Midterm Review

As we at Eastern Nazarene College are now halfway through our spring semester, we will be looking over our past blog posts and seeing what we can learn from them as a collective whole. In doing this, the first thing I noticed is why I write about what I do. Usually, each issue of The Other Sheep tends to have, mixed throughout its other articles, a few pieces that are on the same subject. Whenever I can fit it into the assigned subject of the week, I will write about one of these arching themes of the issue.

One thing I have definitely noticed while reading The Other Sheep is that the publishers are constantly asking for money for missions. I wrote several weeks ago about a financial crisis that the Church of the Nazarene was undergoing, but that is certainly not the only time money has been mentioned. In the last issue I read, they were talking about the need to increase offerings. In many issue, they included a poll about whether the readers wanted the Gospel to be spread further, the same, or less; after each answer, it included instructions on how much money to give to see that answer fulfilled. I never realized just quite how expensive missionaries must be. It is little wonder that they are encouraged to have other jobs as well, in order to be able to support themselves.

I tend to hold missionaries up on a pedestal. I subconsciously think that they are automatically awesome supersaints who can do little wrong. But that is, of course, not necessarily true. Though missionaries certainly worthy of respect for their willingness to sacrifice so much for God and His Kingdom, they are just ordinary people who are just as capable of making mistakes as the rest of us. It has been interesting reading through their stories and seeing the language spoken and actions taken that we today would probably cringe at and wonder why that person would ever say or do such a thing, but at the time, it was not considered unacceptable at all.

Reading this publication has certainly been insightful. It is always important to look to the past to learn what works and what does not, how we got to where we are today, and to remember that we may not always have everything right, especially when we think we do. I look forward to continuing to look through The Other Sheep and learning from what it has to offer.