Missionary Confidential

“Living a full and overflowing life does not rest in bodily health, in circumstances, nor even in seeing God’s work succeed, but in the perfect understanding of God, and in the same fellowship and oneness with Him that Jesus Himself enjoyed.” {emphasis added}
—Oswald Chambers, “My Utmost For His Highest”, 31 August

The Most Dangerous Place To Raise Your Kids

As I’ve mentioned before, “short-term missions” continues to be one of the most popular search terms that Missionary Confidential receives. And further evidence are the sheer number of inquiries we receive at our personal blog. 97% ask about mission possibilities spanning from one week to a year and are usually to take place in between college breaks or as a filler while the person “figures things out”.

I’ve already stated my feelings in “How Effective Are Short-Term Mission Trips?”, more from the perspective of the long-termer dealing with the short-termer, but I recently stumbled upon an article that put into words something that I hadn’t quite put my finger on yet. While the article is mainly about how missionaries choose their field (another topic for another time), I was very interested to read the very last section which dealt with the assertion that short-term mission mentality is a huge deterrent to people becoming long-term missionaries.

While it sounded a bit shocking at first, especially the section on “Anti-Long-Term Sentiment”, I started to replay what many other Christians said to us as we were preparing a few years ago for full-time mission work. “What will you do when you come back?” came up a lot, usually wanting a detailed agenda of work and living circumstances in the States. We hadn’t even gone to the field at that point! “You’re only going for a year or two, right?” or “You will come back because America needs you to serve here,” also were stated frequently. » Read the rest of this entry «

After the planning meeting for our new evening outreach service, the elder ended with, “Just don’t be disappointed if people don’t show for the service. This country just doesn’t respond to these things.”

“Don’t be disappointed”? I knew he meant well, and perhaps he was trying to prevent a bad situation from sending me back to the States like so many others before me. My only response was a smile, but immediately I started thinking about his concern. Had he forgotten that I had church planted multiple times in the States, and not all of them continue today? Perhaps because I’m considerably younger than him, it’s easy to miss that I’ve been heavily active in ministry for over half my life. And I’m fully aware of the difficulties of my mission field, from the incredibly hard soil to the nuances of the cultural differences. I realised that it all depends on your definition of “success”.

A commenter on another blog had recently said (paraphrased): “We thought God had great plans for us in the mission field, with hundreds of converts every night, but it didn’t happen. I guess God doesn’t want us to be successful.” » Read the rest of this entry «