The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

I think something that makes the organization we work with harder to adapt to than any other missions organization is that it is not American. There is really not much that is American about J-Life. That’s why I love it, and that’s why I struggle with it sometimes. Instead of taking the American culture and adapting everything to it, J-Life has started with South African culture, and is now using the South African example to reach out to other countries in Africa. And in this way, it is way ahead of its time. And it is J-Life’s Africanness that is so powerful in creatively and innovatively reaching out to African youth.

This idea of making things indigenous or having a vision that is locally owned is amazing and it is an idea that I think any missionary agree with in the end. But my question is, although we believe that we should just be empowering other nations to take the gospel to their friends and family, how often do we actually live out this belief? I think this belief more often than not becomes a nice idea in our heads that never really makes it into our everyday living. The reality is, empowering others is not prestigious or glory filled. It is not an up in front job, it is not a job that produces tangible fruit everyday and many times it is a job that is never appreciated.

I think as American missionaries, we’ve glorified the job title of “missionary”. It has become popular to go to Africa and do your part for the world. We’ve elected ourselves to be the hand that feeds and patted ourselves on the back when we give stickers and candy to poor snot nosed African children. The thing is, we advertise these “mission trips” as a way to give back to God when in reality, many short term mission trips just give us as Americans a better conscience and in turn create a cycle of dependency on our resources and programs (I know I am generalizing and there are yes, there are many other benefits to short term missions if done with a long term perspective).

This is a crisis that I face daily being a longer term missionary. I have faced the hardships of what it means to truly support local people taking the reigns and doing it their way and it is a daily dying to myself and what I think is best. I am also constantly analyzing interactions and how I word things so as not to promote my way of doing things as a better way but just a different perspective. There is this conviction of a calling here to Africa, but also a constant questioning of how I can make myself less needed in my job and make Africans more needed in the job I am doing. It is a desire to be reproducible in every aspect of my work that inspires me and tires me out. It gives me a purpose and yet makes me more transient. It makes me more teachable and more of a teacher at the same time.

So, I believe that Africans are the most effective evangelists of Africans. They are the most effective ministers to other Africans. I believe it, and I constantly wrestle to live it out. And I challenge other American missionaries to live out that belief as well. It is more of Christ and less of me that I long for. God humble me and take away my pride that You can move to even greater depths in my ministry!