should you choose to accept it

So the conference that I will be going to is entitled: ‘The kingdom of God today: challenges to Christian mission.’

I suppose that, technically, I could be considered a missionary. My funding organization is called Frontier Internship in Mission. I am here as part of a church (but not my church) program. But I don’t do any evangelizing; I had a much higher conversion rate (1 total in my entire life) among my friends at home. I’m not trying to save souls here; I’m much more concerned with creating a heaven on earth.

Also, I’m not Christian.

And being a missionary really isn’t so cool. I can’t think of anything positive about missionaries. The stereotype is that they are naïve, closed-minded, misguided. Those are things that I try not to be. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, they do no good. In my favorite novel, The Sparrow (which has been optioned by Brad Pitt, who I have a lot more respect for after he & Ms. Jolie’s decision to not get married until everyone in the US has the freedom to marry… although I still think a movie version would be terrible), a Jesuit mission ends in catastrophe.

Maybe I should start reading books written for a Christian audience. Maybe then, I can find myself a missionary hero. But, if my brief, painful, foray into the Left Behind universe is any guide, I think I would rather not.