Missions and Myth Busting

This article was submitted to the Monthly News letter at Calvary Community Church in Schaumburg, IL.



I took our entire Humphrey family of 6 to Florida for Spring Break 2008. We relaxed by the Atlantic, found interesting shells in the Gulf of Mexico and lounged at my parents’ rental home. We had no logistical flaws in our trip to Florida nor during the week-long vacation. The problem came on our way home. The connecting flight from Atlanta to Chicago was canceled and we found ourselves stranded. After several hours of fussing with ticket agents, a flight out of Georgia was found and I negotiated a discounted hotel room where all 6 of us could spend the night. We called our friends Mylan and Ericka Tyrell past Calvary attenders who now live in the Atlanta area. They were gracious and invited us to their home for spaghetti dinner. The next day we were up before the sun. The jets were crowded and we flew back to Chicago via New York’s LaGuardia Airport. We arrived at the end of our 36-hour ordeal exhausted and in need of another Spring Break!

The day after we arrived back from Spring Break, I met with my colleagues at Trinity International University. It was a time of connecting after not seeing many of them for an extended time period. One colleague, my friend John J., had just returned from a trip to his family home in Sierra Leone, West Africa. John relayed to me that his time away was good but with some difficulties. He explained to me that he and his family were deep in the wilderness on their way to visit acquaintances when torrential rains hit. Their Toyota Land Cruiser fell off the road as the road gave way in a flash flood. Stranded deep in the bush they could only seek God’s help in prayer. After much prayer, help came in the form of a traveler who had a satellite phone. John used the phone to call friends and family and they were picked up hours later.

Vinoth Ramachandra, a brother in Christ from Sri Lanka, recently wrote a book called Subverting Global Myths: Theology and Issues Shaping Our World in which he respectfully and reasonably challenges American Christians to consider that our beliefs about global community may be based on “myths.” He makes a strong argument that our lack of understanding about people outside our borders actually creates antagonism toward our country and toward Christ. Here is a quote from a recent interview.

“Many American Christians are not only brought up on one-sided readings of their own history but are largely ignorant of the histories of other peoples. This was reflected in the sheer incomprehension that attended the 9/11 atrocities, and it is reflected today in the sudden disillusionment with the global financial system. Anyone who has followed U.S. foreign policy over the past fifty years, or looked at the way global financial institutions operate from the perspective of the global poor, would not have been surprised by recent events. ”

Comments like this make us very uncomfortable because they confront some very basic assumptions about our lives. Said another way, they challenge our worldview, view of our country, and our view of the church.

Your Calvary Missions Team is entering into a season of reflection where we are allowing voices like Ramachandra’s to give us alternative perspectives. As a team we want to rise above cultural myths, plan, and act in ways that promote the cause of Christ and bring the story of Jesus to the lost. It will probably mean some new ideas and changes to the operation of the ministry. At the moment the changes are unknown, but we are seeking God’s direction, learning together as a Missions Team, and allowing our assumptions/myths to be challenged.

What about my friend John J.? God rescued him from the bush and returned his family safely to the United States. Decades earlier God rescued John from his former life as a revolutionary wanted by an oppressive regime - which is why he explained his Spring Break story with cool indifference. Now he spends his energy equipping the church to lead people into the love and worship of Jesus.

As for me? Well, don’t complain about getting stranded in Atlanta, Georgia; it seems to pale in comparison to John’s jungle ordeal. I am, however, seeing that through Christ I am connected to the suffering of believers and even non-believers in other parts of the world. I have responsibility to understand life from their perspective in order to know God’s mission for me in Schaumburg, Illinois.