Funny

You were feeling pretty good about the mission trip you organized to Sri Lanka. It brought together the "old-guard": missions is all about making converts with the "new generation": mission is all about living our lives together and learning more than you try to teach and earning the right to talk by listening. Lay leaders from the congregation were fully empowered to lead the trip. They put in lots of effort and made sacrifices, but you bet they felt it was worth it!

Their were some difficult moments, but the group came to trust each other and there was lots of social capital developed. People who were considered "outsiders" were empowered and there were 3 or 4 longer term relationships shaping up by the end of the trip. It was really incarnational, you know. I mean your team lived among the Sri-Lankans and made it a point not to eat at McDonalds and took part in Sri-Lankan festivals and even prayed a Sri-Lankan prayer even though you weren't completely sure you bought into the theology of it. And through it all, God's all encompassing love was at the center of discussions and projects, and devotions.

But when you got to the evaluation meeting, people were...sad.

They were let down. All their efforts and all the work seemed to go unnoticed by the church.

It was like pulling teeth to get people to sign up to be prayer partners. Someone from the facility staff had to drive the van to the airport because no one else had the time. Worst of all right in the middle of the drive to get people involved in the Sri Lankan outreach, the announcement time in Worship service was taken up by skits and promos for the upcoming wild game supper hosted by the co-ed softball team.

During the most critical time of sign ups for the Sri Lanka trip the children's sermon was about the Motorcycles for Jesus fundraiser which supported an outside group from South Dakota and didn't really involve anyone in your church congregation except for the one guy who rode the Harley Davidson down the center aisle that day during service to raise awareness for the fundraiser.

The Sri Lankan mission team was left thinking that their efforts to live out the incarnational, relational, experiential, and empowering nature of our Christian faith--that effort to engage this new paradigm of meeting Jesus, not just "taking" Jesus--was regarded by the church as less important than the wild game supper and the Motorcycles for Jesus fundraiser.

It's funny isn't it: how people determine what's important to the church?

Or is it?