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.

by Chris Shelby, Kingdom Expansion Minister

The Hills Church, N. Richland Hills, TX

Site visits to missionaries can be one of the greatest blessings you can provide for your missionaries while they are on the field. Some of our greatest memories when we lived and worked in Rwanda are when leaders and members of our supporting churches came to visit us. Mission work is kind of like giving birth to a baby that no one sees. When people take the time to come and see, it breathes life and energy into you and the work you’ve been called to.
 
Site visits can also be one of the more damaging actions in your relationships with the missionaries you support. I have heard story after story of people who have come to visit missionaries who were unthoughtful, presumptuous, and who, often unintentionally, damaged the relationship between the missionaries and their supporting churches. 
 
The difference between extraordinary visits and ones that hurt is posture.
 
Listen to how Paul describes sending someone to visit the new and developing church in Philippi; 
 
“If the Lord Jesus is willing, I hope to send Timothy to you soon for a visit. Then he can cheer me up by telling me how you are getting along. I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares about your welfare.” (Phil. 2:19-20)

Friends, the first thing I want to encourage you to do is to send your Timothys to visit your missionaries. Send men and women who genuinely care about the welfare of the people they are going to see. Missionaries know when someone is coming to see the country they live in or coming to see them. They know if they are one stop on a tour or if they are the reason for your visit. If you come with the single-minded purpose of visiting them and what God is doing in them, around them, and through them, you send a deeply important message: you are seen and what you are doing here matters. If you want to develop deep and lasting relationships with the people you send, reinforce that message every chance you get.
 
Here are a few postures that can lead to extraordinary site visits:

1. Pray – Pray about everything. Pray about whether you should go or not. Let it be the Lord that sends you, not your availability or bank account or desire to go. If the Lord sends you, go with the purpose to pray. Pray over the missionaries every chance you get. Pray over their homes and their streets and their cities. Pray over the leaders they are working with. Listen to the missionaries and pray over the things they are praying about. We are often action-oriented people who want to produce something as a result of our going. I encourage you to ask God to produce something far more powerful than anything you and I can do on a one-week trip somewhere. Pray that the Lord of heaven will bring his Kingdom to the earth where your missionaries live.

2. Learn – Go visit your people with a heart and spirit of learning. As you enter into a new place, we often feel the need to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable. We work so hard in our lives trying to be competent, independent, and strong. That often prevents us from living in a posture that allows us to learn. Release the need to be an expert or seen as someone who has it all figured out. Ask great questions. Be curious about everything. Be okay with being a beginner. Learn all you can about the work your missionaries are doing, about the life they are living, about what God is teaching them. To learn we must be humble. God most often does his best work in us when we are in a context or situation where we are completely dependent on Him and others. And as you do this, remember that this is the experience your missionaries have every day. It will create compassion in you as you get a little taste of what life is like for them.

3. Bless – As you enter into the life and work of your missionaries, look for every way you can to bless. Bless them with your words. Bless them with Scripture read over them. Bless them with calling out what you see in them and ways that you see them living well. Bless their children. Bless their co-workers. Bless the cities and villages where they live. Instead of being annoyed when a waiter gets something wrong, use it as an opportunity to speak the life of blessing into a place of darkness. Make it your entire mission on your site visit to be a source of the blessing that God is waiting to bestow on the world. Blessing is the action of calling forth the Kingdom of Heaven into places where it has not yet come. Engage that purpose and your missionaries will want you to come back time and time again.

These postures create the dynamic of human connection. On your site visits, if you live into the postures of prayer, learning, and blessing, your heart will become connected to the missionaries you send and to the people they are sent to. Your missionary partnerships will flourish because missions becomes no longer an enterprise of your church but a sending and receiving of family whom you love and know and care about and who feel the same about you.

Here are a few more practical ideas of things to do and not do on site visits:

• Don’t ask your missionaries to be your tour guides. God sent them there for other purposes. They can share ideas and some information, but don’t tie them up taking you to see the sites.

• Do ask if you can bring them things from the U.S. when you come. It will likely mean you need to bring another bag, but it will bless them tremendously if you are able to bring them things they can’t find where they live.

• Don’t bring them things you think they would like. Ask them what they could use or what they would like for you to bring. They will appreciate anything you bring them, but we are all different and need different things.

• Do be mindful of their schedules. They are going to be happy to meet you and spend time with you, but their kids do have bedtimes and school schedules. Check with them about the best times to meet and be together.

• Don’t compare their work to someone else’s. This is one of the most harmful things you can do on a visit. God is always up to something new. Just because you saw something work well in another context, doesn’t mean it will work somewhere else. Sharing of ideas is great but resist the need to compare. Your missionaries are listening and learning for what the Spirit wants to do among them. Encourage them to keep doing so.

• Do allow your missionaries to define success in their context. “Success” in missions is about obedience. We don’t often have a clear understanding of what God wants to do in a certain context at a certain time. Allow God to reveal what He desires to see. Ask your missionaries what God is saying to them and what it means to live that out where they are.

• Don’t take pictures of their families, co-workers, and leaders they’re working with and post them on social media without asking.

• Do coordinate your visits from your church. Visitors are wonderful but too much of a good thing can lead to challenging situations. It will be difficult for your missionaries, when contacted, to say, “We’ve had enough visitors this year. Please don’t come.” Take the burden off of them and coordinate the visits from within your church if and when it’s possible.

• Do have a great time! God is going to show you amazing things and your missionaries are extraordinary people. As you bless, you will indeed be blessed!

Thank you for loving and blessing your missionaries. I so appreciate your care and the ways you bless those you send. May God’s good and beautiful Kingdom come in this world as we work together. Father, may you be exalted in the nations!