There are several ways in which missionaries help people through their work. We will be examining some of these. The missionaries in question here are those whose core business is that of evangelizing (that is, spreading the word of God, and converting people to their respective faiths). They are common in the religious faiths that endorse the idea of acquiring new believers by way of conversion through persuasion – such as Christianity and, to a certain extent, Islam. For this ‘conversion through persuasion’ to take place, it becomes necessary to have people doing the persuasion. Amongst those are the missionaries in question here. The missionaries are often sent to evangelize in areas where their faiths haven’t gained ground (new frontiers), thus not only increasing the numbers of their faiths’ followers, but also increasing the geographical spread of their respective faiths.

More often than not, the missionaries have to go beyond the call of simple evangelism. They also have to minister to the practical, physical needs of the people they aspire to evangelize to. This is the sort of ministry that pushes them into charity work. The people they are sent to evangelize often turn out to be poor people with pressing practical needs. Those are needs that have to be addressed, before any meaningful evangelization can take place. Thus, the missionaries often end up having to help people, in among other areas:

Education: in many parts where missionaries operate, they end up putting up schools. These are meant to provide members of the societies they evangelize to with education. Such education can then be the ‘light’ to guide them out of poverty and other socio-economic problems brought about by ignorance. The education also helps the missionaries further their core cause. Educated members of the societies that are evangelized to are able to read scriptures, which (hopefully and indeed often) hastens their conversion process, whilst also making them better practitioners of their new faiths.

Healthcare: in many parts where missionaries operate, they end up putting up hospitals. These cater for the health needs of the members of the societies they evangelize to. It is illogical to make an attempt at evangelizing to a person who has more pressing health issues. Often, the establishment of the hospitals ends up improving the standing of the missionaries (and by extension the faiths propagated by the missionaries) in the eyes of the members of the societies they try to evangelize. This is because the hospitals often prove helpful in the treatment of health conditions considered incurable by the often ‘primitive’ societies evangelized to. This makes the members of such societies get the impression that it is the faiths propagated by the missionaries which facilitate such healings, which hastens conversion to the manifestly ‘more powerful’ faiths.

Care for the elderly: in some parts of the world, especially where traditional social structures are broken down, vulnerable elderly people are often left unattended to. It often takes people of good disposition, such as the missionaries, to establish homes for such elderly people. The elderly people thus provided with nice places to stay are, in turn, easily persuaded to convert to the faiths propagated by the missionaries. That is because they can see the practical goodness of such faiths. Being elderly people in their last days on earth, they are also more amenable to the idea of preparing a good place for themselves in the hereafter.

Care for young abandoned children: in many parts where we have missionaries operating, they often set up rescue homes for such children. Naturally, the children are brought up in line with the tenets of the faiths propagated by the missionaries running the facilities they grow up in. This raises the probability of them become major proponents of such faiths when they grow up and leave the rescue homes/orphanages.

Spiritual care: this is given to all members of the societies where the missionaries have operations. It helps, in the sense that it often improves the levels of cohesiveness in such societies. We also have missionaries providing special spiritual care to people like prisoners and delinquent children undergoing rehabilitation. Such spiritual care usually goes a long way towards turning such people into model members of the society.

Operation of charities for helping the poor: this is like when the missionaries operate ‘soup kitchens’ where poor members of the society are fed. Some missionaries operating in rural areas may set up communal farms, where dispossessed members of the society are welcomed. In some areas, the missionaries often run vocational training centers, where poor youth are given practical skills to earn a living. Graduates of such centers are given startup capitals to kick-start their lives. Through these and other ways, the missionaries help the poor and vulnerable members of the society.

Missionaries are often involved in lots of charity works. This is in keeping with the scriptural admonition that ‘faith without works is dead.’ Thus, it is in a bid to introduce the ‘works’ component in their faith (which would then give such faith life) that the missionaries get involved in charity. Of course, many of the charities operated by the missionaries turn out to be in areas that directly or indirectly help them propagate their faiths. But the missionaries maintain that their goal is simply to help people in need. If such people are impressed with the respective missionaries’ faith and they opt to convert to such faiths, that is supposed to be purely incidental. This is not rhetoric. Indeed, we often see the charities operated by the missionaries wholeheartedly helping people who certainly wouldn’t consider converting to the faiths propagated by the missionaries.

Some of the charities operated by the missionaries turn out to be:

1. Healthcare charities: these help sick poor people access healthcare that would otherwise have been beyond their reach. In some cases, the healthcare charities help foot the medical bills of the folks who are unable to finance them. In other cases, the missionaries establish full-fledged ‘healthcare ministry arms’ through which they set up hospitals.

2. Educational charities: these help youngsters from humble backgrounds access educational services, for the betterment of their lives. In some cases, the missionaries go as far as actually setting up their own schools. These are typically schools with strong religious traditions, where the faiths propagated by the sponsoring missionaries are strongly taught, alongside mainstream (secular) education. There are many countries — especially the developing countries — in which we find a lot of missionary activity, where a huge percentage of schools turn out to be missionary-sponsored.

3. Feeding charities: these help poor people access nutritional food. There are people who are so poor that they can’t quite afford food for their day to day upkeep. These are people who are at risk of starving or starting to steal the food they need to stay alive. Some of the people in question turn out to be poor folks with kids as well. Those are kids whose growth (both physical and mental) risks getting stunted, thanks to lack of proper diet. It takes the intervention of the feeding charities, a good number of which are operated by the missionaries, to help avert such sad scenarios.

4. Orphanage charities: these help in the rescue and upbringing of kids who are abandoned by their parents whilst young. We also have some other missionaries operating charities where mothers with unwanted pregnancies are advised to deliver their kids for adoption (rather than aborting the kids, abortion being something that most faiths are vehemently against).

5. Counseling charities: these help people address mental and spiritual issues bothering them in a healthy way. These charities often turn out to be very helpful in the rehabilitation of offenders in prisons and young delinquents in juvenile homes. Members of the general public with pressing psychological problems often tap into these counseling charities’ services as well.