Why is it so hard to be a missionary?

First, so that we're not arguing semantics, I need to give you my definition of missionary. A missionary is any person that steps out of their own culture and into a different one for the purpose of bringing with them the full Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel, then, needs its own definition. It is the good news of Jesus Christ as characterized by the way he lived his life. He healed--that is part of the gospel. He taught--that is part of the gospel. He forgave--that is part of the gospel. The full Gospel of Jesus Christ is all of these things as well as many others that Jesus modeled through his time on earth.

Back to the idea of a missionary. It is the commitment to the FULL gospel of Jesus Christ (along with crossing cultures) that define a missionary. A humanitarian is not a missionary. A preacher is not a missionary. Etc. Etc. I want to create this very specific definition, not to draw lines, to include, or to exclude, but simply to get us all talking, thinking, reading, and writing about the same thing.

Back to the title question: Why is so hard to be a missionary?

We had a great team come through a few weeks ago. It was a youth team, but with a good amount of young-adult leaders. We brought them to church on Sunday and one of those young-adult leaders briefly spoke with a translator. His message centered around how hard his week in Haiti had been: "the hardest thing he had ever done." Honestly, I cringed as the translator said this in Creole. I wished I was translating for him just so that I could have toned that statement down. I wondered what each of the hundred-or-so Haitians in the congregation would think. These are people that have lived his short, ten-day, experience every moment of there lives. And there are millions of other Haitians out there. "Why," I questioned him in my head, "was this week so difficult for you and yet so normal for the people you are talking to?"

And yet I couldn't disagree with him. I remember being on short term trips and they were hard. And even after 2 1/2 years in Haiti it is still, on a daily basis, the hardest thing I've ever done. But why is it so hard for me and yet so normal for the millions of Haitians that live around me?

I don't think that the Gospel is the hard part of being a missionary. I don't think it's the preaching. I don't think it's the healing. I don't think it's the forgiving. I don't want to minimize these things, but at the same time, they are not what I struggle with on a daily basis.

Crossing cultures is the hardest thing I've ever done. And I would submit that crossing cultures, whether for a week or for the rest of your life, would be the hardest thing you've ever done too.

Here's one example. Marriage is hard, right? Gwenn maintains that the first year of our marriage was the worst of her life. I don't remember it being that bad, but admittedly, her memory is much better than mine. Well both of us would describe moving to Haiti as a "reset" button in our marriage. In fact I've had conversations with other couples that say the same thing. As difficult as the first year of our marriage was, so was marriage in our first year in Haiti. It was supposed to be the easy part. We had been working on our marriage for ten years and, frankly, we were good at it. But now, after crossing cultures, we spend so much time fighting everything else around us that neither of us have the energy to work on marriage. And a marriage that isn't being worked on is a bad marriage. And the worst part is, after 2 1/2 years, IT HASN'T GOTTEN EASIER.

But marriage is just one example. Everything becomes harder. So much is new. What isn't new is different. And what seems to be the same never seems to be. So then why would God call us to this? That's a question for another time.

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