An Open Letter To The Western Church
Dear Western Church,
Really?
What has happened to us?
When did we get like this?
Where is the love?
I am writing this letter because I got some news from some of my squadmates yesterday that shocked me and really pissed me off. I wasn’t sure what to do with this anger but to pray about it. God said “blog” and here we are. My anger is not at a specific person, or a specific church, or even a specific denomination. Honestly my anger is with the collective group of believers in the Western Hemisphere which for the sake of this letter I’m referring to as the western church. Why have we let our petty differences get totally in the way of doing what God has called us to do?
I will start from the beginning. Yesterday I got on Facebook when I got home from church to see what was new on my squad’s group Facebook page. I was completely taken aback when I read a prayer request from a girl in my squad who has been having trouble raising support. She is not only having trouble raising support, she is specifically having trouble getting any support from her home church family. This is not because the people in her church don’t have money to give. Her church family is refusing to support her because Adventures In Missions (the organization sending us out on this mission for God) is interdenominational. They say they will only support her if she goes on a mission trip led by her specific denomination. This apparently is the policy of her church, not just the feelings of a few people. It is absolutely appalling to me because my church family has been nothing but supportive to me, but apparently there are multiple people in my squad who are not experiencing support from their church families for this same reason.
No wonder we have such a hard time trying to get nonbelievers to experience God’s love here in the west. How could we possibly look a nonbeliever in the eye and say that Christianity is about love when we make policies so filled with competitive hate? We are supposed to be following Jesus folks. I don’t recall the part of the gospel where Jesus told us to segregate ourselves and only love those who agree with us on every little unimportant thing. All of this bickering is counterproductive to the calling Jesus has given us to go make believers of all nations. Jesus didn’t call us to join a church, He called us to be THE church.
Now, I haven’t yet left America to see for myself what the church is like in the rest of the world, but from what I’m told they don’t put their petty differences ahead of spreading the good news of what Jesus has done to the world dying around them. I don’t know how we get the church in the west to set aside our #FirstWorldProblems and follow the example of the church in the rest of the world, but something needs to change. When we have gotten ourselves to a point where we won’t support our missionaries because they aren’t going to be spreading the gospel with only other people of the same specific denomination, we have completely lost the message of the gospel ourselves.
Thank you for reading my rant. I will shut up now before I offend somebody. If this is hitting close to home for you, I would encourage you to pray and see what God has to say about your stand on this issue. If God puts it on your heart to give support to a missionary who may be having this issue with their home church, I would encourage you to go to theworldrace.org and click the “future racer” tab. You will find blogs for hundreds of young people from every denomination imaginable who are answering a call from Our Father to put their daily first world lives aside to go minister to the least of these. Read through these blogs and help someone out financially if you can. Who knows, your support could be just the blessing of encouragement they need to keep going on this mission that God has put on their heart. I pray that at the very least someone out there will read this and choose to bless a missionary despite their denomination. I Still Love Y’all even though I’m a little angry right now.
Your Brother In Christ,
Myles Willman
