On Being a Boring Missionary

It's amazing the pressure missionaries feel (whether it comes from our own expectations or through the expectations of supporters) to have exciting news and big thoughts.  As a church, we are in the habit of viewing spiritual experiences as intense and exciting and missionaries as super-spiritual people.  Spiritual experiences should be more exciting, shouldn't they?  David Platt in his book Radical speaks of how the Christian mega-church has become just another mass-marketed interpretation of the American Dream with entertaining speakers, an emotional concert-quality worship set, engaging programs...  exciting entertainment.  Is it any wonder that we then expect that same level of entertainment from even our own spiritual lives?

It's totally natural, then, that when our lives feel boring or mundane we begin to feel like we need to 'be more spiritual.'  This pressure is even greater when you're in 'ministry.'  A few weeks ago, there was an article flying around Facebook called We Need Boring Christians.  You should read it; It ties in perfectly with the other day's 'focused on me' Rugby post.  Basically, this guy writes about feeling like God was calling him to the mission field and winding up stranded and out-of-touch with God. This paragraph pretty much nails the missionary dilemma:

"Following Jesus is not to be romanticized through impressive Facebook status updates or photos of exotic places on our blog. Discipleship is often ugly, messy and painful. Faithful service will regularly lead us into dull labors and bewildering struggles that would make unexciting press. To romanticize social justice or cross-cultural evangelism is to promote an idealism that will be inevitably vaporized on the field, inadvertently leading to burnout and cynicism."

A lot of our life here as missionaries is boring.  Most of it, really.  To be completely honest, my greatest spiritual triumph right now would be finding the time and self discipline to get assignments back to students a little faster with some really meaningful feedback - feedback about biology.  Often stories from the mission field include intense spiritual warfare, but so far the most intense spiritual warfare I've experienced here has been the 'boring' fight against a stubborn self-righteous flesh that works to do good while pushing the real issue, that of total obedience to Christ, comfortably out of mind.  Instead, it's easy to sit and think of how I am spiritually above grading papers and how much greater my impact could be - to think how awesome I could be for Christ, not how HE is doing amazing things.  I begin thinking of how my spiritual life can entertain me - not in those words, of course, but eventually, being 'more spiritual' begins to replace being obedient.