I have been partially involved with Christian missions for over 40 years since my Inter Varsity days in 1979 to 1980 at Georgia Tech. One of my roommates joined Wycliffe. My college friends went to Saudi Arabia with Aramco and other oil companies to learn Arabic and be missionaries to Muslims. They took risks for the Gospel and many dreamed of living in China or Yemen. They took summer trips to China and talked about missions often. Most failed to see their dreams come true. Most of them took engineering jobs with big companies and got rich and we stopped communicating. Some got divorced from spouses that got scared of foreign countries.
I attended Brother Andrew fund raisers after college when China was closed and the noble exciting christian thing to do was to smuggle bibles into China. We heard all sorts of mysterious stories of people inprisoned for Bible smuggling and evangelizing in mainland China from our Brother Andrew friends. Who knows how many of these stories were really true or what was exaggerated to raise more money.
All right.........too cynical, maybe? But I am struggling and doubting and being challenged by the state of missions today. Especially American missionaries and their lack of stability and sustainability.
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