Sunday Night Missionary Service

After God found our family, it was not long before Mom molded our family life to the rhythms of the little Assembly of God.  Several of the founders were originally from Arkansas, giving this simple Pentecostal church in a rural community the flavor of a Bible-Belt transplant.  Sunday morning services were much the same each week with the exception of the first Sunday of the month when communion was served.

Sunday nights were a different matter.  Pastors are busy fellows.  Coming up with two barn-burning sermons in one day requires a lot of preparation, so most Sunday night services were a catch-all for an assortment of special guests: evangelists, musical groups and missionaries.  Missionaries became, in my mind, the true heroes of the faith.  I learned about the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul in Sunday School and read the biography of David Livingstone and other missionaries of times gone by.  But there was nothing like hearing about missionary work first hand.

There were good missionary services and dull ones.  The best were like a trip to a museum with a knowledgeable curator.  The worst were when the missionary just preached a ‘regular’ sermon.  After all, I could get that any Sunday night.  For a elementary school age boy, little could compare to the wonder of arriving at church on a Sunday night to see the communion table swept clear of its normal accoutrements and in its place a collection of foreign artifacts spread out for our wondering eyes: animal hides, musical instruments, weapons, eating utensils (and sometimes food), clothing.  The most creative missionaries would dress in the native garb of the mission country.  Typically, their first words would be in the language of the land they were serving, followed by a translation into English.  I had no way to verify anything they said, but that didn’t matter.  Their stories included all the strangeness of a foreign people, rare diseases, grinding poverty, odd foods, occasional violence, dangerous animals, and of course, testimonies of converts.  A slide show or movie would take me places that I would never otherwise visit.  My first exposure to the Third World was through the lens of a missionary camera.

Missionaries were not just there for my entertainment, however.  They had to raise support to get back to their work.  At the end of their presentation, the pastor would come back to the podium and it was time for the missionary offering.  As a child, I rarely had money.  But I remember wanting to give.  Souls were hanging in the balance.  Still, after hearing their tales, the boy I was wondered why people would choose to go.  It all came down to ‘The Call’.  Missionaries had invariably experienced an irresistible internal beckoning to a foreign people.  They often encouraged those in the service to be open to a similar experience.  I never heard that call to head out for parts unknown.  I felt both guilty and relieved.  Guilty, because I knew I should want the lightening to strike me as it did the Apostle Paul; relieved, because I was given to car-sickness and international travel by ship, air, or rail seemed a sure path to an early grave, even before I reached the destination.