Jeanette Amundsen Klodt grew up in the home of career missionaries Roald and Harriet Amundsen in Unalakleet and Nome, Alaska where she was born. Her parents were classic pioneers and are credited with starting high schools, radio stations, a flying service, a vocational school, and children’s boarding homes as well as churches. While Roald saw himself as a missionary, he created jobs, educated native Alaskans, and served them with his aviation business. His charismatic personality endeared him to most everyone in western Alaska.
Jeanette affirmed the values she grew up with – learning the local culture, living in the community as servants of the people, and providing services in line with the needs of the area. While she wholeheartedly affirmed her parents’ ministry, she acknowledged that the world has changed. She suggested that missionaries, like her parents, who raised their own funding from churches in the lower 48 states, tended to see those churches as their bosses and looked to them for their needs. She noted it may be more helpful nowadays for missional workers to have a job for which they are paid a salary. In this way, they are more like the people, and not a revered cleric who is expected to be different.
She cited the Moravians2 who philosophically and practically integrated a job or business with their Christian faith. The motto of the Moravian Church is: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love”. The Moravian missionaries constituted the first large-scale Protestant missionary movement2, and they were the first to send lay people, rather than clergy. Jeanette notes the positive influence of the Moravians who arrived in Bethel, Alaska in 1885, and integrated faith with the culture, while providing jobs for people.
She summarized how she sees the future with a quote from Exodus 4 where God is instructing Moses to use what was in his hand. So should kingdom missional workers. They should use their skills and training, all while living and serving needs like Jesus did. In this way, they follow God in His mission.
- This vignette is one of many from the book, Missions Disrupted – From Professional Missionaries to Missional Professionals.
- Professor David Eung-Yul Ryoo writing on the Moravian mission strategy stated that “…they worked for the sake of the transmission of the gospel. Zinzendorf felt that not only would their practice and teaching of trades lift the economic level of the people to whom they were sent, but the exercising of the trades would also provide a way of natural interaction with these same people.”
Larry W. Sharp, BAM Support Specialist, IBEC Ventures
Larry.sharp@ibecventures.com