Happy December! As we wrap up another year of Missionary Care articles, Andy Johnson speaks to sending churches on what they need to know about supporting their workers during the holiday season, as well as offers a few words to those serving on the field.
One of the most important roles that a sending church plays in the life of a missionary family is to assure them that they are loved and seen and heard. Site visits are a great opportunity to accomplish this - provided those who are go are well prepared to do so. This month, Chris Shelby, who speaks from a place of having both been a missionary and one who sends missionaries, shares with us insight about how to truly and deeply bless the missionaries we visit.
Last month, we considered some of what it takes to discern a call from God to the mission field. This month, Andy Johnson talks to us about two other early steps in the life of a missionary family: bonding time with the sending church and the creation of a working agreement between the missionary family and their church.
Growing up the son of a preacher, I wanted to be anything but one - yet eventually spent over 20 years preaching because I felt called. My father always told me, “Don’t preach if you can do anything else.” He wasn’t discouraging me from ministry. Rather, he was advising me not to do something as demanding as ministry if I didn’t have a clear calling. If you can have peace outside of ministry, you likely have not been called. That turned out to be good advice.
If you are a part of a missions committee or missionary care team for a sending church, you have likely wrestled with the question, “How do we best prepare for the furlough or home assignment for those we have sent to the field?” They are coming to the States for potentially 6-8 weeks. Where do we start? What needs to be on our To-Do list?
Furloughs (or home assignment) are a complicated part of mission field life. They are opportunities for connection, renewal, learning, and communication. They are also opportunities for exhaustion, loneliness, and self-doubt. This month, Kevin Linderman, longtime missionary to Tanzania and current Executive Director of African Christian Hospitals, speaks to how missionaries can make the most of their furloughs.
As we wrap up our exploration of the Member Care Model first developed by the O’Donnells, we get to hear from Carol Manley this month. She is a mental health care professional with a heart for hurting people, particularly those serving cross-culturally. She speaks from a wealth of professional experience as well as love for God’s people. I have seen her in action, and she has much to offer all of us!
In our monthly journey together through our model for member care, we’ve come to the circle of care that we call "specialist care." These are the professionals who step in on an as-needed basis to help missionaries with specific needs. We’ll eventually hear from two; this month, Dr. Sonny Guild will speak to the importance of an outside team consultant.
It was March 27, 2013. Our good friends, John and Rhonda were on their 30th anniversary “bucket list” Caribbean cruise with another couple, Ron and Hope, also from Ohio. While playing on Nassau beach, facing away from the ocean, John was suddenly struck from behind. A large rolling wave snapped back his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down, face down in the water. In seconds, he realized he was in trouble, but helpless. Unless someone noticed, unless someone cared, he would drown in moments.
I received the emergency phone call well after the sun had gone down. As a missionary in northern Thailand, I had already worked hard that day and felt quite tired. It was one of our new Christian sisters who cried out in a panicked voice, “My brother is possessed by demons who are telling him to kill himself! Please help us, we don’t know what to do!”
The feeling in the room was electric. After months of separation by lockdown, we were finally in the room together. Sure, we’d seen each other regularly on Zoom calls and the like, but to be together physically is something completely different. The joy we felt in the presence of each other went beyond words shared. The Apostle Paul must have known this feeling.
I remember the day well. We were into our second year as missionaries in Mexico City. I remember the emotions I felt looking down off of a balcony and seeing my car parked on the busy city street. I had just received news that the paperwork for the car I bought upon arriving in the city was not completed accurately. The former owner still had keys to the car and the right to take the car back.
If ever there were a year when we timed things right by planning to address resilience, it’s 2020! This year has demanded more resilience out of humankind than most, and the strain is showing up in a variety of ways, particularly among cross-cultural workers. If you’re feeling the long-term strain of 2020, please know this – you should be! You are experiencing a normal response to an abnormal year.
More often than not, ‘missions’ makes no sense. We arrive on our designated field, full of ideas and visions, ready to serve and care for a particular city or village or community. But then we are rendered temporarily useless by waves of culture shock.
What is the single most important factor in determining the effectiveness of a missionary? Is it love for God? Love for lost people? Evangelistic gifting? Prayer life? Cultural adaptability? Linguistic aptitude? Humility? Ability to discern the move of the Spirit?
There are those who answer the call of God by opening their hands - and hearts - and letting go. They let go so the eternal treasures of Good News can be carried to far flung places in the mouths and lives of their own children and grandchildren. Their kids paid attention in Sunday School or during that mission report, and the Father started tugging at their heart, calling them to “go into all the world.” Wouldn’t you know, they took it personally!
On a rainy day in August 1994, my wife and I landed at a small airport in Chiang Mai, Thailand and began what was to become 25 years of missionary service. As we came to love the Thai people, it soon became abundantly clear that we had found our calling.
When my husband, our three children, and I went to work with a young church plant in Amsterdam, there were no mission training programs among churches of Christ. We learned how to do missions the hard way: trial and error. In the words of a fellow missionary at the time, successful new churches were planted in spite of the missionaries and not because of them!
What advice would I have for my younger self working cross-culturally, you ask? Good question! After 16 years in disciple-making in Belgium, 20 years in church ministry, and the last seven years with MRN in Missionary Care, I have accumulated some learning that would have been useful to know "back then." Here are some of my thoughts:
Have you either said or heard things like this lately?
Why am I so tired tonight? It’s only 8:30, and I haven’t done anything today!! Why does my neck hurt so much? Why are you so grouchy so fast these days?
As shelter-in-place orders were being handed down and we were all beginning to set up working-from-home office spaces, one of our old teammates from our time in Burkina Faso texted with
You know, missionary experience makes this shelter in place deal a lot easier, don’t you think?
People don’t do what they ought to do. They do what they are prepared to do. They do what they remember to do and feel capable of doing. This explains why there isn’t more prayer for missionaries in most churches.
I could hear my village neighbor wailing—I just didn’t know why. My wife and I had just started our missionary career in West Africa, moving into a dusty tin-roofed shack that could have doubled as a solar oven. Someone explained to us in French that our neighbor's son was dying. When we saw the child, he was lying on the beaten earth floor of a grass-roofed hut, his breathing labored, pupils fixed and dilated. Despair crept into us as we realized he might not live long. I remember standing over him discussing with the local pastor in hushed tones what medical procedure might save the boy.
Happy December! As we wrap up another year of Missionary Care articles, Andy Johnson speaks to sending churches on what they need to know about supporting their workers during the holiday season, as well as offers a few words to those serving on the field.