A Normal Missionary: Vivienne Stacey

At the moment, five or six people are helping to put all of Vivienne Stacey's writings together, for publication on www.stfrancismagazine.info. Vivienne has lived a very long and fruitful life as a 'stateswoman' for mission in the Muslim World, and she has allowed us to make all of her writings available on the internet. She went to Pakistan in 1954 and retired (well, officially) in the 1990s. This is normal in mission: it consumes a lifetime.

During her life as a missionary with Interserve, Vivienne was also connected with IFES (the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) and often spoke in meetings of that organization. No wonder she has friends all over the world.

May we see more missionaries like Vivienne. Presently, we see so many short-term people come (and especially: go) and I wonder what we are doing... Is this the mission God has called us to, or are we just helping people with getting a good experience or in their career-planning?

Just imagine Paul, or John, or Peter... after 3 or 6 years they returned home. 'We have served God as missionaries, but now we will work for assuring that we will not miss out on a pension arrangement. And our kids need to go to school. Of course this means we return to Galilee. And mind you, we need to take care of our aging parents.'

Give us more long-term people like Vivienne. These are the people impacting the Muslim world. They know the language, they become deeply embedded in the local church, they slowly begin to understand the culture in which they live. They become effective in speaking of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are in the process of uploading as many articles and books by Vivienne Stacey as we can lay our hands on, have a look here at stfrancismagazine.info.