Successful Missionaries

... what makes them successful?

At Mass last week, we had a Marist nun talk to us during the homily. She had spent her life working with the poor, first in the South Pacific, then in the Caribbean and finally in Africa. As she talked, several things went through my head, one of which was this: What is required for Missionary success?

As I noodled this question around from a marketing point of view, I figured that being a missionary would work best when you came from a nation with a much greater standard of living. After all, the Aztecs with their primitive, almost Stone-Age culture weren't going to convert too many Spaniards. What would they say, "Look, these ideas are great! They made us what we are today - human-sacrificing illiterates!" Not exactly a great sales pitch.

My idea was reinforced when I considered the French missionaries to the Indians such as Father Marquette. As noble as the American Indians were, there would be no denying that Father Marquette came from a far more advanced culture. Imagine seeing a gun work for the first time. It put me in mind of the old saying by Athur C. Clarke - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Tales of miracles would be more believable when technological miracles were at hand.

It was a very practical line of thought, very reasonable. And then this morning I read this.

Official Chinese surveys now show that nearly one in three Chinese describe themselves as religious, an astonishing figure for an officially atheist country, where religion was banned until three decades ago.

The last 30 years of economic reform have seen an explosion of religious belief. China's government officially recognizes five religions: Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam and Daoism. The biggest boom of all has been in Christianity, which the government has struggled to control.

Arthur C. Clarke's saying is fundamentally flawed as was my line of reasoning. If space aliens landed today and showed the power to teleport around, we would not all assume magic. Instead, in a world where technology has advanced sufficiently, any sufficiently advanced technology would be assumed to be just that - advanced technology. Modern Chinese, however poor, are not the Aztecs or Iroquois. They might be jealous of your iPhone, but they wouldn't think there were little men inside talking to them.

Maybe missionary success depends on the message.


"I got my iPhone down at the mall in Joliet. It's about 15 miles that way."