In my last blog post, I began laying out why we should consider shifting our language away from using the word “missionary.” In short, those reasons were:

• Calling people missionaries can compromise the safety of global workers in high-risk contexts.

• The legacy of western imperialism and colonialism has created a negative impression of missions and missionaries in some places around the world.

• The tremendous confusion around who counts as a missionary can harm national kingdom workers.

• The word missionary can have a hidden racist impact.

Here are four additional reasons:

1.     The title missionary comes with inflated expectations of super-hero spiritual status that is intimidating to potential workers and off-putting to others in the USA. It creates unhelpful stress, pressure, and false expectations for cross-cultural workers within their own minds and the minds of their supporters. It is hard to recruit people into global kingdom service when they can’t imagine themselves worthy or capable of living up to the expectations of being a missionary.

2.     We are limiting mission to other countries. Most American Christians think mission require relocating to another nation while  ministry is what we do in our own country. We don’t want to perpetuate this false dichotomy because it harms both domestic and international kingdom work. Americans assume we have nothing to learn from the global church because we don’t do missions here. We focus on church growth instead of expanding the kingdom and bringing transformation. We act more like a business that wants to grow market share than disciple-makers in a mission field seeking to expand the reign of God to the next neighborhood, city, or region. Our limited mindset biases us to think that kingdom growth in the U.S. equals church growth instead of church multiplication in diverse forms of church. This traps us into an institutional way of thinking that is harmful in more ways than we can count.

3.     There is a lack of understanding of what the words missions and missionary mean, even within America's deeply committed church culture. Is someone who engages in education or medicine out of Christian conviction in a developing country but who does not do evangelism or church planting a missionary? What about someone who serves in an administrative role in a religious organization but is not personally involved in “religious” work? Is what makes someone a missionary just serving in another country or serving in a religious organization in another country? Does the same apply to people in highly developed countries with a living standard equal to the U.S.? In the U.S. church, our vision of missions is typically 40 years behind the times. This creates much misunderstanding and many opportunities for unhealthy expressions of missions to continue to be funded by churches stuck in outdated models of global kingdom work.

4.     Overuse of the word missionary for things unrelated to what we do. Anyone who travels or moves to another country to do good things with any religious motivation can claim to be a missionary, get in some church’s missions budget, and raise funds based on people’s commitment to global kingdom expansion – even if there is no direct connection to making disciples of Jesus or expanding the reign of God. While this is not all bad, it often produces missions drift that deprives more strategic and impactful ministries of needed resources.  

Suggestions for Adjusting Terms

If we are not going to call people missionaries, what should we call them? That’s a great question that requires some discernment and creativity. At MRN, we are in the process of changing our language to speak of disciple-makers, cross-cultural workers, and international workers. You might consider using cross-cultural ministers, global ministers, or international servants. Instead of talking about missionary care, we refer to care or worker care. But there are likely better words that will surface and gain prominence over time. That is how language works. The main point is to begin the process of educating ourselves and those who are part of the global kingdom enterprise that it’s time to retire the word missionary. In my next blog article, I’ll have some suggestions for how to do this challenging task.