Question Week: How Much (or What) Should You Communicate Back Home?
Posted by C. Holland on May 05, 2009Another 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?
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May 5th, 2009 at 11:15 am
When we were missionaries in Nicaragua we had a maid/cook and that threw off some of our supporters (they’d say things like “Well, THAT must be nice…”) but to be culturally relevant people of our social position (we were easily among the wealthiest 10% of our town of 20,000) it was expected that we would have a domestic. It also provided work for a widow in our church who was raising 3 children – we paid her much better than what she would’ve made working for a “national” family and we even paid for her children to go to a private Christian school. SO we always had to explain this when people in the U.S. found out that we had a maid!
Here in Mexico (where we DON’T live like royalty) the rub is how much “truth” do we communicate abt the intense danger that exists here. The safety situation here is pretty dubious these days with the Drug Wars and now that darn swine flu. We’ve had nearly ALL of our short-term summer missions teams cancel and people back home constantly beg us to come home until the violence & flu subsides.
As far as the locals keeping track of us thru our blog…in Nicaragua it was actually linked on the town government’s website! We hardly ever post anything too “iffy” but when I’m sure some of my rants could be easily misinterpreted by an over-sensitive Mexican.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Hi Greg, My friend who was an MK in the Philippines told me an almost identical story to yours about having a domestic servant–and the supporter upset that it caused. This story and other issues we’ve faced make me think that Christians, in missions or not, need serious education about cultural sensitivity.
I’m sorry to hear about the difficulties in Mexico. We’re praying for you, and I understand about how much to really reveal. Some supporters and family members get so freaked if you reveal some of the realities of missions (and I know our W. Europe issues aren’t nearly as pointed as yours).
May 13th, 2009 at 7:58 am
I believe the question is not so much how much you communicate, but how much you communicate with whom? I have a Stateside accountability partner (my accountability partner before I left for the mission field). He is also one of our most faithful investors/supporters. I was completely open and honest with him when I lived in the States. I am still completely and honest with him living as a missionary. I am free to share with him all of my struggles and challenges. Some of our other investors/supporters I don’t have this kind of relationship with, so I am not as open to them.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Hi David, great point about the accountability partner and about discernment with info to different relationships. I suspect many of the missionaries that have left our field did not have a confidant of some sort that was either outside their family or their mission field that could provide another viewpoint on things.