The Competition

Say you are a missionary, and you’re sitting on a plane, and the person next to you is actually talkative and introduces himself as some kind of sales rep and asks, “So what do you do?” Do you say you’re a missionary, knowing how that triggers as many alarms as the word terrorist? I wonder what Paul answered? “Oh, I’m a slave. My master is Jesus Christ, who is sending me as an ambassador to the Gentiles…do you know him?”

What about if you find the shoe on another foot?

Robert was riding a taxi between two towns in Guerrero one day, and the found out the driver was a Jehovah’s Witness missionary. The taxi driver explained that all Jehovah Witness missionaries are bi-vocational (self-supporting, as are their church leaders; we’ve met a number of them working as taxi drivers). Robert has found that long taxi rides are ideal for in depth conversations about faith, and this was no exception. The taxi driver explained some things that Robert found impressive. Once a year the group holds a national rally in a large stadium. At the last one in Mexico City, the speaker explained that Mexico has 15 million Indian people and that very few of them are Jehovah Witness (almost as few have any relationship with Jesus at all). He called on people to commit to go to the Indian communities as missionaries. This would mean finding a way to support themselves, since the Jehovah Witnesses don’t support missionaries financially. A thousand people answered the call. That is a thousand Jehovah missionaries headed for the Indian villages of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatan, Veracruz, and other states. These missionaries commit to using indigenous languages, so when they find the Bible translated into an Indian tongue, they figure out how to use it. One “local” language they’ve already mastered in Mexico (and, I think, everywhere else) is sign language. Throughout the entire country there are congregations for the deaf, and even in small rural towns, anyone who is deaf is likely to be a Jehovah’s Witness, no matter what else their family believes, because this is the only place of fellowship available to them.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are impressive for their unity. We know of buildings that house six different congregations. The congregations don’t ever lack for leaders because they don’t rely on seminary trained pastors or priests. They choose elders who fulfill the requirements of 1 Timothy 3:2-7 and Titus 1:5-9, and then train them in on-going seminars. When an area needs a new building, people show up from miles around to start building on Thursday, and the doors are open for business by Sunday. Their Watchtower is published in 247 languages, all by volunteers, and is the world’s leading magazine with a monthly print run of 55,000,000. Tell me you’re not impressed. I asked Robert if he didn’t want to join, but the thought of having a committee in Pennsylvania format his thinking every month was more than he could bear. As evangelicals we aren’t, perhaps, as efficient (or as united…sigh) as these folk, but we sure are freer. And which of us could give up Jesus as God incarnate, come to live among us?

I’m not sure what vocabulary the JWs use to describe their motivation for going where no JW’s have gone before, but my guess is they would say it’s a call. Freaky, isn’t it?  Since that is what we would say. So a call wouldn’t be the only requirement for going—for being sent. No one goes without a call, of course, but I guess a call isn’t enough. There are plenty of odd calls out there. There’s got to be more.