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“I want to have a truck and a motorcycle and I know missionaries can’t have those things. As a commercial pilot I could have all those things.”

The young man across the table from me in the coffee shop had asked to meet to talk about his interest in serving as a missionary. I think his honesty surprised both of us, but surprise wasn’t the only emotion we shared. We were both grieving as well: one for the potential loss of some toys, the other for the potential loss of an effective cross-cultural agent.

There’s nothing new about material trappings interfering with missionary zeal. Two generations have passed since Roger Greenway lived his story, published 11 years ago in Evangelical Missions Quarterly under the title “Eighteen barrels and two big crates.” Readers still remember the account of his goods arriving late in Sri Lanka, and the negative effect those possessions had on the relationships he and his wife had built in their first weeks of ministry.

Move ahead a generation. A colleague of mine moved to the campus of a Bible school for indigenous leaders on the field. He arrived in a rented Ryder truck the same day one of the students drove up in a sagging sedan. The native student grabbed the few large plastic bags that comprised his luggage and was settled within 30 minutes. Several hours later, after watching the missionary go in and out of the truck, he finally walked over to have a look. “What could you have that needed a truck this size?” he asked.

To be fair, the student was arriving for a term, the missionary for a career. But the difference was more than time span.

Most missionaries from the West—including me—are wealthy by global standards. And I’m not suggesting a vow of poverty as a requisite of effective cross-cultural service. “Poverty” and “baby-boomer” hardly fit in the same sentence. Yet while we baby-boomer missionaries have not distinguished ourselves for our frugality, I am dismayed at sentiment like that of the young man in the coffee shop, and he’s not alone. Sometimes I wonder where the materialism spiral will take us, should the Lord delay his return very long.

Jesus’ words in John 12: 24–25 surely bear on the subject, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.”

Jesus proffered “much fruit.” There is a harvest awaiting the patient worker. That’s what we all want. That’s why we are missionaries. And Jesus says we can have a harvest.

He also says the road to that harvest goes through the cemetery: “if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Most of us Westerners will never experience a literal martyrdom. But the principle applies nevertheless. Comfort, security, familiarity, family, toys… all of life’s accoutrements, Jesus puts his finger on them and calls for death. He may take them away, he may allow us to use them for awhile, but we must not let things interfere with obedience. And, unchecked, that’s exactly what they will do.

The problem is at least three-dimensional. At the deepest plane, Jesus warns us against trying to nurture here and now what was meant to be satisfied only in another time and place—heaven. Second, at a merely practical level, consider the money required, all of it from donations that could support more ministry somewhere, to sustain an “abundant” life on the mission field. Finally, somewhere between the other two lies the social dimension. All the potential power of an incarnational ministry is vulnerable at this point because of what our accumulated possessions say to the host community.

Unless you are immersed in another culture it’s easy to forget this. But plunk yourself down in a foreign setting for a moment. You’ll see how this world’s goods tend to separate. Our material goods mark us in a way directly opposed to our attempts to identify.

I once stayed in an apartment in Russia that belonged to an American missionary family who was away. My gratitude for their hospitality in absentia was somewhat offset by my concern at what I observed. The refrigerator was stocked with expensive Western foods, which they were receiving by arrangement with a frequent transoceanic traveling colleague. Two walls of their living room were lined, floor to ceiling, with shelves of VHS copies of American movies. Anybody who walked into this apartment felt like they were walking into the US.

Of course, most foreigners can never be truly incarnational. Few missionary parents, for example, will watch their child get sick and die and not fly back home for medical attention. Nobody’s asking for that level of identification. Even the locals will tell you to go back home when the need is that severe.

But that’s a rare extreme. The problem lies elsewhere. Maybe we don’t have to bury our children in foreign soil, but we must bury our materialism at home.

Gary Brumbelow serves as general director of InterAct Ministries in Boring, Ore.

June 27, 2003