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Goodbye Jesus

Missionaries In The Developed Atheist Countries


Roz

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Just wondering, did your various christian denominations usually send missionaries to developing nations?  Sure there's disaster relief and whatnot and that's a good thing, I don't care if it comes from non-religious or religious sources, it helps those in immediate need.

 

What about the run-of-the-mill 'frontier missions?'

 

I remember when I was still SDA about how people would go on and on about their church building trips to Kenya, or the Philippines, or Haiti (excluding disaster relief scenarios), or any other nation that's still developing.  I realize there's probably developed centers in some parts of these countries, but for the most part their QoL lower than that of developed nations.

 

Here's my question.  Why generally exclude Western Europe?  Japan?  South Korea?  Hong Kong?  and so on and so forth?

 

Remember when you were a christian?  How preachers say that 'during times of contentment and plenty, more people get complacent.  During hardship, more people stay faithful and on fire!' 

 

If that's true, how come it seems to me that more missionaries are sent over to the developing world?  Japan is probably the most atheistic country in the 21st century, and by and large the quality of life for the average Japanese is pretty much the best in the world. 

 

How come you don't see drives for missionary outings to Tokyo?  Or church building missionary trips to Narita?

Look at those contented Japanese!  Look how they're getting all complacent!  Satan's got a hold on them!  Should you go and try to talk to them about jesus?  Nah...

 

Let me be clear, it's good to help out the helpless in Haiti, but christianity uses this good act of charity and laces it with church building or evangelizing.  It uses the good will and rapes the minds of those who accept that good will.

 

I guess the golden rule applies here.  No, not that one.  This.  "The one who has the gold is the one who makes the rules."  Using clinics and needed supply handouts to sneak in your religious agenda?  Good job, christians.

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Japan doesn't need missionaries; god's already gotten their attention with that tsunami.

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The church my dad dragged me to as a kid (COG, Anderson) used to talk about sending missionaries to godless England but they never could pull it off. At least his congregation never did.

 

Reminds me of a joke. Why do the English play cricket? So the godless heathens will have some idea of what eternity is."

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I remember reading about how GB has converted dozens of their churches into bars, libraries, clubs, etc. 

 

Why don't churches send their missionaries to jolly old England?

 

Are their souls not as precious? 

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I actually have friends who spent time in Japan teaching English from the Bible as a mission. None of them converted anybody.

We had mission trips to Russia but never to Western Europe.

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I'd be willing to get sent on a fully paid mission trip to Amsterdam. Glory!

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Every time my wife and I go to Ukraine to visit her family, there's always at least one missionary group on the plane.  I can always tell who the "veteran" missionaries are; they're the ones who act like they know everything about Ukrainian people and culture and are loudly proclaiming how much good their work has done.

 

I long for the day when one of them attempts to strike up a conversation with me; that trans-Atlantic flight will finally give them some perspective on what an eternity in hell would be like.

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I remember hearing in church a few times before I quit going a decade ago that other countries were sending missionaries to America now, that's how bad things were getting here.  Was this true?  I remember no one questioning that, and I was like "whatever," so I don't know.  Do you think they were talking about mission trips to Appalachia to help the poor build houses?  Or trips to reservations (not properly America, since they're their own thing)?

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I remember one SDA church promoting going to the inner city and proclaiming jesus, SDA style.

 

Then the parents got all freaked out about "those gang members."

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I remember hearing in church a few times before I quit going a decade ago that other countries were sending missionaries to America now, that's how bad things were getting here.  Was this true?  I remember no one questioning that, and I was like "whatever," so I don't know.  Do you think they were talking about mission trips to Appalachia to help the poor build houses?  Or trips to reservations (not properly America, since they're their own thing)?

I'd heard that they were sending them from China.  I've never seen a Chinese missionary to 'Murcan suburbia.  I call bullshit!

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Here's my question.  Why generally exclude Western Europe?  Japan?  South Korea?  Hong Kong?  

 

Actually, South Korea has a huge missionary outreach program.  There's allegedly more missionaries coming from South Korea to places like US and UK than we have going there.  It's apparently pretty Christian now.

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I suddenly feel sorry for Koreans...

 

Wiki's got them with 18.3% protestant and 10.9% catholic, so it's not US levels yet at least, thank FSM.

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I actually have friends who spent time in Japan teaching English from the Bible as a mission. None of them converted anybody.

 

We had mission trips to Russia but never to Western Europe.

 

So did I.  Call me biased by my perspective, but my missionary/boss seeded several (small) churches in the surrounding area and I knew of other local missionaries, and it didn't really seem particularly devoid of them, especially given the low demand for xianity.  I hear tell that these days, church weddings are in demand, but they're still not buying our mythological snow job.  I'm glad.

 

I can only be grateful that I didn't convert anyone, either.

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my old church has missionaries to Japan,,,,

 

during my undergrad days, i was prepped to evangelise Rome, italy for 4 weeks,,,,,,,, but the trip was cancelled,,,, damned,,,,,

 

of. course degenerated countries need to be re-evanglise for watered down christianity,,,,, and it is good for these under developed countries go payback for pioneering works of these early christian countries,,,,,

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I used to sponsor a missionary lady (and eventually family) in southern France. I even visited once, which was my first time out of country. They generally tried the intellectual approach. Mostly the missionary went to a French university to learn the language really well. Not sure if they ever saw converts. I told her I was miffed that I never heard from her except in form letters, so we stopped communicating entirely.

 

Another couple of old ladies were missionaries in Japan. They had a different approach of using the symbols in the Japanese language to witness Christianity. They said the word "choice" was two people on either side of a tree, indicating Adam and Eve. There were apparently other symbols like that.

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What about your denominations as a whole?  Do they publish reports like this?

 

http://news.adventist.org/all-news/news/go/2013-10-13/membership-nears-18-million-secretary-highlights-regions-of-growth-decline/

 

"The Seventh-day Adventist Church continues to enjoy dramatic growth in Southern Asia, Latin America and Southern Africa, which has pushed worldwide membership to nearly 18 million."

---Classic preying on the developing world

 

"The fastest growing unions from 2003 to 2012 were in India, Bangladesh, Zambia, Uganda, south Central America, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Pakistan."

---To all those countries, I'm sorry, my bad, I helped these fuckers

 

"The top plateauing unions – defined as having membership growth rate of less than 12 percent in a 10-year period – included Southern Germany, Poland, Japan, Hungary, Switzerland, New Zealand, Austria, Portugal and Australia. Three unions in North America also made the plateauing list: Pacific, Lake and North Pacific unions."

---Funny how these countries are plateauing and Zambia and Uganda are on the rise...

 

Any other denomination have these reports?

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Another couple of old ladies were missionaries in Japan. They had a different approach of using the symbols in the Japanese language to witness Christianity. They said the word "choice" was two people on either side of a tree, indicating Adam and Eve. There were apparently other symbols like that.

 

That's funny.

 

I could be talking out of my ass, because it was years ago, I was never that good to begin with, and I've massively forgotten what I knew, but I googled the kanji for "choice", and "sentaku" came up, composed of two kanji: 選択

 

Now a complex kanji is build from building block representations of simple kanji known as radicals.  The kanji for tree is 木.  I've seen it all over the place as components of other kanji.  The kanji for person is 人.  I seem to recall having normally seen represented as a left radical as 亻.  We obviously don't have a match, at least if we're using "sentaku" and not some other word.

 

I could be wrong, but my uninformed guess is that whatever they did was really lame.  Even if they did manage to come up with something clever, it's embarrassingly unpersuasive.

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What about your denominations as a whole?  Do they publish reports like this?

 

http://news.adventist.org/all-news/news/go/2013-10-13/membership-nears-18-million-secretary-highlights-regions-of-growth-decline/

 

"The Seventh-day Adventist Church continues to enjoy dramatic growth in Southern Asia, Latin America and Southern Africa, which has pushed worldwide membership to nearly 18 million."

---Classic preying on the developing world

 

"The fastest growing unions from 2003 to 2012 were in India, Bangladesh, Zambia, Uganda, south Central America, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Pakistan."

---To all those countries, I'm sorry, my bad, I helped these fuckers

 

"The top plateauing unions – defined as having membership growth rate of less than 12 percent in a 10-year period – included Southern Germany, Poland, Japan, Hungary, Switzerland, New Zealand, Austria, Portugal and Australia. Three unions in North America also made the plateauing list: Pacific, Lake and North Pacific unions."

---Funny how these countries are plateauing and Zambia and Uganda are on the rise...

 

Any other denomination have these reports?

My old denomination has an entire website devoted to its world missions endeavors.

 

http://worldmissions.ag.org/

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I'd be willing to get sent on a fully paid mission trip to Amsterdam. Glory!

My current pastor is a former missionary to Amsterdam, and to Paris.

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I knew someone going to Italy as a missionary because Catholicism is a cult.

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I've heard from missionaries to Japan and Europe, including the Italians because Catholic thing.

 

In the SBC, there's NAMB, the North American Mission Board, and... I forget the acronym for the international mission group. So I've always heard plenty about missionaries in the US from the US. It was popular for the kids to have a week long trip to do missions somewhere, like help out with VBS for inner city kids in the next state over.

 

I find the stories about some of the missionaries to industrialized nations to be hilarious. They always complain about how hard it is to convert people who come from such a different starting point that the usual evangelistic spiel doesn't even make sense. One story was about learning German and finding out that the words for "believe" and "know" were considered opposites, and so it was really hard to convince people that faith in Jesus could have any rational thought process behind it. Another one is that the Japanese people are really cool with the idea of spirits, espcially with Shinto, but are completely baffled by the idea of monotheism. So those sorts of missions are always seen as extra challenging and very slow to make converts.

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Missionary work was seen as a calling in the church I used to attend. They did preach and teach quite a bit on community service though, to the point where they sponsored church wide projects one weekend a month until recently. Their motto was "Love God, love others". The bulk of their effort was centered in our area and they sponsored missionary projects in rough parts of town, along with those in foreign countries (Haiti, Philippines, Honduras, Israel). The Israel mission was not a proper mission.

 

As I have mentioned before, my former church was highly messianic Jewish leaning. Israel was the promised land, home of Yeshua, etc. The mission there was some kind of a Jewish learning center, never really clear what it was. Struck me as odd seeing how there is a lot of legit need amongst the Palestinian peoples there in Israel, yet most of the help is going to the Jewish state of Israel.

 

Then again, it makes perfect sense when you realize that Israel is the 52nd state (or 51st depending on your views of Puerto Rico).

 

*shrug*

 

My former place of worship was not of the evangelical variety. They did not think that one could be converted through argument or witnessing tactics. Their standard line was " if you can be talked into it, you can be talked out of it." Real faith came from within and was a heart thing, not a mind thing. It is much easier to convince the poor Latino kids in the city or the poverty stricken peoples in farflung locales that their lives will be vastly improved with Jesus than it is to convince educated people in Europe or the US or Canada of the same thing.

 

The church did a lot of community outreach work with the goal of "sharing Jesus with those in need". Turns out that the mentally ill, pregnant teens, drug addicts, sex workers, and immigrants really need Jesus. So did the kids from the local Christian university...and the core community of the independently wealthy folks who call the shots. But the last two didn't really need Jesus, they just needed an outlet to share Jesus. And a pedestal from which to observe the godless heathens that they desperately wanted in their hipster congregation.

 

I digress. The short answer would be kind of, due to the emphasis on mission here in the US.

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I know a couple who for the past five or six years have gone on vacation a mission trip to the Bahamas.   Talk about working the system. 

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Here's my question.  Why generally exclude Western Europe? 

 

 

Well...Europe is lost...haha. No hope for Europe because Satan already rules there entirely...

 

And...you can't go there and build a school/hospital/fountain/____________(insert whatever) in order to open a "door" to bring the good news...as I said, the battle is lost.

 

But just to give you hope...there are enough churches who think it is their mission to bring the next revival over Europe. They try really hard, organize prayer nights and walks, planting new churches etc. The one I came from sees it's mission in spreading all over Europe. And they are progressing. But slowly. And mainly people from other churches who are looking for more inspiring ways to do church then the one they grew up in. Nonetheless they think God brought those people to them and will use them to spread.

The whole church team I once knew is spread over the continent by now. Every time the leading team has a hard time that leads to conflict it is God who tells them that it would be time for someone to move on...and so they send this person on a sabbatical and then they find out that God called them to France, Italy, Spain, wherever. And of course everyone else knew this already because God never sends someone somewhere without a confirmation. Ha.

 

I just googled one of the guys I actually liked a lot and tadaaa, found out he moved to Rome with his entire family. His wife was half italian...so of course Rome. They have three or maybe four kids who now need to integrate in a new surrounding and it is all for the kingdom of God.

 

Another guy who's wife is adopted from Cambodia got 'called' to Cambodia and has moved there with his whole family. Two kids age 10 and 12 or so. 

 

And those are not just random church members. They made the very core team of the church. Like the leader and those two guys where doing it all together for many years.

 

So you don't need to worry...Europe is covered by Europeans already woohoo.gif

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once we had this mission seminars, and we lay hands on maps and claim the country for jesus,,,,, my small group had japan,,,,

 

hallelujah,,,, japan belongs yo jesus now,,,,,

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