Kevin over at the “Life.Outpoured” blog talks about the importance of missionaries adapting (yet staying within God’s law) to the culture in which they minister, and it goes beyond clothing and acting. He gives some great points to consider in “(Missionary) Etiquette 101″. My favourite: “Begin to think like a citizen of heaven, not of a particular country.”
If you write a blog, run a website or are some form of IT professional, then you already know that you have access to a staggering amount of statistics about your website. While these can vary, nowadays you usually can view how many people viewed your blog or site from certain countries or see which search engines (such as Google) they used to find you. Additionally, you can also see what search term or phrase they used right before they clicked on your site address.
You can probably figure out what most of the search terms/phrases would be for Missionary Confidential, but as I reviewed the list from the entire life of this blog thus far, I started noticing trends. Some are good points, some are confusing, some cause concern, and a few even made me laugh, though I doubt they were meant that way.
I’ve grouped the most interesting ones for your review: Read More…
One of our supporters showed up last week. We barely knew her, but she was planning a vacation to our mission field and thought it would be great to stop by and visit. Having gone through this before, we knew the drill what we would be asked and which areas would be key to show our supporter.
Because of the distance from where she was staying, an overnight stay with us made the most sense and we were happy to accommodate. We met up with her and began the tour. First we showed her the church that we work with, which is a Gothic-style, small building in need of repair. Despite the improvements and maintenance needed, it is a beautiful building, complete with stained-glass windows of angels and mortals looking up to heaven. Being American like us, our supporter was astounded by the church, partly because there aren’t too many like this in our home state.
After showing the surrounding areas and explaining the spiritual need of the country, we continued on to our house. As she walked through our place, it was then that she made the statement, with a smile, “I can’t call you a missionary!” Read More…
One of the things that caught us off guard in our mission field was the perception of missionary in the field being different than the pastor in a foreign mission field. Although we are missionaries in every sense of the word, one of us is a licensed pastor.
We figured this out when people here were surprised at the pastor fact. They were shocked to hear preaching from a missionary. This was very perplexing to us. Perhaps it is our denominational background in the States, where missionaries were also pastors and were sent to pastor new churches in mission fields. It appears that the concept of missionary in our field is one that comes alongside an existing church to handle lay ministry. Regardless, the pastor aspect has now become an asset.
But it made me think: what is the difference between a pastor and a missionary (if both are licensed or ordained to preach)? Read More…
This is the final posting in a series on how I became a full-time missionary to Western Europe. Click for “Part 1: My Backstory”, “Part 2: Ashes in My Mouth”, “Part 3: Learning the Ropes”, and “Part 4: You’re Nuts”.
Originally we understood entry as missionaries into our part of Western Europe as a matter-of-fact situation. Check in, show documents, everything’s okay. But when our immigration officer expressed suspicion about our motives and revealed changes in immigration rules, it seemed as if everything about our ministry was about to collapse. Had we been wrong all along?
At one of our last interactions, my mother had asked if we had a “Plan B” for, you know, when it doesn’t work out—her words. I thought she meant different ways of entering the country under various situations (student, employee, etc.). She meant something more specific: move back to our hometown, get “normal” jobs, and never leave the country again. “Come on, it’s very likely you won’t like it ,and you need to have a plan when it doesn’t.”
“We don’t have a ‘Plan B’” was our response. Missions was the plan, but if it had to evolve and change from our first attempts, so be it. God was directing us, so there was no need for a “Plan B” as she defined it. Realise that I do believe God encourages levels of planning and preparation for future issues, but hers was an encouragement to stop following God’s direction. We just weren’t going to do it.
In the end, we just had to be patient with our officer, who has become much more trusting after seeing us over the years. But that doesn’t mean that Satan didn’t stop throwing what he could at us to discourage our trust in God. Substantial funds fell away, and the dollar lost a huge amount of strength. Our reputation was unfairly damaged by a jealous Christian. Meanwhile, fellow missionaries dropped like flies around us, and cracks began to show in our marriage. Read More…
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