I think this is the point of the editorial that you seem to be missing. It's not saying Evangelicals aren't doing missionary work "per se", rather that there is a need for missionary work still here in the US, while many Evangelicals are sending their kids and young adults off to foreign countries.
There's not a poor person in this country who doesn't have access to all kinds of government sponsored social services, free food, free healthcare, free education, free cell phones, free transportation to said services, etc....
By your own words you're demonstrating the claim of the editorial true. You're just surrendering all the people here, in the US, to government "help" (ie control). Just as the editorial said, you apparently think the government can, or should, not only meet the physical needs of the "poor" but their spiritual needs.
This isn't a comfortable article to read but I think it's an important one. Recently I discovered in myself a desire to do some kind of charitable (or as you might call it "missionary") work. I went to my friends with the proposal that we start doing something, maybe visiting a nursing home or helping out at a soup kitchen. But my friends told me of a more pressing need, not more urgent because of its severity but more urgent because it was more local. It turns out that a friend I had lost touch with has a need for charity. For Christ really.
The point is as Christians, really as imperfect human beings we tend to compartmentalize all aspects of our lives even our Faith. So we like to even think of evangelization or mission as something we do on weekends, with strangers at another location.
This is, I believe exactly what the editorial is criticizing. This notion that we can compartmentalize the great commission like we do other things in our life like mowing the lawn or cleaning out the garage. Also, this tendancy (that I too like everyone has) to, when we do want to do charitable work, we seek such opportunity elsewhere, by going to different places either across town or across the globe, instead of reaching out to say our neighbor, or even our friends. It's more comfortable ultimately to do missionary work that way because when our "shift" is over we can go back home and maybe say a prayer for the ones we "helped". But we eventually forget them.
This isn't true charitable work, I'd say. We do charitable work ultimately to encounter Christ either in the situation or in the people we help. But we can't do that if we compartmentalize it. Put it in a box only to be done on weekends or when we have free time, and then check it off the list when done. True charity is meeting people in their lives and being a part of it, this is really tough but it's what Christ calls us to do. To be truly human. To encounter Him.
Agreed this is uncomfortable, but it’s especially uncomfortable for those of us who believe in small government. The government has gradually assumed more and more of the church’s charitable work (along with a boatload of depravity thrown in) that it has no constitutional authority to do. If and when we DO achieve the smaller government envisioned by the Founders, we’ll have to dramatically step up charitable works.
But the way things stand now, the government is robbing all of us for these charitable works (and depraved works) making it difficult in the Obama economy to do much more.