The Cheerleader and the Curmudgeon
Being Honest in the Way We Speak About Mission
Imagine spending several days squeezed onto the bench seat of an old pickup truck. On one side sits a cheerleader in uniform. On the other, a curmudgeon in overalls. Between them is you—a bewildered traveler trying to make sense of the world.
The cheerleader sees possibility everywhere. The road ahead is full of adventure and stories yet to be written. Her idealism is impossible to hide.
The curmudgeon has seen too much to be impressed. He knows how often plans unravel, how ideals can outrun reality. He has scars beneath his cynicism.
For mile after mile, they argue between blocks of tense silence.
One insists that the world is brighter than we think.
The other that it is harder than we imagine.
And somewhere between them, you are left wondering which one is telling the truth.
When I think about encouraging people toward missional zeal, I often think about that pickup truck. Part of me wants to be the cheerleader. God’s mission is beautiful. The invitation to join him is worth giving our lives to. Your gain will be a hundredfold (Mark 10:30).
And yet another part of me wants to be the curmudgeon. The obedient Christian life can be lonely, disorienting, and painful. The cost is real. It may, at some point, break your heart and possibly your body. Possibly even your faith.
Over the years, I have found myself listening to both voices, and sometimes being their mouthpiece. Living between them has drawn me to an important question: which does mobilization require more—excitement or sobriety?
Becoming Disillusioned
My desire to hold these competing instincts together comes from experience.
Growing up in a rural small town, I needed someone to awaken me to God’s heart for the nations. When that awakening finally came, it came through conferences, guest speakers, and college ministries. During my junior year, the Traveling Team visited my campus, and for the first time I felt a deep longing to spend my life serving among other cultures.
In many ways, I needed the cheerleader.
I needed someone to tell me that following Jesus could be more global and more adventurous than I had imagined. I needed someone to challenge my assumptions and call me toward obedience. The hype worked.
What no one prepared me for was how difficult obedience could become.
Only eighteen months after moving overseas, I experienced a mental and physical breakdown. Part of the pain was the breakdown itself. Another part was my surprise that it had happened at all.
I knew missionary life would involve sacrifice. I did not expect my ongoing sinfulness. I did not expect seasons of boredom. I did not expect the frustration of team conflict. I did not expect how easily idealism could erode beneath the weight of daily life in a hard place.
Looking back, I wish I had listened more openly to those who gave warnings. Not to discourage me from going, but to help me normalize the troubles when they arrived.
Years later, when I became a missions pastor, stepping into the role of the cheerleader felt natural. God’s mission is exciting. Inviting people into it is exciting. I gladly waved the pom-poms.
But then I watched people go.
And I watched them suffer.
Some thrived. Some struggled. Some came home carrying wounds deeper than anyone expected.
One family I had walked with closely endured unhealthy leadership, a violent mugging, and eventually the loss of a child. As I watched them endure and ultimately come home, I began to revisit my own story. I found myself wondering whether I had spoken too much about the beauty of mission without speaking honestly enough about its cost.
Slowly, almost without noticing, I laid down my pom-poms and picked up a cane. The curmudgeon had arrived.
Becoming Wise
I am not sure faithfulness asks us to choose between excitement and sobriety.
When I am only a cheerleader, the curmudgeon grumbles. When I am only a curmudgeon, the cheerleader protests. Each voice seems to know something the other forgets.
The cheerleader remembers that God’s mission is thrilling.
The curmudgeon remembers that obedience can hurt.
For a season, I treated these voices as enemies. But slowly, I have come to believe they are not meant to rage against each other. They are meant to be gathered and redeemed into something wiser.
Maybe the better word is “sage.”
A sage is not merely someone with experience. Plenty of experienced people become cynical. A sage is someone who has learned to see reality more truthfully, without turning away from either its beauty or its sorrow.
Zack Eswine describes the work of a sage as learning to look over reality without closing his eyes to its madness and folly.1 That kind of wisdom does not flatten the world into simple categories. It does not pretend suffering is less painful than it is. It also does not allow suffering to have the final word.
This is why Scripture gives us wisdom literature. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job do not speak from only one angle. They teach us to live in a world where diligence matters and outcomes still confound us, where joy is a gift and grief is honest, where God is good and life under the sun is meaningless.
Wisdom has a way of taking truths that seem opposed and teaching us how to hold them together.
God’s mission is lovely.
God’s mission is costly.
Both are true.
And at the center of Christian wisdom stands Christ himself. Paul calls him “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). In him, all the hidden treasures of wisdom (Colossians 2:3) are not merely explained but embodied.
The gospel is the clearest revelation of this wisdom. Jesus’ crucifixion was the worst thing that ever happened and the best thing that ever happened—at the same time. Human sin did its darkest work. Divine love accomplished its deepest grace.
Only the wisdom of God can teach us to see both.
So perhaps the question is not whether faithfulness requires more excitement or more sobriety. Perhaps faithfulness requires wisdom: the wisdom to speak of gain without naivety, and loss without despair.
I may still live between the cheerleader and the curmudgeon. But Christ, the Wisdom of God, lives in me.
Telling the Whole Story
If wisdom means learning to hold joy and sorrow together, then perhaps the most important quality in missional mobilization is honesty.
Not pessimism. Not optimism. Honesty.
The kind of honesty that refuses to hide the cost of obedience while also refusing to hide its reward.
Years ago, when I first learned to write and deliver liturgy, we were taught to speak with “strength and joy.” The words themselves needed to be honest about the brokenness of the world. But they also needed to point people toward the unshakable reality of God. I have never forgotten that.
The image that comes to mind is not a missions conference but a gathering of veterans. In a podcast series marking the twentieth anniversary of the film miniseries Band of Brothers, the actors repeatedly described their encounters with the World War II veterans they were portraying.2 The most memorable moments came when the veterans gathered together and simply told their stories.
They laughed. They cried. They remembered victories and failures.
The young actors sat captivated. Idealism was being replaced by something deeper. Not cynicism.
Wisdom.
I have witnessed similar moments whenever Christians who have walked in long obedience tell the truth about their lives. Not polished testimonies or recruiting speeches. But also not just horror stories. Rather, a multi-layered glimpse into the real person.
I remember one missionary recounting how his daughter nearly died because medical care was hours away. As he told the story, years later, the pain was still visible. Then he looked around the room and asked: “Are you ready to lose a child over this?”
The room fell silent. You could almost hear idealism hitting the floor.
And yet no one wanted to leave. That is what fascinates me.
The story did not make God’s mission less compelling. It made it more believable.
It is the same honesty we hear in Jesus during the final hours before his crucifixion. In John 13–17, he speaks of glory, joy, friendship, and the kingdom to come. But he is also painfully honest about suffering, betrayal, scattering, and death.
He tells the whole story. And somehow that honesty makes his invitation more compelling, not less—at least to those with ears to hear.
That is the posture I want in the way I speak about mission. I want to tell the whole story.
The beauty and the cost.
The victories and the disappointments.
The laughter and the tears.
The moments when God’s presence felt undeniable and the moments when faith was fragile. I want to speak with strength and joy; with honesty.
I want to stay in the old pickup truck.
Zack Eswine, Preaching to a Post-Everything World: Crafting Biblical Sermons That Connect with Our Culture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008)
Roger Bennett, host, Band of Brothers Podcast, HBO, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15779510/