Have you ever stopped to think about the parents of missionaries? Imagine being told by young adult children that they feel like God is calling them to serve in a foreign country. What if it was one of your younger children that said this? Upon hearing this, you immediately start thinking about the ramifications of such a life decision on your relationship with them, even your grandchildren in the years to come. It is a big deal to have a child become a long-term missionary.

Natural love for our children gives us a desire to share life with them—and especially our grandchildren! We would love to be near to watch them experience life, be there to encourage and help guide them in their hardships. When we grow old, we know we will need to look to them for support as well. Naturally, parents don’t want their children to live far away, especially not overseas.

Whether the parents of missionaries put it in these terms or not, there is a real sacrifice involved when children leave for the field. Parents experience a wide range of emotions and respond in different ways to this news.

I would like to encourage us to think together about the two ways parents can respond to their children’s decision to go into long-term missions: approval and disapproval. In this article, we will consider disapproving parents.

Disapproval from Non-Christian Parents

Sometimes parents get angry when they find out their Christian child is going long-term overseas, or even across the country to propagate Christianity. This might be especially true if the destination is considered a risky place and if there are grandchildren going. Why do these parents get so angry? 

The feeling of being unnecessarily abandoned may be one reason. Another would be that they just don’t get it. Unbelieving parents would often view gospel ministry simply as a wasted career move with no real financial prospects. Because they don’t value the Gospel, they don’t understand why missions is so important to begin with. Financial security and comfort are the goals of life for them. Some see long-term cross-cultural missions as religious extremism, others an unnecessary hardship on the family at best.

Some parents are firmly opposed to missions on religious or philosophical grounds. For example, they might believe that cross-cultural missions smacks of colonialism, that trying to change one’s culture or beliefs is immoral. As you can imagine, missionaries with parents like these really struggle with the strain in the relationship caused by their decision. 

Guilt-tripping

I know missionaries that carry this burden. Their disapproving parents want them to feel guilty for leaving them. One missionary woman in particular, let’s call her Elsie, has dealt with this continually. Her mother guilt-trips her non-stop about how bad of a daughter she is. Anything in the mother’s life that is difficult or a trial, she blames her daughter’s missionary life as the reason.

The daughter bends over backwards to show love and concern for he mother. She would immediately head home to help her mother in time of great need. Her mother wants her close and and on-demand. Since her missionary daughter does not meet her expectations, she punishes her emotionally.

Disapproval from Christian parents

Some missionaries have Christian parents whose response is not much better than that of unbelievers. They resist their children’s decision to follow Christ in missions. These parents don’t encourage their children towards, but instead, away from gospel ministry, especially cross-cultural ministry. Even though they are Christians, they discourage their children from aspiring to be a missionary.

Disapproving Christian parents are a paradox. On the one hand, they value the Gospel message they have believed. They may even be supportive of foreign missions generally with their giving and prayers. But when it comes to their own children obeying the “Go” in the Great Commission, they are decidedly against it. For these parents, missions is important and worthy of support as long as it involves other people’s children.

We have met adult missionaries whose Christian parents are unsupportive, even angry with them for going. How can this be? It is important to think about what it is that causes even some Christian parents to respond this way.

Parents conformed to this world

One reason for this parental resistance is simply a very “worldly” view of this life. Their minds are simply not on Christ and eternity. They are so focused on this brief life with its problems and pleasures that their spiritual eyes are blurred. Love for Christ in them has grown cold. The spiritual condition of the lost does not move them because the love of Jesus in them is barely existent. As a result, the Great Commission, making disciples, reaching the nations for Christ—these commands of Christ and the privileges of Christian ministry—are not dear to their hearts.

Parents like this have lost, or have precious little experiential knowledge of, the love of God for them. They are little moved with compassion for those who remained condemned in their sins. Secondary or worthless things distract them. How could they possibly value godly ambitions in their children?

Unsupportive Christian parents are worldly minded. They are “conformed to this world[1]” and need their minds “renewed” and “transformed” (Rom 12:1-2). What they need is to realign their affections to God’s. They must learn to “set their affections on things above and not on things that are on the earth” (Col 3:1-2).

Self-centered parents

This-life-centered parents are unwilling to sacrifice, to do hard things, or give toward missions in ways that honor Jesus Christ. They might give financially to missions, but it is to fulfill a duty, an attempt to salve their conscience. Their giving is not a reflection of a heart devoted to Jesus. If it was, would they not be open to their children serving wherever God led them? Would they not do all they could to encourage them?

Focus on personal loss

When these parents consider their children going for the Gospel as Christ commanded (Mt. 28:19-20), they only think about what they will lose as parents. They think about what they won’t get to do, experience, or share with their children. It is all about them, the parents, not Jesus. Their love is not focused on their children or their grandchildren, but themselves.

Unsupportive parents prioritize their own security, the memories they want to have and the life they have envisioned. What is best for their children, for the condemned world outside of Christ, God’s will–all of these things have become relatively unimportant, even if the parent’s creed says otherwise.

Imagine being a cross-cultural missionary and your own Christian parents don’t love Jesus, the lost world, or even you enough to support you in fulfilling Christ’s command. This is very sobering.

Removing the disapproval

For those non-Christian parents reading this, the starting point is to find out from your children why it is that they want to spend their life this way and do hard things for Jesus. Maybe you just need to listen, really listen, find out what they believe, and understand why missions is so important to them. It may be that you need what your children already have–salvation through Jesus Christ.

For disapproving Christian parents, you need repentance. It is sin, selfishness, and lack of love and compassion for those for whom Christ died that has led you to such a place. How could it be possible that you would discourage your children from serving the Lord vocationally? Trust God with your children, with your own life. Place them in His hands. Part of what being a “living sacrifice” means for you is to accept and embrace God’s good and perfect will for your children (Rom. 12:1).

Competing against God

Don’t make your children have to decide between you and God. God’s will is clear: love for Jesus Christ comes before all other loves and commitments. If it comes down to it, Jesus makes His will clear:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26-27).

A believer in Christ Jesus must put Him first. If loved ones seek to convince them to sin against God or go against His will, the believer must choose Jesus. Using “hate” in this sense, Jesus is saying that love for Him must come first, love for all others second, even if it appears to those that don’t understand as personal rejection. Let your children be disciples of Christ without your interference. Accept second place.

In the next article, we consider how approving parents greatly encourage Christian missions: Parents, Encourage Your Children Towards Missions: God Pays Well.

Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay

[1] Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the ESV® (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®).