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.

What Do I Believe?

What do I believe?  I am not ready to revisit that question just yet, since I still hold essentially to what I described at the end of this post almost two years ago.  Instead, I want to share a list of beliefs that I ran across while reading about LIFE magazine's location in the Rockefeller center after watching the movie 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'.

In 1962, the center management placed a plaque at the plaza with a list of principles in which John D. Rockefeller Jr. believed, and first expressed in 1941. It reads:

"I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.
I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.
I believe in the Dignity of labour, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
I believe that thrift is essential to well ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.
I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.
I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character not wealth or power or position – is of supreme worth.
I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.
I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individuals highest fulfilment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His Will.
I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might."

As heir to the Rockefeller fortune, John clearly thought deeply about making the most of the life and resources he had been given.  For so long, I have drifted along (like Walter Mitty, I suppose) with unspoken assumptions about what is important, but never actually making the effort to articulate the essence of what my life is about.  So, a task for 2014 -- define what I believe.