Advent Devotions

Today’s author is Naomi Sveholm. Naomi is a missionary with Central Europe Teachers teaching English at a bilingual Lutheran high school in Bratislava, Slovakia with her spouse and two children.

The first emissaries of the British Empire, especially in the 19th century, were missionaries and merchants. They established relationships and trade with locals, forcing shifts in culture and language and exploiting natural resources. When trouble inevitably followed, so did the British military, quelling conflict with force and ultimately occupying and dominating the territory so that at its peak in the early 20th century, about 20% of the global population was part of the British Empire.

It is partly because of this historical baggage and interdependence on colonizing forces that many missionaries are uncomfortable with being called missionaries, although many of the ELCA’s current missionaries are teaching English, working with locally-run organizations, or teaching in already established seminaries.

As an English teacher in a bilingual Slovak high school, I am technically considered a missionary. And I am also uncomfortable being called one. Although this year I have been involved with a number of activities that are more mission-oriented, such as speaking with a student about being queer and Christian, leading discussions wrestling with moral issues in literature we’re reading, and listening to a very angry student complain about how un-Christian many Christians behave, my day-to-day work is much more likely to involve discussions of Slovak traditions or trying to explain thesis statements for the umpteenth time in a way that might possibly make sense.

Because of my work with Central Europe Teachers, I was interviewed several years ago for a Lutheran publication in Slovakia and asked about the Great Commission, Jesus’ final command to go out and make disciples. Slovakia is about 69% Christian (higher than the US’s 62%) and the Lutheran church has been ordaining women since 1951, almost 20 years before the ELCA’s predecessor ALC started doing the same—why would Slovakia even need missionaries? I wrestled a lot with my ideas of the Great Commission and the baggage of being a missionary, but ultimately came to peace with the idea that my way of making disciples is to love my students and strive to bring out the best in them.

My students are all individuals and one person’s best might be a change from an attitude of dismissal to working hard for significantly improved skills and scores (I’ve seen it happen) while another’s best might just be making it to school physically on a tough day. It has been fun, too, seeing graduates around town and hearing about opportunities they’ve had to exercise interests and gifts I never got to see in the classroom because the classroom didn’t allow them to express those different interests and gifts.

These differences are also reflected in this week’s text, in which there are a variety of gifts but the same spirit, and varieties of activities but the same God who activates them. Even if Slovakia doesn’t need missionaries, it does need workers and service. So does the US. We are all members of one body and there is neither Jew nor Greek, Slovak nor American, slave nor free, but one spirit that is the body of Christ, and I hope we are all loving and striving to bring out the best in one another, no matter what form that takes.


Dear God,
Help us see how to serve you and bring out the best in your children, the community that makes up the body of Christ.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen