by Jay Jarboe

Director of Emerging Leadership Initiative

and former worker in Mexico City

What do I wish my church had known about me, my family, or my work during my time on the field?

Our sponsoring church took a risk by sending a young, inexperienced couple to one of the largest cities in the world, Mexico City. That step of faith led to a 25-year ministry relationship that neither of us expected. No, we did not stay 25 years in Mexico City, we stayed 6 years there. Ours is a story of being spiritually raised by a church, sent by a group of elders with a dream, and returning to continue our partnership in that dream.

What I wished my sponsoring church had known about me, our family, or our work on the field was the long-term investment they were making in a city, a people, and yes, even a young couple who felt called to join God in his work. Several years before we were sent by our church, we were already being shaped through their outreach to the college campuses in their city. Even after 40 years in ministry, we now look back at our time in this college program as perhaps our most valuable disciple-making training. I wish my church had realized the significant investment they were making to train people to share Jesus wherever they are and whatever title they may hold.

I wish the church that sent us knew that their example, vision, teaching, mentoring, pre-marriage counseling, and great patience with inexperienced university students led us and others to our life-long calling. I hope they know that a church on mission results in the multiplication of people on a life-long mission. Our sending church knows they were imperfect and flawed, but their boldness in taking risks led to the multiplication of disciples who are now making disciples.

What I suspect my sponsoring church already knew was that we feared moving to a large city and raising a family outside of our culture. They knew that we had an impossible-size vision and needed to find a God-size faith. Their prayers, calls, and notes were so encouraging. I remember our sending committee who cared for us and welcomed us into their homes when we came for visits and furloughs. When our son was newly born in Mexico, we rushed to get his passport so we could return to our supporting congregation to be present for their Mission Sunday. The leaders of our support group had moved out of their bedroom, supplied it with a baby bed and all we would need for a newborn. They cared and provided.

I also realized that the leaders of our sending church knew the challenges of life in ministry and mission. During one visit to our sponsoring church, one of the shepherds, whom I did not know very well at that time, saw me in the church hallway. He put his arm around me and said, “We need to talk.” He took me into an empty office and said, “I just have one question to ask you: how are you taking care of your family in Mexico?” He challenged me to take time for my wife, my children, and myself. From that point on, I always knew the question he was going to ask me, and I appreciated the honest concern and accountability he provided.

I wish all of us who were pursuing this vision would have talked and prayed more about this mission as if it all depended upon God. Too often our team took credit for what God was doing. Too often I thought that this impossible dream we were following depended upon me. Too often we were praised for being good cross-cultural workers and were not reminded that we serve the God of the impossible (Ephesians 3:20-21).

What I wished my congregation had known and acted upon was the sacrifice our parents were making. My wife’s parents were already missionaries in the Philippines. After returning to be with children and grandchildren, they received the call to Cuernavaca, Mexico. So my wife’s side of the family had already experienced the sacrifice of going to a new culture. My family, however, were inexperienced as parents of foreign workers. My mother was the first to visit us about two months after we arrived in Mexico City. She had to see that her only granddaughter was ok. Today my mother would have received the wise counsel to wait a year before visiting your children and grandchildren in their new foreign home. When my mother visited us in Mexico City, we did not know the language well, we were not settled into our home, and we did not know how to get around well in this new large city. We enjoyed her visit, but it would have been much better for her to see us settled and comfortable in our home, communicating well in Spanish, spending time with our new friends and fellow workers in the kingdom. She would have met new believers who now knew Jesus partially due to her sacrifice of joining us in our common calling. I am grateful that today we are a little more aware that when parents and grandparents send their special ones on mission, they make some of the most tender sacrifices for the gospel.

I am grateful that we were blessed with a sponsoring church composed of many former missionaries who understood better than most what we would all experience together. I am also grateful that they were willing to continue to grow and to learn what they did not know. I pray that those of us who send and those of us who go realize the rich blessing it is to partner in this amazing work of God.

Paul understood this special relationship between the one who goes and the one who sends. He writes to his partnering church at Philippi: It was good of you to share in my troubles...Not that I am looking for a gift, but I am looking for what may be credited to your account. I have received full payment and even more; I am amply supplied now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. (Philippians 4:14,17-18).

May God raise up more churches like the church who sent me.

Jay Jarboe

Voices from the Field - Jay