Words'nTone

A number of years ago we witnessed at church on a Sunday morning a young man and his wife stand before us, poised and ready to head off to the foreign mission field: China. He was going as a medical-doctor-missionary for a organization called Christar. I remember the moment; it was great, wonderful, and moving. I could tell his parent’s were proud—I would be. He pointed to the place in the sanctuary where he sat as a teenager when he first felt called to missions. That day the young man was also the morning speaker for our church’s annual mission conference. He didn’t get far into his message before he began to cry, tears of passion for missions and thankfulness. The church, where he was called, was now sending him with support, blessings, and much prayer. He spoke on a simple theme: “How do we measure success?” Without the details, in summary he plainly explained that biblically, success = obedience. Not worldly prosperity, riches, or recognition. Sounded simple enough and to the biblical point as I recall.

Every church service has its serendipitous moment—we had one that morning in our pew. As part of the mission decor, the missions committee had placed a rather large, almost a story tall, balloon-world to our right in the sanctuary. It was filled with helium for about a week or so, giving it fullness and shape and rising up a bit into the sanctuary. After a week, however, the balloon was looking rather dilapidated, yet still holding itself up--somewhat. After the young man had finished speaking, our Pastor stood to close the service, pointed to the globe, and said, “What’s wrong with the world?” Without hesitation, more to us in the pew than to the rest of the congregation, my good friend, sitting next to me, Pete Kramka leaned toward my ear and replied, “Helium.”

Now that’s funny. I thought how true: The world is losing what it takes to stay afloat. I thought it also odd that the remaining helium in the plastic globe made the Northern hemisphere look fine. There was the USA all filled out, but the lack of helium at the bottom made South American and Africa all shriveled up, along with the southern portions of Asia. And there you have it—the Christianized west is full and fine, the unreached (least reached) and more populated countries are all shriveled up. What’s wrong with the world? It needs more helium—Christian witness and resources. I know, silly perhaps. But Pete’s retort struck me as funny, ironic, serendipitous. Nonetheless, the fact is 80% of Christian resources are used for 5% of the world’s population (that’s North America). And to add to that sad fact, most of that 80% of Christian resources is made to prop up wealthy and affluent church building-centered ministries in places of prosperity rather than in those places and locals and among people groups in the USA that are economically vulnerable and affected by poverty. Either way you—as a Christian—look at it, judgment on USA Christians will come, someday, and we will be held accountable for hording the 80%.