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John, 83, went to India 1944. William, 93, went to Congo 1955. John, 91, went to Central African Republic 1944. Darlene, 78, went to Liberia 1945. Jack, 70, served in Peru 30 years. Anna Louise, 80, joined the mission 1945. Ruth, 81, joined the mission 1946. Rachel, 73, child of missionaries and missionary herself. Delbert, 96, joined the mission 1936. Carolyn, 75, went to Liberia 1949. Molly, 96, joined the mission 1954. Velma, 76, went to Brazil 1951.

I found their names in the “With the Lord” column in a mission agency magazine and began to think about who would take their places. This list speaks volumes about the significant enlistment of new missionaries in the post-World War II period. They were part of what many historians claim was the most dynamic time of missionary recruitment in the church’s history. Now, however, mission agencies struggle to keep pace with the demographics that determine that this bulge in missionary recruits has become a bulge in losses by deaths and retirements. Or, to put it another way, we are not sending out enough new people to take the places of John, William and Darlene.

What makes our failure to fill the ranks of the departed quite remarkable is that our pool of people and money has mushroomed in the last half century. Our churches are larger and richer. Our schools have more money, faculty and students. Our agencies have added people and dollars to their recruiting campaigns. Our brochures, ads and Web sites are slicker than ever.

InterVarsity’s student missions gathering at Urbana draws 20,000. Hundreds of thousands have visited and worked the fields for two weeks to two months. All of this effort should mean that mission agencies are overwhelmed with applicants, but they are not. Except for a few agencies, the numbers are either flat or sinking. Some big mission boards have seen a 30 percent drop in the ranks of their full-time career missionaries.

Churches, agencies and schools provide the matrix for missionary recruitment and development. Some would add a fourth component, the Christian home and family. We cannot begin to assess all the causes for our recruitment failures, but it’s clear that something is seriously wrong.

Dig deeper into the reasons and you can find some of them in our prevailing biblical, theological and cultural conditions. If Christians are to think about serving God in a missionary vocation, they have to know their Bibles. They have to be taught and they have to study themselves. Study of biblical missionary themes is a powerful incentive to missionary commitment.

Theologically, the church has long been subjected to critical doubts about the uniqueness of Christ and the necessity of personal repentance and faith for salvation. Add to those doubts the overwhelming public pressure to treat all religious beliefs as equally valid and you have pretty much undercut the compelling urgency to take the good news of Jesus anywhere.

Our cultural imperatives demand that we take care of ourselves first. We get the best education, the best jobs, the best homes and build the finest churches. Meanwhile, the rest of the world can scrape along as best it can. Prosperity has subverted Christ’s demand for self-denial and seeking God’s kingdom first.

Effective missionary recruitment demands that we address all of these factors. John, Bill and Darlene will not be replaced until we strike at the heart of what keeps us from obeying Jesus Christ. Until we lay everything on the line for Jesus, we only play games with the needs of people around the corner and around the world.

March 8, 2002