Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith

by D.L. Mayfield

A social justice activist and writer shares her personal experience working with refugees and the ways her faith has been challenged and strengthened—leading her to experience the power of God’s love and find her true spiritual calling.

Determined to save the world, one soul at a time, nineteen-year-old D. L. Mayfield left her conservative Christian home to become a missionary to Somali Bantu refugees in Portland, Oregon. But after a decade proselytizing, she realized that she had not converted one single Muslim. “I am pretty much the worst missionary ever,” she despaired.

Yet in her time working with these displaced people, Mayfield’s eyes were opened to something much bigger. “I started to read the Scriptures with new eyes, informed by the people who the Bible was written by and to—the people at the margins of society. And it was so much better than I could have believed. The blessings of Jesus were to be found in the most unexpected places. The kingdom is real, alive, and changing everything—liberating, setting free, healing, and preaching news that is actually truly good, in the here and now.”

Assimilate or Go Home is the story of her awakening. Mayfield shows us how God’s love is transforming lives, and makes clear that instead of saving the world, we can join God’s party by loving all of our neighbors—especially those on society’s edge. With vulnerability and a touch of humor, Mayfield reflects upon how her faith was challenged, and urges all of us to reconsider our concepts of justice, love, and being a citizen of this world—and the kingdom of God.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Christian, Faith, Religion, Christianity, Biography

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2016

About the author

D. L. Mayfield lives and writes in Portland, OR with her husband and two small children. Mayfield likes to write about refugees, theology, and downward mobility, among other topics. She has written for places as varied as McSweeneys, Christianity Today, Image journal, and the Toast. Her book of essays, Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith is forthcoming from HarperOne in August 2016.

Reviews

[peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

One summer, when I was 19, I went to New York City for a two-week long evangelistic campaign. We were excited to "love NYC", especially the rough parts, despite the fact that most of us had never been there before. We stood in a circle and sang praise songs on busy street corners. We hung out in Port Authority trying to start friendly, non-awkward conversations with people as they raced to catch buses. I got mugged, and ended up pursuing the thief down the street, begging him to let me pray for him, which he did. I plopped myself down on a bench in Battery Park next to the only other person in the park that afternoon and said "Do you know Jesus?" which was pretty much the beginning and the end of that conversation.

So I was curious about "Assimilate or Go Home" when it came out, and a little nervous. When it comes to religious practice, my own story sounds pretty weird outside of a very narrow cultural context and, while I've gotten used to that fact, it is still sometimes daunting to read the words other people write about that culture.

But in Danielle's book it was obvious I had found a fellow pilgrim. It might as well be me she was describing when she writes "I was never one of those kids with a good testimony, a story full of intoxicating addictions, the appeal of the sinner-turned-saved. I was destined for the far murkier sands of the religious upright, inadvertently becoming someone who was so good that they didn't need saving anymore." I’m pretty sure I’ve got something similar written in a journal somewhere.

This is a broken book, I think, but in a deeply satisfying way. Mayfield invites us into her story of starting out, going in the ditch, and then starting out again, and again and again. It is not so much a narrative of success as it is one of faithfulness and digging back out despite the loss. And each time it did, through a potent mix of unflinching honesty and the unexpected discovery of grace, it gave me strength and courage to do the same.

Mayfield is posing some deeply important questions about how religious faith is to behave in the public square. She challenges the missionary impulse to a re-examination its motives. She dares to suggest that the most important thing is to be willing to be weak, rather than powerful, and to receive help, instead of dropping in with all the answers. In the end, she calls believers to “a place where we throw off the voices telling us to insulate ourselves from both the great brokenness of the world and burning fire that is the love of God.”

In the end, I don’t think I saved very many people in New York that summer. There was this one guy in the subway station who sort of prayed the prayer, but that was about it. Like so often happens on these short-term trips, I’m pretty sure I was the one who was most changed. But now I wonder if even that clumsy summer trip was a necessary part of the process, part of stepping into the brokenness and the burning fire. I’m pretty sure I failed to save New York, but maybe failure is where it all begins.

[McKayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps this makes me a fellow failed missionary, but this is the most relatable biography I’ve read to date. Elizabeth Elliot & co. Might be more commendable, and definitely more quotable, but I found Mayfield to be far more relatable. Sometimes I felt like I was reading my own journal, other times I was relieved that there was an already articulated thought to a lingering feeling.
I’m not saying she’s perfect, I’m just saying I get it.

Topics somewhat include: A confrontation of the hero/martyr complex which is needed, both for myself and all the other do-gooders. Stories of trying so hard to be the one to serve someone only to become the needy one and finding an authenticity in the relationship that can’t be taught at “training.” The way that American privilege and comfort in our own Empire has stumped our desire to see his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Not knowing how to pray at the end of the day because most days kingdom work really just feels like your “do-gooder ass is being handed to you” (her words not mine, but I do wish I could claim them). And yet, on those days, Jesus still makes it clear that he sitting right here with you & isn’t going anywhere. (Spoiler alert: his love for us isn’t contingent upon our works!!) And in some way, the toll that it feels like this work is taking on your faith, is actually just God’s means of helping us better understand what Jesus meant in all that Sermon on the Mount talk.

Disclaimer: There is some theological vagueness in the book that I don’t care to hash out in my review (some guy named Nathan wrote a review that hit the nail on the head so go look at that if you want to know what I think there.) But, this book was more for the camaraderie for me than it is a theologically dense recommendation for struggling Missionary.

[Christie Purifoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a thoughtful, beautiful, and ultimately hopeful collection of personal essays. Like the author, I have sometimes felt that to witness too closely the lives of the poor in America, and especially the lives of immigrant and refugee poor, would lead in only two directions: either losing myself to despair or saving myself by retreating to a comfortable, walled-off middle class existence. Of course, there is a third option, and Mayfield, with heartbreaking honesty and humility, shows us this way as she discovers it for herself. By the end of the book, it is clear that any retreat to comfortable isolation is no salvation at all. Ultimately, this book is an invitation to a party. And everyone is invited.

[Lori Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assimilate or Go Home is the story of one woman's beautiful coming undone. It is her personal struggle to move from trying to convert the world to Christ to simply loving the world because she has been, and is continually being, converted. D.L. humbly lets us into the raw, honest parts of her story, where her evangelical upbringing and her present day walk with Jesus rub up against one another and challenge all that she knows about God, the world and herself. This book is her invitation to lay down all that we think we know about Christianity and follow Jesus into the margins, where everything is upside down and bursting with the kingdom that Jesus was always talking about; the kingdom where the Good News is actually good news to the people living there.
DL Mayfield is a master storyteller with the kind of prose that draws you in and causes you to let go of every preconceived thought or belief you once held dear. This book is a game changer for anyone willing to follow Jesus into the margins or just across the street.

[Laura (Book Scrounger) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated this book from a "failed missionary" who, despite whatever failings does clearly have a heart for the refugee people she has worked with and befriended, and tries to trace the evolution of her thinking from an idealistic Bible school graduate ready to make converts, to someone who learned to listen and see things from their perspective, and also to see Jesus in the brokenness of the world.
While I don't identify so much with her fervor for missions, I can absolutely identify with the need to please and the desire to be seen as fulfilling the duties of your faith. So many paragraphs resonated with me and have given me a lot to think about. I also really like the clear pictures she gives us of the Somali Bantu families and individuals who became her friends, as well as the explorations of the many obstacles they face in just surviving in the USA.

[J. Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you look around your congregation and every one looks pretty much like you (as mine does to me) and you wonder how to do outreach to those don't look like you, read this book. You'll learn much from this "failed" missionary -- her writing and teaching should be read by every congregation thinking of doing community outreach to "the other."

[Lauren Welsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

hit me right where it hurt, loved this book !!

[Nathan Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the one hand, this is an excellent read. DL Mayfield is extremely honest about how her upbringing shaped her vision of what a missionary should be. She chronicles the many ways that spending years ministering to and receiving blessings from refugees challenged and changed this vision. Her stories are a gut-punch for Christians in America who are blind to the incredible amount of privilege we hold and the unseen oppression both this privilege and our attitudes create. The book repeatedly challenged me--a very heady person--to get off the couch and move towards relationships with people on the margins. Knowing Jesus requires not just right thinking, but serving everybody and vulnerably sharing life with those that society rejects.

On the other hand, there are a lot of issues with DL Mayfield's unspoken theology. Through her experiences and spending time in the Bible, Mayfield turns from the fundamental conservatism common among middle class white Americans. However, she fails to present a concrete vision of what she turns to. It is clear she embraces the Franciscan vision that downward mobility is to be embraced. As she ventures down this path, she learns to best be present with her neighbors and friends but admits that teaching them English or wishing different life choices from what their culture prescribes are futile tasks. Her vision of Jesus is very experience-based, and its evolution is very much presented as a way for her to jive the Jesus of the Bible with her experiences. But ultimately she doesn't present a vision for why her neighbors need Jesus or the paths she pursues to show them Jesus. At one point, she seems to admit that her current life philosophy is "deeds, not creeds." And this is ultimately where the book let me down.

In sum, the book is challenging, honest, and fantastic in many ways. She sympathizes strongly with Jesus' love for the marginalized and I am incredibly inspired to do the same. But, in the end, there was a strong dose of Jesus and the gospel he preached that is absent.

[Leigh Kramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first came across DL Mayfield on McSweeney's. Her essays about living among refugees were stunning and I swiftly followed her on Twitter, ready to read whatever she'd give us. A few years have since passed and it was a thrill to read her book. Some of those essays from McSweeney's make an appearance, although they seem to have been expanded. I was impressed with Danielle's vulnerability: the way she lays bear her old assumptions and how this impacted her relationship with her refugee friends, the way she discusses her struggles and her privilege, her honesty about her doubts. In Assimilate Or Go Home, she avoids the voyeurism that is so often present in missionary accounts and instead challenges us as readers to consider our own assumptions, judgments, and privilege in our day to day lives. Well worth reading.

Disclosure: I received an ARC from HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review.

[Christiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recounting stories from her four years living with and working with Somali Bantu refugees, D.L. Mayfield's book takes us into the depths of the human soul. She is hardest on herself as she recalls the idealism (meant to save others) that actually pushes others away. It is only when she begins to see her neighbors as friends instead of people to be rescued that her own faith is transformed. D.L.
is a modern mystic. Longing to be a flame for God, this is her journey from do-gooder to neighbor.
A must read!

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Not a literary masterpiece, but definitely a worthwhile story about learning to find the kingdom of God in the margins. Teenage/young adult me could’ve used this freedom from striving to be the “good evangelizer” I thought I was supposed to be.

[Kimberly Patton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this honest book of essays about refugee ministry and life. The author delves deep into modern Christianity and I found many similarities from my own upbringing. I loved the way her faith fell apart and came back together and how she learned that love is the most powerful gift of all. Really beautifully written. I would recommend to Christians that need a fresh perspective on what it means to minister to the poor.

[S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had read it years ago, but in some ways you must live this or something close to it to have the same realizations. I am not sure I would have listened.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

We live in a divided America: Republican and Democrat; haves and have-nots; Caucasians and minority communities; Christians and Muslims (or really anyone else), educated elites and the illiterate. We are divided by politics, religion, race, economics, and culture. And you don't have to look too far for evidence of how deep the divide. We've witnessed the public debate over who's lives matter whenever someone gets killed and have heard the startling statistic that three-quarters of white Americans are without any minority friends.

What Makes D.L. Mayfield's memoir Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith  so good is the way she opens up about the challenges of living in the divide.  Raised on a steady diet of missionary biographies and dreams of heroic self-sacrifice she began living and working with Somali-Bantu refugees with hopes of winning converts and gaining significance from her missional efforts. Instead she found her Somali friends eyed her with suspicion and treated her presence with benign neglect. Committed to friendship with her Somali friends, her attitude gradually shifts to one which is more reciprocal and mutual than that of mere missionary. Her mission field transforms as she learns to give and share the love of God with her Somali neighbors.

When Mayfield begins her mission, she is full of privileged assumptions and believed-expertise. She confronts her own privilege, her  need for recognition, and she makes the shift from expert/sage to that of listener. Here are a couple notable quotes I underlined as I read (chapter titles in parentheses, the electronic copy I read didn't allow me to specify location) :

I am not poor. I drink lattes during droughts, eat hamburgers during famines. I profit off the world I was born into, an economic system that crushes and oppresses. The problem was that I was born at the top, and so all of those troubles at the bottom used to seem so hazy to me. This is the real problem of being rich and happy and healthy and popular: it becomes easy, oh so easy, to forget about the rest. (Wade in the Water)

The longer I knew my refugee friends, the more ignorant I became. Or at least, this is how it seemed to me. I started off so confident, so sure of my words and actions. Over time, I became immersed in their problems, falling headfirst into a crash course on how hard it is to make it on the margins of the Empire, and I ended up becoming overwhelmed, overworked, and slightly bitter. I went from feeling like an expert to a saint to finally nursing the belief that I was a complete and utter fraud and failure, and this was the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s the only way I could ever start to learn to be a listener. (Part 4, The Life-Changing Magic of Couch Sitting)

I liked Mayfield's book a lot. In part because I could relate to it. I spent two years in 'urban mission,' prior to going to seminary, with organizations that required me to raise personal support. In the early days of my mission I found it easy to write 'support letters' telling friends back home about what good work I was doing in the inner-city. However these letters became harder to write farther into my tenure as missionary. It became harder for me to 'pimp the poor' and as I was confronted daily with the cycles of poverty, addiction and racial inequities, I wondered what good we were doing. Prayer became difficult for me as I watched neighbors and homeless friends gain one small victory only to hit with an insurmountable roadblock (or get sucked back into an addiction).

Mayfield names a similar sense of disillusionment as the missionary romance wears off for her, but she comes out the other end, hopeful, if chastened. Books like this are necessary because they image for us what it looks like to learn to lay down our privilege, rights, and delusions of grandeur in order to join in relationship with the other. In a divided nation like ours, this is sorely needed. I give this book five stars and recommend it to anyone, especially those of us on the privileged side of the divide.

Note: I received this book from BookLookBloggers in exchange for my honest review.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a series of essays and, as such, was a bit choppy to read. Our book club decided that it was a little frustrating because there's really no sense of timeline; one essay she's in Portland, the next she's moved somewhere else. She bounces between her teenage self and her married-with-kids self and that can be a bit jarring for the reader.

But since I work with Somali/Somali Bantu and direct an ESL program for adults, I was really eager to read this. I resonate completely with her experiences and shift in perspective from centering herself to realizing her role is much smaller than she once believed. No one who has worked with this community could come away unchanged, and I really enjoyed reading someone else's stories that are so very similar to mine. Her honesty about not reaching the goals she once had for herself is refreshing. I wish more people with agendas and who are so confident of what others need or want would read books like this and think deeply about what they might be being asked to let go of and how to find their place on the margins.

[Debbie Howell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a series of essays written by a young woman who earnestly and admirably sought ways to connect with and help refugees in her community. The writing is good and the topic is interesting, but something about the structure of the book didn't work for me. Maybe I would have liked it more if Mayfield had written it as a chronological story of her experiences and growth, more memoir-style. Still, there were some parts I liked. In the essay "Oh to Be of Use" Mayfield talks about her feelings of helplessness and failure. After years of working with immigrants, she and her family moved into low-income housing so that they could better build friendships and share life with the people there, to be available to help in some way, yet she ultimately realized there were things that couldn't be fixed, things she couldn't be part of. She wanted above all to be useful, but when she came to a point of feeling useless her own faith changed and deepened. If you're interested in what it's like to be an immigrant assimilating into American culture, you may enjoy this book. The author's blog would also be a good resource with much of the same content available.

[Lindsy Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Danielle’s words comfort me like few others do. Her ability to see the world as Jesus does, from a place I believe he would have resided, and put it into achingly beautiful words is a precious gift.

Thank you Danielle, for your ministry of baking cakes and writing words. For your willingness to cut out a piece of your heart and put it into the pages of a book for all of us to see. Thank you for sharing your own doubts, your own fears, your own brokenness. Thank you for loving your neighbors well, honoring their stories, and inspiring me to do the same. You are moving the Kingdom and writing us all home.

[Ruthie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest and relatable

I went into this book blind. Amazon recommended it, it looked interesting, and it cost 2 bucks. I didn't expect to find myself immersed in a collection of essays that I couldn't stop reading.

This is the book that I want to recommend to everyone I know - especially those involved in some kind of long term ministry. Those are the people who know first hand that ministry isn't all dramatic stories and lightning bolt moments. Those are also the people who will appreciate this beautifully written reminder that in the middle of the everyday, God is present and faithful - and that he doesn't always look like what we imagine when we're young.

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

The back reads " what refugees taught me about the gospel that I never learned in church." As a fellow pastor's kid, who became a doer in a helping people profession in close proximity to poverty this book spoke to many things I am been have been thinking about: the idol of helping, the reality that helping sometimes makes things worse, the trauma of being a refugee, the trauma of generational poverty and that many of us are the older brother in the story of the prodigal son.

[Rachel Hafler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest, raw, and beautifully intense. This book was a healing process and a hopeful, convicting push to examine my own 'failed missionary' heart. I read it in one night and cried through most of it because Mayfield's story resonates so closely with my own. I love that her essays were arranged according to the cycles of refugees acclimating to a new home and that she acknowledged how this is not a linear journey. I've seen these messy stages in my own life and also in the lives of my refugee students. Her deep love for her neighbors, friends, and students flows out of these essays. The kingdom of God is for everybody, at all times, and I will return to this book again and again as I discover this beautiful truth in my own life. The ministry of baking cakes (or brownies or pies) is one that I excel at and I'm learning that it is enough.

[Ansley Gerhard-Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d recommend this book to anyone struggling with what it looks like to be a faithful witness in the age of massive inequality. Danielle shares her story with brutal honesty, a young woman who tries to convert her refugee friends and instead finds herself being the one changed. She comes face to face with horrific trauma, extreme poverty and the culture shock that comes with being forced to leave your country and ending up in a country where you aren’t wanted. One of the moments that stuck to me out the most was when her and her husband were lamenting to a neighbor about how on the killer of a young Black boy in their neighborhood was not facing charges. Her neighbor replied “You two have the luxury of being surprised. Nobody else around here does.”

[Al Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Failed Missionary" is such a resonate sub-title. If most of us are being honest, this might be the highest level we could aspire to in our Faith walk, because it at least denotes an attempt. This well-told story of one woman's faith walk and her interactions with her immigrant neighbors is packed with meaning, inspiration and the reality of never really being at the top of our game. And how freeing it is to approach our faith life from that perspective. We are ordinary, real-life brothers and sisters on a journey and we need to share that journey, potholes, speed bumps and all. And we need to know how to change course when we hit a dead end. I highly recommend this read for its pure encouragement.

[Mieke McBride · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really powerful book about a woman who knew she wanted to be a missionary from a young age. She sees an opportunity to do this in the US among refugees but quickly finds herself confronting obstacles-- internal and external-- and realizing flaws in her views of God. I recognized so much in this book and greatly appreciated the author's candor. The book is divided into four parts and each contains important steps in her faith journey and development. I don't know what else to really compare this book to, but it was a great one to start 2018 off with and many parts I'll continue to think on.

[Hannah Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

An uncomfortably insightful book. To say I enjoyed it would be a stretch but I felt known by this book and as if this author would recognize me on the street.

"I am poor in that I do not know how to love people just as they are. I am poor, in that I do not know how to love myself if I am not actively giving something. I am poor in that I do not know if I have the strength to see the kingdom of God as it is meant to be played out."

The truth burns in this one.

[Lindsey Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book brought me to tears in the most inspiring way. D. L. so eloquently describes her experience working alongside refugees and the urban poor. Her stories are raw and challenging. Everyone should read this book!

[Samuel Kassing · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a sobering read. Mayfield’s prose are beautiful and her thoughts are clear and moving. I resonated with much of the book. I’m still wrestling if I left this little volume with more sober hope or if I left in a more neutral place. Maybe with some time I’ll come back and change this review.

[Rebekah O'Dell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was beautifully-written and completely convicting. I will be thinking about this book for a long time and recommending it to lots of readers.

[Ruth Potinu · Rating 5 out of 5]

More people need to read this book an honest look at what living out missions can look like. Engaging and well written.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays about the author's time living among refugee populations in the US. Books of essays are prone to feeling disconnected, and this one is no different. The chapters don't flow, and the time line jumps around. This makes it difficult to sit down and read more than one chapter at a time. That said, this is a good book if you want to get an idea of what it is like to be an immigrant to the US, at least through the eyes of a white, US-born Christian woman.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This felt like the Christian version of Eat Pray Love - a woman finding herself via a narrative where every other person is a plot device. Unfortunately, the plot devices are refugee communities... :-/ I suspect this book is rated highly because her story is sort of unusual among white evangelical Christians, but that group is not the only group of Christians in America by any stretch of the imagination. There are plenty of people doing incarnational work without coming off sounding self-righteous and exoticizing other culture groups.

"As it turns out, I also believed that my refugee friends were a sort of prop: nominal, one-dimensional stories in the great saga of my own life. When I finally started to believe the opposite, to see them as complex, flesh-and-blood people, everything got much, much harder."

"I realized more than anything—I wanted to live here, in the midst of them. I wanted to understand where they had come from, the ways they lived their lives. I wanted to eat their food and see if I could get anyone to laugh. I wanted to understand this place, this apartment complex that was a place itself inside a city that could care less; I wanted to escape and be changed by the people who were to me as exotic as a palm tree, a man-made island in the midst of my long blue sea of a life."

"There would be places for me wherever I went, places that made me feel and think and see things differently. It did not have to be the square, beige box of the successful American story (already, even at age fifteen, the thought of years of academia and jobs seemed stifling and soul crushing). There was color to be found in all the gray." ::eyeroll::

"To follow my dream of becoming a missionary, of working full time with people who needed me, to chase that intoxicating feeling of discovering other worlds, I knew I needed training."

"Thus, in many ways my classes were a break from reality. I could finally engage who I really was, a girl who fantasized about preaching in the underground church in Belarus, a girl who wanted to live in an Indian orphanage, or an African hospital, or a Chinese school. Wherever there was danger, persecution, a lack of resources and education and gospel witness—this is where I wanted to go. I loved Jesus, of course, that was always in the back of my mind. But in reality, what I wanted more than anything was to be of use to somebody."

"For far too long the only narrative I believed was the one where I came in and cleaned it all up and took it upon my own two shoulders—where I was the infinite in the wide, gaping ocean of sorrow."

"I didn’t see how that meant that my neighbors and refugee friends became my stepping stones in attaining the love of God; I didn’t see how it meant that I was using everyone around me in real and devastating ways." (the only essay I liked, because she came clean about her motivations).