We just spent a week with a missionary team in Concepcion, Chile, and I was once again reminded that missionaries are a little crazy. Really.Do you think missionaries are a bit crazy? I do. Here are 3 reasons why.

Consider this:

1. THEY TALK LIKE CHILDREN – While most of us spend our young lives striving to become mature adults (or at least master our language enough to give the impression that we are mature adults), they have  put themselves in a situation where they sound like little children.

Sounding like a child when you are child is one thing–sounding like a child when you are an adult isn’t so fun. Just when the members of the Chile team reached the age to be taken seriously, they moved way down south where they are surrounded by Spanish–a language that none of them grew up speaking. They have become like children just when they became adults with a college degree in one hand and a wedding ring on the other.

That’s crazy .

2. INSTEAD OF CLIMBING THE LADDER OF SUCCESS, THEY ARE DESCENDING- While their friends who they went to college with are entering the job market to climb the ladder of success, the members of the Chile team chose not to even take the first step up the ladder. Most of them have master degrees in their areas of specialties (audiology, theology, speech pathology, marriage and family therapy, and management), yet they are living in a country where some of their degrees are not even recognized.

That’s crazy (and not good resume building).Do you think missionaries are a little crazy? I do. Here are 3 reasons why.

3. THEY TAKE JESUS SERIOUSLY – They seem to take Jesus seriously when he says to love him more than their own family. Chile is too far away for a weekend trip to visit the parents, too far away to visit a grandmother in the hospital, or for the grandparents to take care of the newborn for a Friday night out.

Those couples are trusting Jesus’ promise that he will bless them a hundred fold as they love Him more. We preach that verse from the pulpit, but it’s a little crazy to be living it.

I suppose that if we were looking at the life of Jesus then we would think that he was a little crazy too. On the way home from Chile I started wondering what kind of craziness Jesus is calling me to live out.

Is your life looking a little too normal?Do you think missionaries are a little crazy? I do. Here are 3 reasons why.

 

Related post – When your kids take Christianity too seriously

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