“Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” 1 Kings 17 v.10
Elijah’s miraculous provision from the beaks of the ravens is not enough to cushion him from the effects of the drought he has foreseen, just as missionaries’ incomes can be at the mercy of the vagaries of currency markets, inflation, financial crashes and political turmoil. Elijah is now sent to seek sustenance beyond the borders of Israel. In Queen Jezebel’s heartland, in fact, where a widow has been prepared, seemingly without her knowledge, to provide for God’s messenger while the drought drags on.
Now Elijah crosses a cultural boundary and so could be defined as a missionary.
What are his first words? A request, an admission of vulnerability. Compare this to the arrival of Christendom in Latin America. The local people were gathered, invited to bow the knee to Jesus in Latin, and murdered when they didn’t.
Maybe Elijah is not establishing a paradigm for mission with this request; he is just thirsty. But don’t you hear an echo of this petition in a later question, Jesus’ words to a Samaritan woman, ‘Will you
give me a drink?’ What about Luke 10? When Jesus sends out the 72 he specifically limits their capacity to carry provisions and their means of provision is to be what their hosts provide because “the worker
deserves his wages.” In this paradigm, the missionary worker is to receive their wage from the people to whom they are sent and they are not allowed to take a back up wage with them.
The outcome of Elijah’s stay with the widow at Zarepath is that she believes that his words are from God (I Kings 17 v.24). We might call this a successful missionary trip. But note how it began. At God’s command, Elijah leaves the borders of Israel to seek support. Today, we might call someone doing that an economic migrant.
In western evangelical circles, we have an idea that the Kingdom is (or has been) extended by missionaries who are sent to plant churches. I am beginning to understand that that is a very limited view of God’s work.
Diaspora ministries mobilize to share the gospel with people groups on the move round the world. But do we recognize what is being done by the mobile poor? What about Filipina and Indian nannies teaching their charges to love Jesus in countries where apostasy can be punished by death. No one recruited or screened them. They may have quite basic Bible knowledge but they love Jesus. There is no member care for them, just the loneliness and vulnerability of being a long way from home, with their children far away.
Dr Joshua Bogunjoko was the International Director of SIM International, the first non-Westerner to serve in that role. I had the privilege of attending a seminar that he gave in Bogotá in 2017. Entitled Mission from Poverty and Fragility, it challenged everything about the model of mission I knew. I have a page of scrappy notes from the talk. Here’s a sample: “Today there are more Christians in churches in cities in Africa than in entire countries in Europe.” “The last agencies recognizing change are mission organizations,” (ouch!). "Mission sending in Acts – Paul recruited from churches he planted.
Paul’s missionaries are not from Paul’s sending churches.” "If a mission was formed in riches, how can a poor person join it? Are we self-selecting based on money?"
But what I remember most vividly was a story he told of a young Afro-Colombian woman with a
strong sense of call to mission. She applied to SIM and was accepted but wasn’t able to raise anything like the usual support the mission agency required. SIM sent her to Burkina Faso anyway. She lived very simply with local people, learned to cook their food and quickly found her place in the community. “We
didn’t know black people could be missionaries,” was the revealing and sad comment of the local people.
I love such stories and I have a big store of them. The Peruvian somewhere in North Africa. When he told his hosts where he was from, they said, “Oh, one of us!” What could that possibly mean? Someone from the global south, someone of colour, someone outside the power structures of North America and Europe. The Costa Rican in the Gaza Strip whose safe passage had something to do with his name-checking Maradona.
The notion of a mission as 'from the west to the rest' is dead. Long live multi-directional mission!