Missions conferences – a waste of time? (2)

As I entered the Filipino church for the missions’ conference, I saw booths on both sides of the church hall representing different countries. These booths are well constructed replicas of buildings from different countries, which contained artefacts from that country and information about that country. Obviously much time and cost had gone into those booths.

That night before I preached there was a 45 minute long presentation of peoples from different nations in their national costumes. Altogether, about 20 nations were represented that night. As each couple representing a nation walked on stage, they greeted the audience in the language of that nation, and then gave some demographic facts and missions’ facts about that country (eg. how many missionaries are present in that country).

Again, obviously much effort, time and expense had gone into each presentation. While it was no doubt that the participants did a great job and were entertaining, and somewhat informative, I believe that it was a waste of time – and even somewhat counter-productive to missions.

Firstly, though I had been to many of those countries represented that night, I must confess that I’d hardly seen any of those “national” costumes before. In this generation, even our most traditional grandmothers don’t wear their national costumes anymore – except if they work in the tourist industry, or are attending a very special occasion.

Though the idea of wearing national costumes is entertaining, it is more suitable for the tourism industry that wants to emphasize national differences to attract tourists (after all who wants to pay money to go to another country, unless there is something different to see there!)

On the other hand, as promoters of missions, we should do our part to inform our people that in our generation, other countries are not that different from ours. In other words, we should not add to the “Fear Factor” that frightens many Christians from leaving their home for missions, but we should inform them that God, in these Last Days, has created a more and more borderless world for His Good News to reach the uttermost parts of the world.

Honestly, I cannot imagine a job-agency in Manila organizing a similar parade of national costumes of the different countries they hope to send workers to. I am pretty sure they try to inform their applicants of the current situation of those countries, rather than a historic romanticized version of it.

I am thankful that there were no added special “fear factors” at this missions’ conference. I’ve attended missions’ conferences where the missionaries brought fat juicy worms in bottles that were native delicacies (that were so exotic and expensive that hardly any one could afford to eat them except on special occasions) and displayed them as “food from Thailand.” Which young girl would pray to be sent forth as a missionary to that land? The truth is that the natives of that land eat rice, vegetables and pork like most other Asians!