David Platt, the brand new head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Missions Board, has some helpful suggestions for members who want to help the home-team overcome the severe budget shortfall that has them calling missionaries home.
Business is international. Men and women cruise the globe at 35,000 feet, going places missionaries cannot. What could you do?
Transport sensitive Christian materials that cannot be mailed or sent electronically. Firewalls run by local governments block access to training materials, Bible translations, and other forms of support. This could be as simple as meeting someone for supper and passing the information along.
In other words, smuggle-in contraband literature.
Allow your temporary housing to serve as a meeting site for Bible study groups and churches.
Use your locally-registered business to provide legitimate visas for missionaries who cannot acquire them otherwise.
In other words, use your business as a front for illegal activities.
Learn the language through multiple visits and help teach in areas where the IMB has not placed anyone.
But it’s allright because, you know, warriors for the Kingdom aren’t bound by man’s law, only — dum-da-dum-dum — His law. I’ll bet that if you suggested to a roomful of these yahoos that the reason they aren’t welcome might be that they deal underhandedly, you’d draw nothing but blank stares. They really are that self-unaware.
UPDATE: This post is no longer at the SBC Voices Web site, so the link above goes to Google’s cached version.