Living faithful, fruitful and fulfilled on the mission field
Imagine with me. Party invitations were handed out in the room. You waited breathless and anticipating. Your card must be at the bottom of the pile they clasped in capable hands. Until the final card was distributed, there was still a glimmer of hope. Would …
“Suck it up!” My basketball coach used to tell me that when I was acting tired during our practice drills. “No pain, no gain!” In many ways, we are taught to ignore pain and push through it. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for …
Every year I ask the Lord a question. “What one thing do you want me to do this year?” I like to get my priorities crystal clear. When I know what God has said to do, I have my marching orders. I know my one thing. Without fail, that is going to be my top priority for the year. A few years ago, I was praying. I heard His still small voice whisper, “Invest in people, not projects. It’s the people who will bear the most fruit.”
Instantly, I knew this was true. It was biblical. But it wasn’t easy.
I like projects. I enjoy that sense of completion and accomplishment. It makes me feel good. There is great fulfillment in being able to do something. People, well, they’re harder. They have issues.
God is a relational being. He is deeply committed to relationships. He chose to work through these frail and often troubled connections we have with others. God makes Himself known through how we relate with people, more than projects. Working with people requires patience, love, character…the fruit of His Spirit.
When Jesus gave the Great Commission in Matt 28:18-20, He didn’t say, “Go into all the world and dig wells.” Nor did He command us to go and build orphanages, or schools, or start businesses. He told us to go and make disciples. That involves people. (Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not completely against projects. We need to think hard about this issue and make sure our projects are leading to actual disciple making.)
There is a trend in American missions today away from people and toward projects. We are a “cause-driven” society. Causes and projects ask little of us, compared to relationships.
It was Sunday morning. We were staying in the home of a pastor friend. His church had supported us for many years. Traveling hundreds of miles, we had come to update the church about our ministry and lives. They’d been faithful ministry partners for years. It was a joy to come back and spend time with them. We looked forward to the 15-minute opportunity to challenge for greater mission engagement.
“Do you have any projects?” my pastor friend asked. “Our people respond well to projects.”
“Hmmm.” I thought. “What project can I come up with so people will give?”
I managed to think of something. My husband needed a new computer. Maybe the church could help us buy one. We needed to come back to our home country after a year or so to see our kids. “Would that be a worthwhile project?” I wondered.
Inside, I felt frustrated. Why can’t people give because they believe in us? Why isn’t the fact that we are going back to make disciples among unreached people, a good enough cause to give to?
Jesus said, “go and make disciples of all nations…” Matt. 28:18 NIV.
Jesus said, “the harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few…” Matt. 9:37. He didn’t say the projects were few, or the money was not enough. He said people were needed.
While we feel the pull to focus on projects, it is people who produce the greater fruit. Evangelizing, mentoring, coaching, making disciple makers, building relationships, loving people, these activities are vital. They have much more to do with fulfilling Jesus’ final command than many projects do.
I am concerned about the shift in American churches away from investing in people. Projects will raise a lot of money and do many good deeds, but may horribly fail to complete the Great Commission.
It concerns me that by the way we give to missions, we could unintentionally push missionaries away from doing what is most important. We may thrust them toward doing what is necessary to raise funds to survive – creating projects that will motivate and inspire donors.
Projects will raise a lot of money and do many good deeds, but may horribly fail to complete the Great Commission.
This is a cause for major strategic concern. If we make this shift, we will likely not see a change in the disturbing stats we face. More than 2 billion people on the planet remain unreached and have no access to the gospel. People will change that, not projects.
Projects are easier to raise funds for.
With projects, we can easily see what we have done.
It is difficult to measure spiritual growth in someone’s life. It’s far easier to say “Done. We built that widow’s home, orphanage, or church building.”
Disciples make more disciples. If we do not go after a multiplication model of discipleship, we will never complete the Great Commission. The population growth rates among the unreached are far too great. Buildings don’t multiply, people do. Movements of disciples flow along relational lines.
While projects can bring short-term transformation, long-term change requires discipleship.
If a family in Mexico gets a new home built for them, it feels like transformation. If, however, the father of the household continues to drink, what happens? The kids continue to run with the drug dealers. Within a few years, that house will make little difference in their lives. Possible scenario? Yes indeed.
Imagine instead, if a missionary builds a relationship with that man. He shares Christ with him. He walks with him every day for a year as he battles his way toward freedom. They study God’s word together. They cry and pray together when he fails. Over time, his life becomes a witness to others. He gets a job and keeps it. The man begins to provide for his family, and they build a small house. It’s not as nice as the other house, but it is their own. He starts to share with and help his brother who is also an alcoholic.
People bring far greater lasting transformation than do projects.
Our world is starving for community. People walk around engaged with their phones. Lonely, they feel restless and empty. A discovery or life group is started. People connect around God’s Word and share their lives. Projects don’t build lasting community, people do.
Missionary- Are you focused more on projects or people? Who are you investing in? Training as a disciple maker? What leader are you raising up to do what you do? Are people at the top of your priority list?
Missions Supporter/Pastor- Are you investing in projects or people? Do your missions related goals have to do with how much money you raise? Or how many missionaries you mobilize and send from your church? Do you care for the missionaries you do send well? Do you invest time in knowing them and their struggles/needs?
Reflect on these questions before the Lord. Ask God to shine His light on the way you are doing missions. Let Him realign your priorities to His. The pathway forward may not be the easiest one, but He will walk with you. His ways are higher, His thoughts and strategies better than ours.
I would love to hear your input or experiences with this! Feel free to comment below or on the Missionary Life Facebook page.
*Disclaimer- The above article is not meant to offend or attack, but simply to call us to think carefully about the swing toward a project-oriented mission philosophy. I recognize that some projects, when done mindfully, can be beneficial and lead to fruit.
Have you ever lost your temper? Gotten upset with fellow team members? Differences in personality, culture, and spiritual gifting can drive us apart. Or, these differences can make us strong and effective as a missionary team. My husband and I are extreme opposites in many …
Ever talk to yourself? Every once in a while, I accidentally find myself exclaiming something out loud. I suddenly notice what I meant to say silently in my mind has slipped out my lips. “Come on Anderson, do it right!” is one. Or I utter …
Though I was born in Nigeria, my passport says I am an American. I love my country. But I have never felt like a “real” American. Preparing for a trip back to the USA, someone asked me, “Are you going home next week?” That is a hard question to answer. Where is home anyhow? Is it where I now live on the mission field (Asia)? Is it my passport country? They both feel like home. Neither of them feels like home. There is a kind of “homelessness” we missionaries feel.
As a cross-cultural worker, do you ever feel you don’t fit anywhere? You are not fully a part of your new culture. But you are no longer at home in your old culture either.
God wants to use these missionary challenges to draw us closer to Him. He wants to turn these difficulties into a blessing.
A sense of homelessness can lead us toward a deeper discovery of our true identity.
Embrace this journey into a deeper understanding of what it means to be at home in God. We can learn to be at home in Christ no matter where we are. While waiting for the day when we will be forever with Jesus in our new Heavenly home, we can rest with Him now.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”
John 14:1-2 NIV
In the Old and New Testaments, we read God’s promise to create a home for His people. Finding “home” is part of what it means to experience salvation. In Christ, we finally and fully belong. He says He will both…
1) bring us to, and
2) plant us in, the place of our inheritance. We will have roots going down. We will not be nomads forever! God has prepared a place for us- a place to call home.
Several years ago I struggled deeply with this issue. I had become a new grandma. My heart longed for a place to welcome my children and new grandbaby. We rented homes in India and Nepal, but they were not ours to own. The Lord had even spoken to me saying He would give us a home, more than fifteen years before…but it had never happened.
Will I ever have a place to call my own? I wondered. This unsettled feeling disturbed my heart. Sometimes it affected my marriage, as I unfairly shifted into blaming my husband for not finding a way to provide a home for me.
I needed to go back to God in prayer and find my home in Him again. Only then could I find peace.
In John 13, there is a beautiful description of John’s intimate friendship with Jesus. It says in that chapter, John reclined on Jesus’ bosom. He was leaning up against him. They were close. They were comfortable together. John felt Jesus there. He was home.
Intimate friendship is like that. We hang out and relax together. This looks different depending on the culture you are in. In Asia, both men and women walk down the street holding hands. Where sports is popular, a soccer team huddles in, to plan for their game, arms around each other. In other cultures, they greet with a kiss on both cheeks. Most cultures have some way to express closeness and intimacy through physical nearness…through touch.
Like John, we can come close to Jesus. He wants to draw us into that place of intimacy and friendship where we are at home. Jesus wants us to lean against Him. Dependent, close, comforted, loved, hanging out with Him. This friendship is ours to have. He calls us to it.
Loneliness on the mission field can drive us to negative things. We feel the shame of not belonging fully. We pursue inappropriate solutions. Food, too much time on the internet, self-condemnation, overworking, and many other things are where we tend to go. When you feel the ache of missionary homelessness, run home to His arms. He is where you fully and forever belong.
As we encounter Jesus in that place of intimacy, He shows us once again who we are. We are sons and daughters, members of His family. We are also His chosen ones, royal priests in His Kingdom. Not only do we have a home in His arms, a family in which to belong, but we have a country. We have a Kingdom of which we are both citizens and ambassadors.
Understanding our Kingdom identity gives us a different worldview. It gives us new values and ways of behaving. Life on the mission field creates an incredible opportunity. In the midst of the trials of transition or feeling homeless, we can learn to deeply embrace our true identity in Jesus.
While we work hard to adapt to our new culture, we also reject some behaviors and ways of thinking we find there. We need to recognize things in the culture around us that are not in line with God’s values and ways. As we discern these, we live out our Kingdom identity. We are in the world but not of it. (John 17:14-15)
Another thing happens as we come to love the ways of those we now live among. Our eyes open to our own culture’s faults. This too is an opportunity to embrace who we are as Kingdom citizens. We don’t reject our home cultures. Discern what is of God’s Kingdom and what is not. Our loneliness, our missionary homelessness, creates in us a longing for the Kingdom to come on earth as in heaven. That’s a good thing.
If this feeling becomes severe and affects our ability to function well, we may need to talk to a counselor or member care person about these issues. They can cause great anxiety and distress, particularly among women. God created females with a desire to make a home for our families. Things like COVID-19, visa challenges, or other crises sometimes force us to travel endlessly and prevent us from going home to the “nests” we made around the globe.
If you need to talk to someone and get some debriefing on this issue, do it! You are not going crazy. Living in constant transition wears down emotional strength. What I’ve written in this article is not meant to be an easy fix to a complex problem.
Ask God to use the challenge of missionary homelessness for good in your life. He is calling, “Come into My arms. Let Me show you where home truly is.”
Won’t you turn to Him even now?
Want to share your story, or ask questions about this very real issue? You can do that on the Missionary Life Facebook group. Or post in the comments below.
Disruption releases innovation. We discover untried ways of serving God, of accomplishing His purposes. Do you maximize or resist the opportunities disruption or crisis brings? Often, instead of embracing new things, we get stuck. We experience a nostalgic longing for the way things used to …
This past weekend I went away for a quarterly retreat. This spiritual practice I’ve done for years keeps me grounded and abiding in Jesus. On this recent retreat, I read Rich Villodas’ new book The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our …
“Ughh. Not again! Another day of language learning. Why not quit? I can already understand and speak more than a lot of people.” These, and other negative thoughts cross my mind as I stare at my language books. Language learning is hard work. You need to know why you are doing it, to press through the challenges.
Sometimes language learning is fun. Embracing a more relational approach helps. I like the GPRA or LAMP methods. These approaches to language learning get you out among people, not only learning but practicing what you learn. Check out my free ebook to help you choose a language-learning approach if you want to know more about these methods.
No matter your approach, days will come when you don’t “feel like it” anymore. What will keep you going? Understanding the value of learning the heart language of the people you are trying to reach helps greatly. Let’s dive into this a bit more.
Language and culture are deeply connected. They both relate to the heart. We long to see the hearts of those around us transformed by God. This happens through the bridge of language. Knowing God speaks our language makes Him relatable, someone I too can know personally. This motivates me to want to press through and keep learning, even when it is tough. I want to be able to communicate God’s heart with those around me. Don’t you?
“Classifiers? Ughh. Yes, I remember learning those months ago. I haven’t used them much though and they are not at the tip of my tongue. The word for pineapple? Nope. Drawing a blank there. I know I’ve memorized this word before. Why won’t it surface when I need it!”
Thai is my fourth language to learn in the mission field. There are days when I consider quitting. Many excuses run through my head. “I’m too old to learn another language. I can get by without it. Many people here speak English.” You name the excuse. I’ve likely had it cross my mind in the past few days, months, or years.
Language learning is not easy. It requires discipline and diligence, even if you use an immersion approach and are gifted in languages. Many people are not, and ideal language-learning situations are hard to find.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1 Cor. 15:58 ESV.
Some argue that modern missionaries don’t need to learn to speak the local heart language. We have many media tools to help us share the gospel in other tongues. We have Google Translate after all! (Yes, and I use it often!) Working through local partners, we can disciple and train using English. At least that is what some people say. And when we need to preach or teach somewhere, translators can assist. True? Maybe, but keep reading.
Trade languages are common in nations that have many different people groups. In much of West Africa, English or French are the common languages. Why bother to learn Hausa? In a country such as Nepal, you’ve already invested time in learning to speak the common language, Nepalese. Do you also need to learn to speak Sherpa?
Isn’t it too slow? To learn and master languages before sharing the gospel and making disciples?
These are all somewhat valid arguments. This makes it even more important to know our why for language learning.
The number one reason we invest in language learning is love. God put His love in our hearts for this people group. We reflect His love as we invest the time and effort to understand their particular language and culture. Nothing communicates love as clearly as when you leave your own culture and language behind and learn theirs. Individuals want to be loved for who they are. In the same way, cultural groups often draw identity from their particular language and culture. It sets them apart from the rest.
For some, the majority culture is oppressive. Though they understand the trade language and use it because they have to, it is not the language of their heart. When we take time to learn their unique language, we show we value their people group.
The opposite is also true. When we do not learn the language and culture, we can inadvertently communicate a lack of commitment and genuine love for them and their people group.
Jesus was our model. He left Heaven and became a human. He took on humanity to show us how to know God. We too must be willing to leave behind what is natural and easier (using our own language and culture.) We embrace the hard road of language and culture learning. Why? So we can be a bridge of Christ’s love.
Can you get by with translators and trade languages? Absolutely. Is that all you want though? To get by? You left home, secure jobs, friends, and family to come and be on the field. Take the next step. Do what it takes to be fruitful and identify closely with the local people.
What is it you want to communicate? Information or heart? Information can be passed through trade languages and translators. Maybe not well, but to some degree. Heart-to-heart connection comes when you speak their mother tongue or heart language. When they speak to you in words that come from their heart, something different happens in the relationship.
In that heart-to-heart connection, deep feelings and longings are shared. You have the opportunity to minister and disciple differently than you ever can using a translator.
Surface-level discipleship will not produce the fruit we long to see. Multiplication of disciple-making happens fastest when we use the local heart language and not the trade language. One of the characteristics of a Disciple Making Movement is that it is indigenous.
Learning to use tribal languages, or heart languages encourages those you are training to also use that language. If they hear you praying in their language, they will pray in it too. If you tell a story in their language, they will learn it in that language and can share it with others more easily.
This is a big one for me. I prayed this morning, “Father, thank you for the challenge of language learning. It continues to develop Your character within me. I want to be a diligent person who presses forward in obedience to Your purposes, not someone who quits when things get tough. Help me Lord to persevere until I see a breakthrough with this language. And help me persevere until I see Your purposes come about here as well.”
The two are related. Don’t give up on the dream God has given you!
Don’t wait to do ministry until you have mastered the heart language of those you are reaching out to. Ministry is about people and language learning itself is ministry. Let Jesus shine through you as you struggle through the language-learning process. At the same time, don’t quit learning the language because you can already minister without fluency. Press on! You will see much greater fruit because you did. Preaching to myself? Yes! I am!
Where are you at in your language learning journey? Need prayer for perseverance? Share in the comments below or on the Missionary Life Facebook group. We’d love to stand with you in this!
When we go on dates, I like my husband to open the door for me. When he walks around and opens the car door, I feel special, loved, and valued. For some people that doesn’t matter much. I guess I am a bit of an …