Latte missionaries …

You know how it is: you’re sitting with your laptop in a Starbucks and right next to you are two people having a conversation. Now, by “right next to you” I really mean right next to you, no more than two feet away.

What does that mean?

It means you’re going to hear plenty of their conversation.

You’re not trying to. Honestly!

In fact, you’re trying to tune them out so you can focus on your own stuff you have to do.

But a part of the conversation captures your attention …

The part of the man who, with what looks like arrogance, points to a photo on his laptop of people from an African nation and talking about the “beast” that must be built — a very simple dwelling to serve as a church building. That’s because in the harshness of the weather, the people scatter. So, if they erect a building, the people will come for “church meetings” instead of scattering.

The man went on to talk about the “limited” and “primitive” thinking of these people, and how the building will serve to teach them a better way to live. After all, he says, their way of life is all about “daily sustenance.”

It seems that is something beyond the basic understanding of this obviously well-fed American, who likely has never missed a meal in his life. It doesn’t seem like this guy is getting his head around what the daily realities are for these people.

But then his cohort chimes in, trying to sound insightful by noting there are such broad cultural differences. He starts out sounding smart, until he puffs himself up by turning the conversation to the fact that he has a seminary degree and has “studied” such things.

Then the first man asks the second a truly brilliant question. He says to the man with the seminary degree, “Are you currently discipling anyone?”

The long, rambling response to the question was a justification to a one-word answer: “No.”

This is the intellectual arrogance of what the American church exercises all to frequently. We look at the people of the world with a sense of superiority. We think we know how to live better. How to be better. After all, we’ve studied such things.

But we aren’t personally discipling anyone.

“Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall,” Proverbs 16:18.

“Haughtiness” is a great word we rarely use today, even though it’s quite fitting. To think we can sit with our lattes in coffee houses and, with our educated minds, plan out how people on the other side of the world can live better by listening to us is, well, haughtiness.

Especially when we’re not discipling a single person in our own back yard.

Scotty