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If a Major League baseball player hits .300 or better, he will attract lucrative, multi-million-dollar contracts like flowers draw aphids. Owners pay .250 hitters more than most of us will earn in a lifetime. Such a grotesque measurement of success baffles us. Why would anyone pay, or watch, a hitter who goes out seven times for every 10 trips to the plate? Or worse? That’s baseball economics, beyond the normal laws of business and science.

From a spate of scholarly books, it appears that our missionary hitters should bat 1.000 if they’re any good. They should never strike out, pop up, ground out, or fly out. They should nail a hit every time they go to the plate.

From some of these critiques, one could easily assume that if our missionaries had only done things better, the whole world would have been converted, and the beautiful biblical picture of God’s kingdom on earth would be fulfilled. For example, why is the world filled with hunger, exploitation, wars, crimes, tribalism, greed, corruption, and so on? Because missionaries have not done their jobs correctly. They strike out too often instead of hitting home runs. Instead of just saving souls, they should have transformed society according to biblical principles. They have made too many converts and not enough disciples.

This attitude puzzles me on a number of scores. First, it sounds like the converts we make in Africa, Asia and Latin America should behave much better than American Christians do, and the ills of their societies should be healed better than ours are. I have yet to hear anyone accuse American pastors of striking out, or failing to bat 1.000, because criminals roam their towns, drunkenness, divorce and drug addiction are rampant, prostitutes openly ply their trade, and strife and killings blow families (read tribes) apart. If we can’t clean up Cicero, Illinois, why should we expect Christians to clean up Sierra Leone and Congo?

Second, these critics for some reason fail to grasp that old baseball axiom: You win some, you lose some, and some are rained out. Why can’t they accept .250 or .300 hitters in missions? Why do they seem to expect perfection from our missionaries?

Third, it seems to me they overlook the monumental changes for the better in society that have been wrought by missionaries, to say nothing of the uncountable millions of believers and churches that owe spiritual life and vitality to missionaries, going back to the 18th century. Let’s say the average missionary bats .250. By God’s kingdom statistics, that figure has produced churches, schools, hospitals, technology, wells, farms, literacy, and a host of other good things in tough places in the world where no one else has ever lifted a finger for social and spiritual improvement.

This is not to say that we should shy from pointing out missionaries’ errors and strikeouts. We must do so for the profit of those missionaries who want to move up from .250 to .300. Yes, the critics’ books are helpful to a point, and we can all learn from those who have stepped up to the plate and failed to make a hit.

“And some were rained out.” The outcome of many missionaries’ lives will never be posted on any scoreboard except God’s. We must be careful how we judge the lives and ministries of others. If we must criticize missionaries for striking out, let us do so with charity and not with blanket condemnations, or with charges of failing to do the impossible-change the world to millennial expectations without the return of our King of kings and Lord of lords.

June 22, 2001