by Sandy » Tue Nov 27, 2018 4:04 pm
It seems dangerously subjective to claim a "calling" to take the gospel to a particular people group and to just do that without some kind of objective affirmation. Feeling that "the Lord has laid this on my heart" is sometimes just a personal mandate to do as you please and use God as an excuse. There is a branch of Christianity (and Oral Roberts University would be one of its promoters) that believes you can just go and "speak the word" and God is somehow obligated to bless it. I see that perspective in some of the comments about this incident.
There is a fine line in the whole modern missions movement in America where enthusiasm and "calling" crosses a line into arrogance, including attitudes of cultural superiority and acting like missionaries coming to your country is doing you a favor, or that you expect some kind of response from people who have heard the gospel for the first time.
During a period of time when I was the senior staff member left at a church after the pastor resigned, our youth pastor was hot to put together a mission trip to Japan to "help" one of our sister SBC congregations "evangelize." This was at a cost of somewhere around $2,000 per person. I asked the obvious question about how could a group of mostly youth who did not speak Japanese assist a church with "evangelism." From the reaction I got, you'd have thought that I didn't understand the second chapter of Acts. The justification turned out to be a lot of discussion about the experience for the youth, how few Christians there are in the country, how the presence of American Christians would be a "shot in the arm" of the church. Out of a week in the country they spent a couple of afternoons handing out copies of the "Jesus Movie" in Japanese at the subway station. Other than a short clip of two or three students walking up to people showing them the package with the movie, and a few minutes of the worship service on Sunday, the rest of their return video was of their sightseeing adventure. Testimonies on their return were about the "poor" Japanese people, masses of whom don't know Christ because there aren't very many Evangelical churches and how sad they were because there was all this prosperity but no faith. Maybe their presence was a boost to the congregation they served, a group of about 100 people total, most of whom were European and American expatriates.