this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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I mean, missionaries. My sister was one for over a decade and during those years she owned a backpack with some clothes and toiletries and that was all. She received monetary donations that she used to travel, stayed with families in the towns she visited, etc.
You’re not going to see that in the US (especially the Deep South) or really any developed nation because churches are already established. But you will see it often in developing nations where the “message needs to be spread”.
My sister is annoying as hell with a holier than thou attitude. Or at least to me because every time I try to talk to her the conversation somehow turns to god and after also being raised as a devout Christian, fuck that bullshit.
And remember the Deep South has 2 denominations, evangelical and baptist, and both of those are fucking selfish fire and brimstone denominations.
Fair enough, and good for your sister, and while what she did is admirable I still say the fact that she ever ‘came back’ from doing that means she’s stopped following that command. Not judging her, I get it, but Jesus literally commanded his followers to give up their lives and follow him. Which means it’s not a temporary commitment.
I actually have a few friends that became missionaries and lived off donations. In Italy, because they were baptists(who are evangelical by the way, that’s the particular tradition I was raised in, they are very very into spreading the gospel through missions in the SBC) and they needed to go save the heathen Catholics.
I’m not trying to say your sister is a shitty person or anything. But mission work in my experience is usually a circlejerk where they are more concerned with conversion and preaching than actually helping people.