Living faithful, fruitful and fulfilled on the mission field
“Do more! Bigger is better! Climb the highest mountain! You can have it all!” Recognize anything about these statements? I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of a steady life pace. Does the pace of my life reflect the Way of Jesus? It’s an …
“A vacation? I don’t need that! It’s expensive,” we say. “The needs of the ministry are too pressing.” The same goes for food, exercise, rest…even fun. Missionaries take care of everyone else, but self-care is usually last on our long list of needs. This philosophy …
Mission work often attracts mavericks. The challenge, the adventure of going to a far off and difficult place, it inspires pioneer types. Not every missionary has a maverick personality, but many do. These character qualities are a great help in the boldness and tenacity needed for missionary life. They also have a negative side.
It is important to live in submission to authority. We can not afford to operate without spiritual covering, even if we have an entrepreneurial personality.
One place to find that covering is through your missions agency. Another is through a home church. There is great value in establishing a strong, healthy relationship with a sending church. It will help you thrive and be sustained for the long-term.
I was deathly sick. I’d been evacuated from Nepal to a hospital in Bangkok. Thank God for insurance that paid for my flights. A complicated relapse of hepatitis had made my fingernails and the whites of my eyes as yellow as a ripe banana. My skin was horribly itchy as the bile built up in my body.
My liver wasn’t functioning well. Doctors came and went from my room, fascinated with my medical condition, but with no clear diagnosis or treatment plan. Calls were made to infectious disease centers in the USA and Australia as they sought solutions.
After being flown to Thailand, accompanied by a British nurse from the clinic in Kathmandu, she left. I was alone. So very sick and discouraged, I stared at the pictures of my little girls I’d left back in Nepal. I missed them and my husband terribly. I had no idea how long I would have to be in the hospital, or away from them. My husband was coming but had not yet arrived. It would take days for him to make arrangements for our kids and the work he’d have to leave behind.
One lonely and difficult day, my home church surprised me with kindness. They walked into my hospital room…a short-term team on their way to another country with a layover in Bangkok. Hearing how sick I was, they came to see me.
In they walked, carrying a video camera! They prayed for me, worshipped with me, then left a CD player and music to listen to. Their stay was only 15 minutes long, but it brought deep encouragement.
When the team returned home, a video of me in the hospital was played in our church. Thousands prayed for my healing and God answered.
I am so very grateful for the many, many, times our home church, Cedar Valley, has stood in the gap on our behalf. Their love, concern, support, and encouragement has made a huge difference in our success in the mission field!
It has not always been easy to stay connected. Since going to the field, our church has gone through two major pastoral changes. Each time, we have had to work hard to get to know the new pastor, build a relationship, and establish trust. We’ve had new missions committee members, and many changes in church staff.
When we come home, it can feel a bit like we are “out of the loop.” We are no longer known to the new leaders. We don’t have much relationship anymore. At times we wonder, is it worth all this hard work to have a strong relationship with our “sending” body?
It absolutely is!
“While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.”
Acts 13:2-3 ESV
Paul and Barnabas had a sending church. It was the church in Antioch. During a time of fasting and prayer, the church leaders felt God speak to them about sending these two out. They owned that decision and were a part of it. Later we find the team reporting back to the Antioch church about their missions activity.
It is easy to think we can go on our own. Gather friends and supporters and don’t worry about the hassle of getting your church’s backing. Pastors today, especially in large churches, can feel quite unapproachable if you are not well-known in the church or are young. Sometimes, they want you to contribute to the church’s local needs rather than step out in missions. That can be discouraging.
In spite of these barriers, it is still crucially important to pursue a positive relationship with your home body.
Before going to the field, be willing to serve. If you are not a faithful and active member, they are unlikely to “send” you. Get involved. Serve in the kids’ programs, ushering, cleaning, or in whatever needs to be done. Don’t think a church will support and send you if you have not prioritized contributing to the church’s vision.
When you return home, though time is short and it may be difficult, do your best to make a contribution. This will help renew relationships.
Don’t wait for them to ask you to share. Find opportunities to talk about the need that has gripped your heart. One time when home, we made it a goal to request time to share in every Sunday school class and small group.
Honor your pastor, elders and other leaders by showing you value what they think. Don’t be afraid of their input. Listen and take it to heart.
Don’t neglect communication when on the field. Make phone calls, send emails, or video messages. It shows you care. Fill out whatever forms they ask of you on time.
When on furlough, make an appointment with your pastor. Take him/her out for lunch or coffee and pay the bill. Ask questions about their vision for the church. Show genuine interest. Contribute where you can. If there are changes in leadership, you may need to work hard to get to know them. The relational investment will pay off.
Having a sending church that understands your vision and work is a great support. If they are able to support you financially, that is great. Don’t make the relationship about the money. Their prayers and sending of you are what is most important. Finances often follow, but should not be the main reason you connect with your home church.
My husband and I haven’t done this perfectly. Sometimes we’ve not put in the effort or have been too drained when we came home to do all that’s mentioned above. We keep pressing on.
Sometimes missionaries are sent, but later they lose their home base. Churches split, or a pastor has a moral failure and the church dissolves. What do you do then? You must find another church to send you. It’s worth the investment and effort. We need to think long-term.
What difficulties have you faced in developing a relationship with a sending church? I’d love to hear those in the comments below or in the Missionary Life Facebook group.
Pass the baton. You know this principle. 2 Timothy 2:2 says it so clearly. Paul discipled Timothy, Timothy entrusted the teaching to faithful men. They passed it on to others also. Leaders who hold on to authority may grow powerful. The scope of their ministry …
When you see a Muslim woman, dressed in her hijab, many Christians feel afraid. They avoid talking to people of other cultures. One of my relatives recently befriended a woman from another faith background. It’s been interesting to watch her reach out. As far as …
“I’m not finding anyone who is open to the gospel,” he told me in a call. I asked further questions. “Who are you wanting to reach?” He described his vision to reach high caste Hindus in his area. As we talked further, I asked him how he went about sharing the gospel. “I tell them they shouldn’t worship gods made from hands but should worship The One who created everything instead.”
A true statement, but not the best place to start with devoted Hindus. At some point, you need to speak the truth in love to those who follow other gods, or ways of approaching God. Jesus is indeed the only way to the Father. He said of himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father, except by me.”
Attacking another person’s religion and cultural values is neither wise nor fruitful. It is distasteful, unkind, and creates huge barriers for them to “hear” the gospel you are trying to share. At the same time, we live in a day and age where being tolerant has become a more important virtue than loving people enough to share the truth. We need to learn to boldly and relationally share the reality of who Jesus is for us and who He can be for them as well.
When we first went to Nepal, our first several years were devoted to language and culture learning. Our hearts longed to share the gospel with the unreached around us, but we faced a huge language barrier. In some ways, this was good. It slowed us down and forced us to take time to learn more about the Nepali Hindu worldview.
At first our learning was on the surface. We noticed things like food, clothing, how their houses were built, how they greeted one another. Slowly our language ability increased. We began to learn about deeper worldview issues. Things like what they believed about how the world began, the caste system, and reincarnation. This understanding would inform our witness.
Being foreigners, when we visited a Nepali home, we were welcomed warmly. Nepalis are generous and hospitable people. We’d sit on the floor, drink delicious cups of sweet chai, chit-chatting about their family, the weather, and other things.
Almost always, sometime within the first ten minutes of conversation, a question would surface. “Do you eat cows?” This question particularly came up, if we mentioned any kind of spiritual topic.
Most Hindus in Nepal (at the time we were there), had never heard about Jesus. They had little idea of who He was, why He came to earth, or what He did when here. His life, death, resurrection, and the reason for those things, was new information for them.
What they had heard though, was that Christians eat beef.
Hindus worship the goddess Laxmi who is represented by a cow. The cow is sacred for Hindus. In Nepal, it was against the law to kill a cow. At the time we lived there, the punishment for this was as great as the punishment for killing a person. It was a very big deal to them that Christians ate beef, a major barrier preventing their coming to faith.
If this obstacle didn’t come down, it was hard for them to listen to our message.
Soon after we moved to Nepal, my husband and I made a decision. We would stop eating beef as long as we were focused on reaching Hindus. It was not easy to do. Before this, hamburger had been a staple part of our diet.
Reading 1 Corinthians 8, we knew that food was not what was important. It could indeed be a stumbling block. We stopped eating beef completely.
After that when people would ask us, “Do you eat cow?” We had an answer ready. One that removed the barrier. “No, we don’t. We know that the cow is a sacred animal for Hindus. We want to respect your culture so we don’t eat beef.”
We then could move beyond that barrier into further relationship and begin sharing the gospel message. As we continued to learn, we identified other important barriers and bridges. This informed how we presented the gospel in that context.
“But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. Be careful however that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak.”
1 Cor. 8:8-9 NIV.
In this article, I will share the first three of eight points. Next week, I’ll add five more.
When approaching someone from another culture or religion, be respectful. Don’t attack their culture or beliefs. Typically, Western cultures place little value on tradition. Youth around the world, tend to disdain the traditions of their ancestors and enjoy exploring new things (be it drugs, sex or a new religion or cult). That does not mean their interest will stick as they age, mature, and marry, nor is it a good pathway to reaching their entire family.
Instead of attacking their beliefs, show value for them. They are “God-fearers.” If they pray five times a day, that shows a certain hunger for God. You can affirm that. If they fast, or go to the temple, or have certain important rituals, be curious. Ask what those things mean to them. Be respectful of their devotion. This is a great place to begin.
Within other religions, as with Christianity, there is a wide range of people. Some are radically devoted, others are nominal. Most have some level of allegiance to their religion that is greater than most “cultural Christians” have. This is because religion is strongly tied to community and identity. You can’t underestimate the degree of loyalty they will have to a religion they don’t actually practice much nor understand well. It’s there, under the surface, even with the most nominal or rebellious teen.
Get curious and ask open questions. As you do this, be careful that your questions are to learn and understand, and aren’t perceived as a hidden attack.
For example, you might ask a Muslim friend something like, “I’ve noticed that many Muslim men have beards. I’m super curious…what is the reason men in your culture don’t shave?” Listen well and repeat back to them what you hear to make sure you’ve understood their perspective.
When talking with someone from another culture and/or another faith, stay away from my God/your god language. You want to build bridges, not walls (more about that in the next article). Don’t compare using these kinds of words. They divide and separate you from them. Instead, recognize their desire for spiritual things, spirituality, etc. Are they a seeker of God? Do they respect and honor God in some way, even if they don’t yet know Him as you do?
In Acts 17, Paul was in Athens. He began his conversation with the Athenians by talking about one of their altars. It had the inscription “to an unknown god.” He didn’t condemn them for making this altar or say, “We don’t make altars like that in our religion.” Instead, he used that as a bridge to help them understand who the God they were worshipping is!
Do you have people of another faith and culture around you? Maybe they work in your office, or their kids go to your kid’s school, or you meet them at the market. Begin relationship with them by showing respect, interest, and being curious about their beliefs.
Who will you start a learning conversation with this week?
I would love to hear how these conversations go in the comments below or on the Missionary Life Facebook page.
Two billion people on our planet are born, live and die without even once hearing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ! That’s an injustice that doesn’t end with death. Many Christ-followers want to help right this wrong. Why not personally share the good news …
Frontier missionaries are usually risk-takers. Courageous and bold, we go where others wouldn’t. We stay when others leave. Deep commitment to the task of reaching the lost motivates us to a life of sacrifice. What risks are unwise to take? Does missionary safety matter? If …
Some contemplatives live in a monastery cloistered far away from a broken world. Others engage with it believing that God’s transformation is not only for us but for many. Rich Villodas and his co-author Peter Scazzero live into this tension well. The Deeply Formed Life: 5 Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus was the winner of the Christianity Today Book Award last year. Reading it, one can see why. The breadth and depth of this book make it one I’ll not read once, but be planning to re-read every few years.
Villodas writes on page 173, “Our most effective strategy in reaching a world for Christ is grounded in the kind of people we are being formed into.” I agree. We cannot apply good ministry and disciple-making strategies and hope for good fruit. Our very lives must reflect the Jesus we work so hard to share.
This means we must be willing to take a journey of spiritual formation that involves our whole person-our sexuality, racial prejudices, mental health, areas of anxiety, relationships, and more. Villodas’ book speaks boldly to them all showing a breadth of understanding of spiritual formation I’ve not seen elsewhere.
Our spirituality, as Villodas says, is often “shallowly shaped” rather than deeply formed (p. 27). This causes us to be unaware of places where we need His transforming power and life to flow.
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
– Romans 12:2 NLT
My takeaways follow three main categories.
I wish I could say I’ve conquered busyness and learned well how to slow down. It isn’t as if I don’t know of its importance. Yet this remains a constant challenge where if I am not vigilant, I find myself too busy and with too few margins in my life once again. The result is always less connection with the One who gives me life. The great danger is that if I am not deeply connected to Jesus, I’ll begin to strive in the flesh. I will work hard to produce, and doing will overwhelm being.
Villodas says, “the problem before us is not just the frenetic pace we live at but what gets pushed out from our lives as a result; that is, life with God” (p. 5). He goes on to say, “As long as we remain enslaved to a culture of speed, superficiality, and distraction, we will not be the people God longs for us to be.”
He then describes his own ways of slowing down to be with God in silence, solitude, and Sabbath. To live a fruitful life, we must learn not only to do this once in a while but to build it into our spiritual rhythm and practice of life. Apart from it, we are apart from God. And apart from God, we can do nothing (John 15:5).
Villodas writes, “Racial justice and reconciliation remain two of the most urgent matters of faith and public witness.” When the Church doesn’t get this matter right, the way the world sees us as Christians is greatly affected. At first, I was surprised to find a chapter on racial reconciliation included in a book on spiritual formation. That would not have been my first thought.
The author goes on to say, “Sadly, there is often a hyperspiritual perspective held by many Christians who see racial justice and reconciliation as optional or ancillary to the gospel.” The more I read the two chapters included in the book on this topic, the more I agreed. It is indeed part of our formation as Jesus followers that we deal with personal prejudices and issues of the heart. We must also, however, be willing to engage with this issue in our world.
When working in North-east India, I remember teaching in a Discipleship Training School for YWAM. I taught the Jonah story and called them toward mission engagement with the plains Indians that were so unreached. As I taught, hatred and racism against the rest of India surfaced. Dark-skinned Indians were not honored or liked by light-skinned North Indians. Tribals were often looked down on and thus looked down on others. There was deep pain and a need for reconciliation between the varied people groups around us.
“At the core of racism is the lie that some people are superior or inferior to others. This happens across all different people groups” (p. 56.) All of us must be willing to consider where our history and upbringing have sown seeds of racist thought in our individual hearts. But it can’t stop there. As Villodas writes on page 56, “Individual racial prejudice is about how we negatively and often violently perceive others, but institutional racism is about how power is used.” Examining how we use power in our Christian institutions is not easy. Yet it is vital to our witness and formation. It takes great courage and humility to be willing to examine and evaluate this. Many are not willing to go there and resist defensively. Instead, let’s be open to the Holy Spirit’s work in us and our ministries too.
Chapters Seven and Eight address issues of sexuality with wisdom, vulnerability, and transparency. There is much here to learn from. He writes, “When sex is reduced to the moment, our lives with each other become transactional and potentially objectifying. When it is seen as simply an act, our spouses’ bodies become means to an end and we are in danger of having marriages shaped by using and not communion.”
Earlier in the chapter, it says, “lovemaking takes practice, and it begins outside the bedroom.” The book also addresses issues of sexual abuse, trauma, and singleness. These chapters give the reader, whether married or single, much to consider and prayerfully apply.
I recognize that many of my readers do not have the ability to buy the books I review. If you do, this is one I’d definitely encourage you to grab a copy. If the book is not available where you live, or you don’t have the means to get one, I trust this short review will give you food for thought.
Spiritual formation is vital to our lives as Jesus’ followers. It must not be ignored or shoved in a corner while we pursue ministry goals. This is true for me, and it’s true for you.
Have you been paying enough attention to your inner life with God? Are you distracted by ministry pressures and priorities? If that is the trajectory you are on, don’t wait to make a course correction. Make time for your own transformation into greater Christ-likeness.
Take a Sabbath. Begin a journaling habit. Go on a retreat where you don’t think or pray about ministry stuff. Instead, you simply enjoy Jesus and allow Him to speak to you about who you are and who you are becoming.
Villodas calls our inner life, interiority. I’ll close with this quote. “A life with God for the sake of interiority requires time.” Let’s make time to let Christ be formed in us, to be, not only do.
Borders closing. Food shelves bare. Churches unable to meet. Never in history have we encountered anything quite like what our world is facing. How we respond as Jesus followers says a lot about who we are. As missionaries, will we seize this opportunity to share …