Missions Textbook 53 Relationships on the Mission Field

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

Very few people go to the mission field without having to navigate the following relationships.

Married or Single?

The first question you might need to ask is whether you are choosing to go to the mission field married or single? If you are already married, read this anyway to help others with their decision. Each scenario has distinct advantages and will face unique challenges. Married couples will usually build relationships with other married couples, and their children, housing and cost of living will affect their ministry. Single people will usually gravitate toward other single people, and the desire to find a marriage partner is strong in every culture. In fact, many cultures will wonder if there isn’t something wrong with you if you are not married. Since more women than men go to the mission field single, it is very difficult (not impossible) for a single woman to find a man who fits her criteria as a marriage partner on the field. Getting married and returning to one’s home country is never a sin. All options are open.

Your Parents and In-laws

Don’t get caught off-guard by overlooking what your parents and in-laws think about your leaving the country for a few years. They may be overjoyed that their children are following the Lord in this way, or they may be devastated to realize they will not be a part of watching their grandchildren grow up. You and your parents may need to discuss your reasons for making this decision. Talk about all the possibilities of them seeing their grandchildren somehow, either they come for an extended visit (are your parents retired?) or you send the kids to them for a summer. If your parents are aging rapidly, should you stay home and take care of them? Will they feel deserted or just experience loss at your leaving? Do you want your parents to support you financially on the field? Do you have the right to ask them for financial help? Your own personal relationship with your parents will decide the answers to these questions. If your parents are nervous about what you are doing, can you connect them with others who have children who live overseas? Be careful to choose other parents who are positive about this move.

Fellow Missionaries

We don’t want to paint a rosy picture of these relationships. We realize that if you don’t go to the mission field, you will still have to navigate relationships in your life, but it is a well-known fact that the main reason missionaries leave the field is because of friction and fights with other missionaries. The scenarios vary. You should think about the six scenarios of relationships that you might encounter in your ministry. Things can go wrong and you should prepare for the worst but pray for the best.

Scenario #1. If you join an existing missionary team with existing leadership, will you, as the outsider, be the cause of friction within the team, or will you be a peacemaker? Sometimes the team leadership needs to be revised. If that is the case, how will you handle it? Stay and fight, or leave? Do you have the experience to challenge the leadership, or are you just arrogant enough to believe that you should be leading? Are you teachable, even from someone who is not a born leader?

Scenario #2. You are asked to be the team leader of an already existing team. You have not built a relationship with anyone on the team before you arrived. How well has everyone gotten along before you arrived? Why did the last team leader leave? Should someone on the existing team have been placed in your position? Does someone else want your position? Why did you accept the position? Would the team be better off with a leader they know and trust, even though you might be more qualified and have more leadership ability than him/her? What is more important to you: efficiency or relationships?

Scenario #3. You are joining a brand-new team with brand new leadership, and all of you will attempt to build relationships along the way. I won’t ask a lot of questions about this scenario. I will just state that you are going to have lots of opportunities for sanctification. Read and re-read Ephesians and Philippians about fellowship.

Scenario #4. You are placed in charge of a brand-new team. This one is usually easier than scenario #2 because everyone is starting fresh. Many of the same questions under that scenario still apply to this one.

Scenario #5. You choose to go to a field where no one else wants to go, so you go alone. First, you need to realize that the apostle Paul always went with a team, unless he was under arrest. Second, you need a clear calling to make this move, or you need at least to be seriously committed to serving the Lord in this way. You won’t have any checks and balances from other team members, and we often need the input and correction from others to see our faults. Even when the correction is wrong, it should make us re-evaluate our motives and actions to make sure that we’re not damaging people with our decisions. And you will be criticized by other missionaries for not following the crowd.

If you are going to think that far out of the box, be clear on whom (Whom) you are serving and who has authority over you. Be careful claiming that you are ultimately accountable to your local “sending” church back home, since few in your church will know the language or culture of your target country, and they won’t have the foggiest idea of how to help you make good decisions on the field, or correct you if you go off the rails. The apostle Paul spent fifteen years in Antioch building relationships with the local church leadership before leaving on his first missionary journey, and yet, as far as we know, he received no input (or financial support) from his “sending” church while he was gone.

On the positive side, you won’t have any fights with other missionaries, and this might be worth more than fighting with other team members.

Scenario #6. You just don’t want to work with any other missionaries. You just want to associate with nationals. This is one motivation for choosing scenario #5. Re-read the disadvantages in scenario #5. If you choose this scenario, you will probably learn the language quicker. The worst way to learn a new language is to surround yourself with your own language. Beg your new national friends to speak to you only in their language, and not to allow you to slip into your own language. Yes, you will die, but you will resurrect.

If you go with a mission agency, the agency leadership will probably not allow scenarios #5 & #6, although there may be so few missionaries where you are going, that #5 & #6 will be your only options. On the other hand, they may not let you choose your location if there is not already a team there.

Mission agencies will probably take into account the possibility that not every missionary will get along with every other missionary. There are many things missionaries can disagree on, including education of children, what is too free or legalistic, what the money is used for, how much language you really need to learn, and especially methods for communicating the Gospel. Hopefully, the mission agency has mitigation and counseling services to help the missionaries iron out their differences.

Missionaries from other mission agencies

This should never be a problem, but believers seem to gravitate to relationship problems. Try to discover what kinds of relationships other mission agencies in your area have with one another. Attempt to find out the reasons for the difficulties. Don’t judge either side until you have as much information as possible from all sides. Perhaps you can avoid the issue altogether. In Austria, when we were criticized by missionaries from other agencies, we simply ignored them. They eventually stopped trying to “associate” with us, i.e, “help us” decide the best way to do things, and peace reigned.

One of the reasons for conflicts between missionaries from different agencies can be labeled “territorialism.” Some missionaries believe that whoever arrived on that field first has the right to direct the affairs of any other agencies and missionaries arriving later. These first arrivals often do not realize that they are inadvertently preventing more opportunities for the nationals to hear the Gospel because of their “ownership” of that territory. I asked a missionary once if he preferred that some nationals go to hell rather than to hear the Gospel from someone other than himself. After that he left us alone. Your best response is to avoid other missionaries with whom you disagree and focus on building relationships with the nationals.

If you or your team do work with other agencies, inquire as to how well they get along with each other. Do both agencies have similar goals? Is the leadership in each agency in agreement with different methods to achieve those goals? Is working together mandatory? Who is your final authority on the field? You don’t want to be caught off-guard by something that could hinder you building relationships with the nationals.

Nationals

A national church may or may not already exist on your field. You should learn as much as you can about the history of that work. Who established it? How advanced is the work? Has the relationship between the missionaries and the nationals changed over time? Have they grown in love for one another, or has resentment set in?

Will you be asked to work alongside of or under the national workers? Does you mission agency give you the freedom to make that choice yourself? Are the nationals receptive to that situation? In Europe we saw both acceptance and rejection of new missionaries by the nationals. This usually had resulted from previous relationships that had nothing to do with us.

Who will hold you ultimately accountable, your mission agency, your supporters at home, the national workers, or the national church? A missionary told me years ago, that a missionary could only get a missionary visa in France if a local French church would sponsor him/her. If, however, the missionary began to evangelize in a way that brought the local church too much visibility in the community (good or bad), the local church could revoke the missionary’s visa, and he/she would have to return home. Are you okay with that potential scenario?

What would happen if you started a new work when there is already a national work there? Who would object? What objections would surface? Don’t be shocked by this possibility. Sometimes doing this is a bad idea. The nationals do understand their own people better than the missionary understands them. On the other hand, you might ask the question, are the nationals reaching their own people with the Gospel, and if not, why shouldn’t you jump in and attempt to evangelize the nationals outside the confines of a national work? When Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, rejected him, he responded that “no prophet is accepted in his own country” (Luke 4:24). That principle might apply to the national church in your target country. If you do start a new work without their approval (authority), you might experience conflict with national believers, and maybe also with other missionary agencies.

If you end up working with nationals who are far enough along to have their own pastors and maybe even missionaries, should you help finance the national workers? Debates have raged over this very hot topic. On the one hand, shouldn’t the national works become completely dependent on the Lord and independent of foreign missionaries? On the other hand, is there no place for cooperation with the national churches in supporting their leadership and missionaries? Enjoy the discussion.

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

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