As long as such men were cocooned in a nice comfortable mission station everything was fine. In his own ministry, Peter said it was not the danger of being shot at while crossing a border, or forging a crocodile-infested river, or even the danger of disease that ran most people off the field. It was the simple things like lack of hot showers and different food that most Westerners couldn't handle. The point being of course, that courage, integrity and perseverance are desperately lacking in far too many modern men. Most Christians form their concept of what it means to be a man from our culture.
Cultural influences are so powerful, often because they are so subtle.
The society in which we live exerts tremendous pressures on the individual. If Christians do not offer a consistent Biblical world view as an alternative, then our salt loses its savor and we end up adopting the same values as our culture. After a hundred years of sociological changes resulting from the Industrial Revolution, and the growth of new religions, Western men no longer have a valid role model of what it means to be men. The cultural values have changed, and men have changed with it. Christianized societies value self-control, discipline and hard, diligent work.