan for every man and woman to be a missionary, but it’s repulsive tide own upon the idea of leaving everything and focusing on doing His works rather than doing societies works.
God provides. He has a plan. And this post basically discredits all of this because it is practically saying that His plan isn’t good enough.
My plans to join the military didn’t work out so now I can’t find anything worth doing with my life besides His work. I see more fulfillment out of doing good works, not getting a the new pair of Ugg Boots at the Mountain High Outfitters down the road.
However, if this was a satire, it was a very good one and I applaud your genius mind. Haha.
Sincerely, maybe disgusted and maybe amazed Christian-Ryan, 19
It most certainly is Satire! Thanks for the compliment! We had many people confused over its purpose when it was originally printed in our SERVE newsletter as well.
I realized immediately that it was satire and thought this was a very clever way to get your point across.. thanks!
Well that was 100% inaccuracte. God is nothing if not forgiving; and loving especially. Whoever wrote this either ignorantly wrote without reading the Bible, or has an agenda against helping humanity.
Hello there! Thanks for reading our blog. This is a satirical, sarcastic blog post. We are sorry that it caused confusion. Please read the other content on our site to give this post its proper context. We believe in the mercy and love of God: we have dedicated our lives to spreading it! God bless you 🙂
This is complete heresy . Look at Paul didnt he screw up way before he went into mission.
Hello there! Thanks for reading our blog. This is a satirical, sarcastic blog post. We are sorry that it caused confusion. Please read the other content on our site to give this post its proper context. We believe in the mercy and love of God: we have dedicated our lives to spreading it! God bless you 🙂