Destructive Generosity

Dr. Paul E. Pritchard Jr.

The look that came across their faces was priceless.  The American cocoon that had sheltered them from the other 97% of the world was being ripped away one layer at a time.  Now, perhaps for the first time, an accurate view of missions was starting to take root in their minds.  In our circle of eighteen men, only a few were veteran to the mission fields of the rest of the world.  The conversation was now paralyzed by a comment that many Americans could not digest the idea that “the generosity of the West is killing our churches!”  The missionary welfare system we have created has obscured the biblical principals of tithing and giving in the understanding of African believers.

The continent of Africa is home to some of the most pitied places on the globe.  The sympathy, pity, and emotion that typically fuel the mission programs in our Baptist Churches today are leading our mission endeavors to a very rapid demise.  It is only a matter of time before most churches run out of fuel.

You see, the real motivator behind biblical missions is God.  God-centered mission is what we have lost.  Now people parade missionaries across their platform like they are contestants in some kind of beauty pageant and then wait for the next missionary/video guru to spell bind them with the latest collection of tear jerking pictures of homeless, starving children.  Please do not interpret my comments as cynical.  They are not.  They are facts!  Many of our fundamental churches today have become so carnal that those who make spiritual decisions in them are more sight driven than faith driven.

The weekend crusaders that go to the slums of Mexico and return with a “burden,” more often than not, never return and end up choosing to respond to this “burden” with an American dollar instead of a life-size model of true Christianity.  The result?  The result is that Christianity is now being equated with money.  Money equals – missions.  The one thing that the national needs most in order to grow is faith - faith in God, faith in God’s Word.  This is totally undermined by deprioritized, destructive generosity!  The question is begged:  Is this generosity real generosity at all?  Or is it guilt money?

Africans have told me that they were more generous before they found out that they were “poor Christians.”  Is there such a thing, as a poor Christian?  Has not the industry of poverty become even greater than the industry of war these days?  Have not our bleeding heart liberals done a great job at influencing our bleeding heart carnals to see only the material and ignore the spiritual while spending billions on trying to cure social ills and the festering depravity of fallen men.  Instead of treating the disease, we treat the symptoms!  Instead of the gospel, they now get our garage sale leftovers!

The bible plainly explains that the love of money is the root of all evils.  The love of money has killed many American churches and diseased most of the rest.  What makes us think that the African believers are any different from us in this regard?  In our ignorance, while we have attempted to reproduce Christians, we have reproduced our churches with all of their problems instead.  Those who control the money in our churches often control our churches.  Money drives our nation and money drives many of the messages that leave our pulpits.  Americanizing the mission field is killing our mission!  What do I mean by Americanizing?  The ‘American dream’ that so many cannot live without is now being lived out and sought after in third and fifth world countries.  How does this hurt?  First of all, they are not American.  They have a culture that is their own with practices that are not all wrong, just different!  Cocky Americans think that different is wrong and that if it is not just like their church and just like the way their pastor says it and does it, it is wrong.  NO!  NO!  NO!

Just a question:  How well would we do if on Sunday morning our choirs had to sing to the Jewish chants and the music of the Middle East?  Did not our Bible come from there?  Why haven’t we adopted all of those cultural practices and native observances?  If we aren’t subject to the culture of Israel and the Middle East, why do we attempt to impose the culture of America and the West on those Africans who believe on Christ? 

My point is that much of our failure in the area of missions is due to this attitude and mentality.  Our missionaries are too often poorly trained and, quite frankly, rarely respected.   In addition to this, they are frequently thought of as ‘second rate’ or ‘second class’ due to their delivery or style of preaching simply because the expectations change every time you cross a state line.  A missionary should be trained to be the most elite, most gifted, most qualified, and most spiritual diplomatic Statesman of Ambassadorship the church can afford to send.  To send anything less is to insult the kingdom he represents and curse the King in whose name he goes.  Think about this:  the missionary will win, teach, train, appoint and ordain the pastors!

America’s view of the church is so distorted that we strain to imagine a place where a pioneer is needed.   We have little vision of a function for which an apostle, a master builder, and foundation layer would even be needed.  Why?  It’s because of the gobs of churches that paint our landscape.   Our pastors are paid professionals who are often times hired and fired like employees.  This corporate mindedness that has robbed God’s church of her true beauty and her most sacred purity, unity, and authority must not cross the ocean!

Time and space will not permit me the opportunity to address the many misconceptions that surround missions today.  But, unless someone speaks up, Independent Baptists are going to become such radical separatists that we’re going to separate ourselves from the very people that we’ve been left on Earth to win.  Our Lord modeled a ministry that was of a servant - We lord.  He was of a giver - We take.  He was of one who would go, and go anywhere - We stay.  Without a 12-step manual, a pulpit, a piece of property, and even much of a respected name, he trained eleven men who turned the world upside down with His model of leadership.  Is His model below us?  Service without recognition?  Sacrifice without remuneration?  It is obvious that the Christianity of our day preaches death with no cross, salvation without repentance, and Christianity without Christ.  The Christianity we know and are “selling” around the world is nothing more than our Baptist version of a “prosperity doctrine.”  It is a Christianity that is more about being polished, politically correct, and prepared with a power point, than about being empowered by the Holy Ghost to preach the gospel of repentance!

Christianity has become more about performance than about the person of Jesus Christ.  We stand in our pulpits week after week cheering people on to hollow victories and doing our best to make the trivial seem urgent and the meaningless seem meaningful.   Is the spirituality of our churches being measured in terms of dollars and cents, buildings and budgets, luxuries and landscapes, instead of in terms of submitted and surrendered wills that bow in reverence before a thrice Holy God?  Is this what we want the rest of the world to know about God?  Is this how we proclaim His glory among the heathen?