3 “Missions” Given By the Church (And Why They Aren’t Real Missions)

January 6, 2022

I wrote an entire book about practical ways to rebuild your life after leaving religion. In it, I break down how religion negatively affects the seven main areas of your life and how they are damaged when you leave Christianity.

However, there is another thing that many people feel is the most harmful when they leave religion—the sense that they’ve lost their purpose in life. This is perhaps even harder than losing all your church friends, losing a relationship with a partner or spouse who wants to remain a believer, or perhaps even losing your job if you worked for the church.

When your purpose in life is swept out from under you, there seems to be nothing left—nothing holding together the pieces of your life. Because that’s one thing that Christianity does well. It gives you a purpose in life—a mission—even if that mission isn’t actually real or necessary.

In my book, perhaps the most important chapter is about discovering your new life Mission after leaving religion. It’s an important part of regaining your lost sense of purpose after leaving the Church.

The reason many people feel like they lose their purpose in life after leaving religion is because the Church is very good at making you feel like you had a mission in life. But the “missions” and life purposes doled out by the church are hardly anything but.

Here are three common “missions” commonly held by people in the Church and why they aren’t real missions.

1. Become an Overseas Missionary

This seems like the most obvious since it actually has the word “mission” included. It even feels like a mission, like something you’d see in a television documentary or maybe even a movie. It necessitates a life of forsaking the creature comforts of the western world to hit the road with only a backpack, traveling indefinitely, going only where “God leads you” to evangelize to local populations that he has divinely placed in your path. It’s kind of a romantic notion.

On top of that, missionaries get all kinds of accolades from the rest of the Church congregation who have chosen to remain in their cities for whatever reason—career, family, kids, etc.

In a distant, previous lifetime, I was almost convinced that the lifestyle of a long-term international missionary might be for me. This happened after I took the Perspectives class—which I wrote about here—and it made a compelling argument for living a non-safe, non-standard Christian lifestyle. Alas, the class came too late for me in terms of where I was in my deconstruction. I would eventually travel soon afterward, but for work rather than for evangelism purposes. That travel would play a key role in finishing off my deconstruction.

Becoming a long-term missionary is not a true Mission because it causes harm. Missions are for people with a vision and want to leave their positive dent on the world when their life is all said and done. Although you’d be hard pressed to convince a Christian missionary of this when he’s in the throes of his work, mission work can be quite damaging to local populations.

• It’s sweeping in to change the beliefs and actions of a culture to make them more resemble western ideas.
• Building projects destabilize local economics, supply, and demand by interrupting the natural market.
• “Loving on orphans” creates a market for fake orphanages containing kids who aren’t actually orphans.
• Mission work tends to be more about the missionary and making their own selves feel good. I’ve written about this before.
• And, of course, the entire content of the message is just not true.

2. Become a Church Leader

Another mission held by many people in the Church is the pursuit of becoming some sort of leader, whether that be a head pastor, teaching pastor, youth director, worship leader, or just a member of a worship band.

When I was still in the Church, I saw many people pursuing these options. I had friends who knew they’d be heading to seminary right after college. I had other friends who invested tons of time volunteering with the worship band, even if they were ultimately taken advantage of. A few of these friends would go on to take jobs at other churches as worship directors. Others wanted to form Christian bands and tour the country, spreading the Gospel with their music. That didn’t pan out for them, but they were talented enough to do so, in my opinion.

But these kinds of leadership roles within the Church are not true missions.

Why? Because they are more like jobs than they are missions, and jobs are very rarely missions. Jobs are for people who are working in exchange for money to further the ideals and interests of their employer, whether or not you actually agree with those ideals or interests.

The Church, of course, doesn’t portray pastors and worship leaders as mere “jobs.” Tasked with the effort to evangelize Jesus to the entire world, they are deluded into thinking their jobs are actual missions.

Not only that, every pastor and worship leader has essentially the same objective: save souls for the Kingdom of God. Ideally, a real Mission should be tailored to the individual who brings a unique flavor and perspective that only he can bring into the world in his own way. That does not describe the “mission” of evangelizing Jesus to the world. For that, if you step a little too far outside of what’s accepted best practice, someone will let you know. You might even be fired from the church, since it’s a job and not a mission.

3. Being the Best Husband and Father

I suspect this one might be a little controversial.

Many Christian men, if asked, will tell you that their mission in life is to be the best husband to their wives and the best father to their children that they can possibly be. To be clear, I think this is a noble goal and a fantastic thing to strive for. But it’s not a mission.

It cannot be your mission. Why? Because it depends too much on other people. And even if those people are your spouse and children, you still cannot technically control what they do or don’t do.

Even if you do literally everything right, you are still only 50% of your relationship. You cannot control what your wife may or may not do. She may choose to divorce you for literally no reason and be gone from your life entirely. Your children, when they grow up, may decide to move very far away from you.

In both these cases, your stated mission of being the best husband and father collapses, and from no fault of your own.

A true Mission cannot be derailed by the actions of a handful of people. Missions tend to focus not on the few, but the many and the wider world. If a handful of people aren’t interested in being helped by your Mission, then that’s fine, because there will be thousands more out there who are. All you have to do is find them.

Please don’t think I’m telling you to not be the best husband and father you can possibly be. Of course not. But you can do that at the same time as having a Mission that focuses on bettering the wider world. I’d also argue that one of the best ways to be the best husband and father is to allow your family to see that you have a Mission you care deeply about, that you strive toward daily, and how passionate you are about working toward a positive change in the world.