Dear Readers,
How\u2019s your tolerance for ambiguity today? Fairly high? Good. I have a practical mobilization question to ask and would love your input. Read all the way through, and you\u2019ll find some helpful links to what others have to say, along with a poem of sorts to leave you with a laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We recently shared a positive review of a devotional book honoring pioneering missionaries. Naturally, a thousand-word version of someone\u2019s life story is bound to leave out a lot. The stories weren\u2019t straight hagiographies, but they were hero stories, crafted to inspire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s the question: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nShould we exercise more caution when sharing stories of missionary heroes with the next generation? Could they sometimes do more harm than good? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
To be sure, generations of missionaries have learned from and been inspired by those who\u2019ve gone before them, and particularly by reading their biographies. Mission history is full of such accounts, and that\u2019s what keeps me telling them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut do they also contribute to the tendency of some to put missionaries on pedestals that can\u2019t support them? That makes it easier not to be one. Maybe you\u2019ve told a missionary (or been told), \u201cI could never do what you do.\u201d Not what I want to hear as a mobilizer.
\u201cI grew up on missionary biographies and wasn\u2019t scarred for life,\u201d wrote a friend. \u201cBut at least a vocal portion of the younger generations, especially, feel as if the heroic missionary model creates pressure on them to achieve spectacular, and unrealistic, exploits for God.\u201d
Similarly, Bible stories are sometimes retold in a way that focuses on David, Esther, or some other figure as the hero, rather than God. Then we may write ourselves in as the star, expecting God to use us in the same way. Maybe the key point is to tell the stories more carefully and make God gets any glory.
I\u2019ve also seen pushback against books that aim to deconstruct or disillusion us of our heroes, and I don\u2019t know if those are any better. And some memoir writers go to great lengths to highlight their own flaws and failures. Helpful or not?
What do you think? Has the appeal and usefulness of \u201chero\u201d stories waned? Could they be somewhat generational (e.g., more appealing to baby boomers than to millennials) or cultural (more attractive to Americans than, say, Australians or Germans)? <\/p>\n\n\n\nAre you more for or against such stories? Can you offer guidelines for picking stories to tell or how to tell them? Let me know what you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Readers, How\u2019s your tolerance for ambiguity today? Fairly high? Good. I have a practical mobilization question to ask and would love your input. Read all the way through, and you\u2019ll find some helpful links to what others have to say, along with a poem of sorts to leave you with a laugh. We recently … Continue reading What Do You Think about Missionary Hero Stories?\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-practical-mobilization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13985"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14097,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13985\/revisions\/14097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}