Missionary Confidential

Another Question Week:

How much (or what) should you communicate back home to your supporters?

We live in a unique time when we can instantly update or be updated about a number of things, from the trivial to the most important. There’s a lot that we can share with people to educate and update about our missions ministry, including prayer requests and praises. Our communication strategy includes an e-newsletter every other month, a quarterly printed newsletter (for those who don’t have email—yes, those people exist!), and a blog that we update several times a month, trying to include pictures as well. For specific supporters or churches, we’ve sent personal letters, postcards, thank you notes, and even made phone calls to keep the communication flowing. We even maintain a telephone number in the States that forwards to our mission field. If anyone said we were unreachable or weren’t letting supporters know what we’re doing, I would have to laugh.

We try to report what we do, but often times I find that a lot of it is the same sort of thing over and over, so we try to supplement with information about the social changes in our field that could affect peoples’ openness to hearing the Gospel. Sometimes we’ll post photos that aren’t completely related to ministry. I struggle with what to say or how much to reveal because, while I want to make sure our personality comes through, I don’t want to be terribly public with everything in my life.

The other issue that I struggle with is the fact that our nationals do try to research us on the web, and this includes our blog. We’re not in an overly-hostile mission field, yet we quickly found that the blog’s innocent reporting became a lightning rod of hostility from those who do not want us here. Due to some IT magic, our missionary blog is no longer viewable within our mission field, and it’s important we think about safety.

What do you tell your supporters, and how much/often do you communicate?

A good friend here in my mission field (a fellow American Christian who’s here for a secular job) recently had a great dialogue with me about why people find ministry so difficult in missions work. While our interaction was specific to our area, it did make me wonder if some of the following questions were posed to potential missionaries, either through their mission agency or their sending church.

No matter where your particular mission field may be, if you’re considering missions ministry (in the full-time sense), you might want to ask yourself the following questions.

In relationships, what if… » Read the rest of this entry «

Finishing up Question Week:

What books/reading would you recommend to someone considering full-time mission work?

As referenced on our “So, You Want to Be a Missionary…” page, the book we considered invaluable to our journey was “Funding Your Ministry: Whether You’re Gifted or Not” by Scott Morton. We most certainly would have made several errors without it, and it includes honest talk about myths, mistakes to avoid, strategies, and a section for beginners.  Especially helpful are communication techniques and money management ideas.

I’m curious about what book(s) have helped you on your journey (and we can all agree that The Bible should be on the list!).

We’d like to get some dialogue going, so this week is Question Week. Next up:

During the fundraising process, how much about yourself is appropriate to dilvulge?

Here’s what got me thinking about this (see my post from January on “Obama Cost a Missionary Their Support”). The point of discussion that I see here is not about who’s supporting Obama (or not); it’s about public disclosure when you’re a missionary.

When we started our journey into fundraising, I didn’t realise that we would become a (lesser) form of public figure, complete with all the requisite scrutiny. Combined with today’s social media openness, you can learn a lot about a missionary without even talking to or interacting with them. Plus, people in your mission field will research you online. We found this out the hard way, and it can jeopardize your entire mission, depending on the culture.

We’ve done some things in our past that we’re not proud of. One of us used to be a “hacker” back in the day. The other never wanted to be a missionary until God really brought a heart-change just a couple of years before our fundraising. These (and other things) would potentially upset certain personality types, and if we had been directly asked about such things, we would have answered honestly. But bringing it up out of nowhere would have seemed worse.

Missionaries, did/do you find people want to know specific things about you, your family, or your beliefs on specific issues? Let us know in the comments section.

We’d like to get some dialogue going, so this week is Question Week. First up:

For those already established in their mission field, how do you handle inquiries from prospective missionaries about your field?

Because we maintain huge communication back to our supporters, which includes a blog, we tend to get a decent amount of people we’ve never met contacting us for direction. Sometimes this happens in waves (evidently a lot of Christian colleges must have a “Missions Emphasis” week or month which requires contact or research on a mission field), other times not so much.

We started out replying to each one, but that became daunting and too time consuming. After time we could spot indicators from the emails that seemed to determine a person’s seriousness about our mission field, such as specific questions or understanding that we were busy and could not reply immediately or at length. I began compiling our “best of” in a file, and copying/pasting into the reply emails. A few have turned into great friends, and one couple are completing their preparations to become missionaries here in Western Europe. I’m glad we took the time to respond to them.

However, for prospective missionaries reading this site, please remember that you’re contacting a complete stranger. Introduce yourself and give a short paragraph about who you are, where you’re from and why you’re considering missions. Do some research first and avoid broad questions. Don’t expect an immediate reply, especially if they’re in a different time zone. Here is my list of “what NOT to ask a missionary about getting into their field” (and these are all real emails we’ve received): » Read the rest of this entry «