I’d like to read more this year, and missiology/missions is definitely on the subject list. I’m thinking of possibly reviewing some of those books on this site so:

What book(s) would you recommend to someone who says, “I’m thinking of becoming a missionary/going on a short-term mission trip” or asks the question, “What’s it like to be a missionary?”

Hit the comments below!

Related posts:

1. Question Week: What Books Would You Recommend to a Prospective Missionary?
2. Question Week: How Do You Handle Missionary Inquiries?

The latest newsletter from The Body Builders talks about the importance of sending gifts to your supporters, not only to encourage better relationships with your financial partners but also to help maintain giving. I have to be honest; in our almost five years in the field, we never sent Christmas gifts. As much as we communicated and made sure to send letters, postcards and make phone calls to our supporters, we just couldn’t afford to buy and ship packages from our field. The cost was too high.

But not every missionary is in Western Europe. So I’m curious: do you give/send Christmas gifts to your supporters?

And here’s the link to the newsletter: ‘Tis the Season…For Giving!

Related posts:

1. Roll the Dice, Get a Prize, Give to Missions?
2. Staying Home For Christmas
3. Fundraising: The Extreme Edge of Faith

I’m rethinking a lot about missions these days while back in the States. Much, much more to come, but a friend recently sent us this:

“Girls Night Out – Bunko With a Mission”! Mark your calendars for Saturday at 6:30 p.m. at [church]. Prizes and raffling off gift baskets from [Local Restaurant], Starbucks, Lacome, Mary Kay, [Tutoring], Bath & Body, [Football Team tickets] and much more. Suggested donation $10. Feel free to invite a friend…Please R.S.V.P.

There are so many ways to fundraise, I know. But in the case of missions, what are we conveying to people? This isn’t very important to you, so I’ll have to bait you with prizes and useful, fun items you receive in return. We’re so desperate, we’ll try anything. 

If they’re playing a game that had been originally used for gambling (I’ve never played it, so I’m not familiar with the method), isn’t this akin to having a “Casino Night for Missions”? I’m not fearful of cards or dice when playing a board game with the family, but it just seems to me like an odd method to use for mission fundraising.

We had been taught, mostly by being the audience in a church, that the missionary is to convince you with facts, figures, and photos why their mission needs our financial support. You might speak to the missionary afterwards to get more information, and then decide to give an amount freely, not expecting something tangible in return. We encouraged people to pray about this and a specific monetary figure, and I hope they did. It appears to me to be a more intellectual pursuit.

Of course, I realise that we sold off all our possessions years ago to go to our mission field; however, it was not presented in the classifieds as a “Help Missions Yard Sale”. It was just a yard sale, and it did benefit missions. Yet that was not why people showed up and bought my toaster. It was a simple transaction.

The church doesn’t seem to use these methods for regular Sunday tithes. Oh, I know there’s the year-end appeal when the church is in the red, but I’ve never been part of a church that ran, say, a Harvest Festival to Pay the Electric Bill. Tithing and stewardship has been addressed in the Sunday message in a rather straightforward way in my experience. Why the need to get money for missions in this way?

So, am I just a fossil who’s been out of the States for too long and needs to “get with the times”, or does this strike you as the wrong message to send about how to support missions?

Related posts:

1. Do You Give Christmas Gifts to Your Supporters?

We’re back in the States. For now.

We’ve been back for a few months. Praying, waiting, seeking God’s direction. I didn’t mean to leave the blog with the cliffhanger of  “The Voices in Your Head”, but shortly after that entry things went horribly wrong at the church we were serving.

Elders, deacons and church members spoke some of those exact words I had typed in April. Those voices became real. And there’s no way they read the blog; only my Other Half knows about it.

But that’s not the problem. We’ve had worse said and done to us. We’re grown-ups. We can take it. The real problem was that they used those words to justify their next step, which was to take the church down a very unBiblical path. And the membership made their stand firm.

We knew resigning was our only option, but what made it so hurtful was that, in leaving that church, it effectively killed our immigration permission. Due to new laws, we had to leave, seek another ministry opportunity in the mission country and then attempt to reenter later, resetting all permission back to the beginning. And those new laws have become ultra-restrictive to any new missionaries.

Almost 5 years of ministry stopped in what felt like a heartbeat. We had to return back to the States, completely unplanned and unprepared. It was (and still is) awkward, uncomfortable and left us pretty emotionally drained. But the most interesting part was in the leaving. 

If you look at the About section of this blog and the early post “When Missionaries Leave on Bad Terms”, you read my confusion about former missionaries leaving and hating our mission field in Western Europe. I believe this experience may have answered my question from 2008.

When we knew we had to leave, we started to inform and explain to those around us; we didn’t just disappear. If you’ve read any of this blog, you’ll quickly understand that we’ve worked so hard to communicate in context with the nationals. Though some were most understanding and have kept contact with us to this day, many shocked us with their responses to why we were leaving.

“You’re lying.”

“This isn’t that big of a deal. Why not just stay, ignore the problem until you get citizenship in a few years and then quit the church?” (from a national pastor, of all people)

“You’ve got some other plan that you’re hiding, like a better paying job.”

The day we were flying out of the country, we even received an anonymous text saying something to the effect of: “I know what you really did. You should have come clean, but you’ve made it worse. You think you’re escaping this today, but it will follow you.”

Whoa. Talk about kicking us when we’re down. I think I’m starting to understand some people’s reactions if this is anything of their experience in leaving. Not saying it’s right, but we’re still working through some anger issues over the abusive, bullying and untrue comments that came directly to our face from Deacons and Elders.

At this point, I still couldn’t be in the same room with some of them and be civil. I’ve lived long enough to know that this, too, will pass. But it’s pretty raw at the moment.

So here we find ourselves in a weird limbo state: an unexpected furlough. Hopping from relative’s house to relative’s house, catching up on the last 5 years. America is a very different place than the one we left. We’re not the only ones out of a job and trying to figure out what’s next. It seems like now, when you say you don’t have the money for something, unlike before, people actually believe you.

Soon we embark on the presentations to our supporting churches, the part I really dread. It’s going to be difficult to see photos on the video of what we accomplished while there, knowing what was said and how it ended. And the requisite staying in different places with people you don’t really know. Not fun.

Yet we don’t want to give up the opportunity to show people what their church’s contribution helped accomplish (actually, a lot of long-lasting good, despite the end), nor the opportunity to challenge people on what missions can look like and where that can happen (see “We All Know What Happens When We Assume…”).

We’re still very gutted over the whole thing, still trying to make sense of it and at the same time finding our way forward. We don’t hate God, we’re not leaving ministry, and we still believe we are missionaries.

But not in Western Europe, at least, for now.

No related posts.

On the mission field you see a lot of things, hear a lot of things, feel a lot of things. But the hardest thing to overcome is the voices in your head.

You know what I’m talking about. They’re not audible (we’re not talking schizophrenia here), they don’t make logical sense, but they’re always there. Hanging on your every hang-up, weakness, and self-doubt, those voices know exactly how to get to you. And even though there’s no actual proof for 99% of it, you just feel that it’s so believable.

Oh, I had those voices before. Before I was a Christian, before I entered missions. I think—I know—a lot of people hear these voices, too. It’s just being human. But stepping onto Satan’s territory, the volume goes up. Way up. And the attacks are much more precise, delving deeper into your psyche than ever before. There they are, lurking at every turn, sometimes so out of the blue that it almost literally knocks the wind out of you.

“They don’t want you here.”

“You can’t do this.”

“It all seems hopeless.”

“What if you get kicked out of the country?”

“You’re an imposter.”

“How will you survive if the funds take a nose dive?”

“They will never see you as anything more than a foreigner with an alien agenda.”

“You deserve better.”

“You’ve done your time; why keep on going?”

You don’t usually see the arrows coming. Funny thing is, the arrows don’t hit; they just whizz by, uncomfortably close but not an actual strike. I don’t know what it is, but it seems to come when nothing’s wrong, no one’s started anything, and there’s absolutely nothing in the physical world to point to. Just these weird convictions that seem to come out of nowhere, sound seductively simple yet true. And they’re not.

But I don’t give in to them. I can’t. I won’t. Partly because I’m stubborn, but more because I can’t sense God in any of it. None of it makes sense, and quite frankly, they’re all lies. I’ve got no proof and, what’s more, it’s never revealed to me when I’m in my quiet time or any time I’m focussing on God. Never. Not once.

So what do I do? Conquer by continuing. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Pray, pray, and pray some more. Because if my time here on earth has taught me anything, it’s that Satan starts to ramp up the attacks when you’re stepping on his toes and close to a breakthrough for God’s Kingdom. I’ve seen so many missionaries give up on something that they thought was impossible—only to find out that if they’d waited a couple of months, things would have been so much different, better, right.

I can’t take that risk.

No related posts.

This month’s fundraising newsletter from The Body Builders suggests raising support through the power of a community. Essentially, the concept is to meet regularly with a group of other missionaries that are fundraising to swap ideas and encourage one another. I think this is a brilliant idea and wish we’d had this opportunity when we were back in the States. You can read the entire newsletter here: “The Power of Community in Raising Support”.

I wonder, however, how this looks once you’re in the field. We view support raising as something that doesn’t stop, and while a meeting could be of great benefit while on furlough, I’m unfamiliar with the community concept while in the field. Has anyone else had experience of encouraging each other in a group setting while fundraising?

Related posts:

1. Top Five Fears in Fundraising
2. Transitioning From Fundraising to Tentmaking
3. Are You Using “Toxic Phrases” When Fundraising?

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A letter from Post-Christian Europe on the future of America’s Christian culture.

Do you idolise the “easy” life of a missionary? An honest answer here.

An open letter from a former long-term missionary to France on returning to worship in American churches.

Are you a missionary or are you a “Trader”? (HT: Almost an M)

An updated answer to “What is Furlough?”

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1. From the Missionary Blogosphere

“Well, you must be there because you have such a love for the people.” I never know how to respond to that comment.

It’s usually after the complaintive statement about why the person thinks it would be so awful to live in our mission field (or outside of America in general). “But the weather’s so bad!”, “How do you deal with the lack of product choice?”, or “Why would you give up such good opportunities in the States?” are the most typical precursors.

A while back, we were invited to visit some fellow Americans in another part of this country during our vacation time. They are Christian, yet their primary reason for being in the country is secular work. We had asked about what there was to do as a tourist in their city, and the reply was interesting:

“Here’s a list of historical and religious sites in the area. We figured since you’re missionaries and you have such a love for these people, you must want to focus on those things during your vacation here.”

Uh, no, actually we were curious about regular tourist stuff and, while that could include a museum or church, we’re more the foodie type. And shopping. And entertainment. Or even walking the countryside. You know, being somewhat normal in modern society. When I let them know this (albeit in much less sarcastic tones), they sounded disappointed. We just wanted some time off and to have fun. It became clear that we weren’t living up to that “Missionary Superhero” stereotype.

I wouldn’t say I have “a love for the people of [my mission field]”, because it seems to imply infatuation or obsession with this specific culture ahead of God’s direction, a bizarre fixation which many take as the only explanation as to why I’d live in this “crazy”, “awful”, or “God-forsaken” place (other people’s words, not mine). To be clear, I do not have a hate for the people, either. I enjoy being here, and we’ve already made extensive study of historical and cultural aspects to better minister to the people here. It seems that the longer we’re in our field, the better we’re understanding the personality of this culture. It can be great fun! But, like all cultures, it’s not perfect in our mission field, and there are parts that are frustrating at times. What I do suspect is that God could call us to a plethora of different cultures, and we’d find that each would have awful and great aspects that make them unique. Just like we found when we were growing up in the States.

What I would say is that we have a love for Christ, and we’re concerned for all people groups; He’s just given us a geographical area to focus on that we find less challenging than it appears to those on the outside of the situation. I can’t say we’re here solely because we have a “love of the people” because it’s not true. We’re here because God called us here, and, should He call us elsewhere or back to the States, we go where He says.

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1. When Sympathy Turns Demeaning, Part 2: Those Poor People

While the context is business entrepreneurship, John Doerr makes some interesting comparisons in this video from Stanford. I feel his description of missionary is very favourable, and it made me think in the Christian context, “Are some missionaries more like mercenaries?” The reason I say that is, if you pause the video at 1:04, there’s a comparison list. And it saddens me to say that I have encountered some mercenaries on the field, just replace “money” with “numbers” or “personal glory”. Thoughts?

Link to “Mercenaries and Missionaries”, John Doerr

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Are printed missionary newsletters so 20th century? (HT: Justin Long)

Thoughts on why we may not want to admit that we have culture shock.

I know I’ve been guilty of giving people the “mishclaimer”, sometimes without realising it.

El Chupacabra faces the preconceived notions of what exactly a missionary looks like.

MissioMishMash writes a missions philosophy for America.

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2. From the Missionary Blogosphere
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