A Mission Pastors Dilemma
As a mission pastor, I sometimes feel like a marriage counselor. In all honesty, I stink at counseling. I am not the most compassionate or patient person in bringing two people together. When it comes to counseling, I am more like the guy in this commercial [1]. Yet, as a missions pastor, I have two groups that I am constantly trying to counsel and bring together.
Those two groups are our church people and the field missionaries. These two seldom speak the same language. They need each other, but they do not understand one another. Helping them be on the same page can be difficult, but they must be on the same page if we, as a church, are to reach people with the gospel effectively.
The Church
On one side, there is the church. They desire to do something meaningful and relevant. Churches want to be engaged but may not know how to carry out that engagement in a culturally relative way. They often come to the field with different goals than the missionary. I had a missionary share with me that a potential church partner stated they would only participate in a short-term trip to places where they can achieve an ROI ( Return on Investment). If they spend a certain amount of money on a trip, they expect a predetermined percentage of people to give their lives to Christ. This strategy on church missions falls apart quickly when churches try applying it in the unreached parts of the world that need the gospel the most.
One of the biggest problems I see churches doing is seeking to utilize strategies that lend themselves to creating dependency. American churches can be very giving. But sometimes, we want to fund it all and do the work for those we seek to reach. A missionary friend relayed a story of a conference he attended in a Central American country. The conference leaders asked the local pastors why they were not planting churches. The answer was simple: “They needed an American team to come down and build the buildings for them, and they did not have any American teams to do this.” At this point, the conference organizers realized they had failed in training these local pastors over the last 20 years. They had created a dependency model that is highly ineffective in church planting and dependent on people from America to accomplish.
Handing out lots of money is another example. I saw a businessman once give a local North African pastor over $25,000 to “help him out a little.” Within a year, the pastor was out of the ministry and lost the confidence and trust of his congregation. The money he was given was the primary contributor to his downfall. There are many more issues than dependency.
When churches seek to bring American methods and use them in a culture where those methods will not work, they risk getting the missionaries kicked out and nationals killed. No wonder there are times when missionaries are reluctant to work with churches.
The Fix
In these cases, it is crucial for the missions pastor, with the help of the missionary, to train their churches and teams to understand the strategy and the work overseas. Church members who do not understand missional strategies can become a real problem for those on the field and set back the work the missionaries spent years building. To help make sure this does not happen, we take all our mission teams through our trip training manual, which consists of at least five meetings to cover things that the trip participant needs to know before they go.
We cover things like:
· We teach that the overall idea is for us to plant churches.
· We teach our teams that the missionary is the chief strategist in this, not the American team that lives 5000 miles away.
· We teach our teams how to avoid creating dependency among the people we serve.
· We train our teams to use storying to share the gospel.
· We teach our teams this is a long-term strategy for our church with this missionary.
· We teach our teams to lay our expectations at the feet of Jesus, and He will bring the results He wants.
· We teach that our trip is not about us.
· We teach that the missionary is not there to serve and provide us with experience.
When consulting with churches seeking to go to the unreached parts of the world, I always discuss mission ideas and strategies with church leaders before they speak to the missionaries. I call it preemptive work.
From The Field-Side of Things
From the field side, I have seen missionaries who have no desire to host a short-term mission team coming from the States. They do not believe the church has much to offer, nor does the church understand their strategy. And sometimes they are right.
But here is the problem: As a missions pastor, it is hard to mobilize my church for your ministry overseas if our people do not have a chance to see the work, touch it, and be a part of it. In return, that makes it difficult for me as the mission pastor to raise money to help with your projects. Getting my church involved with the fieldwork is difficult for me if they do not know the missionaries and have never been there.
The Fix
In cases where the missionary is not high on a short-term team, it is good for the mission pastor to help the field personnel understand the mission pastor’s position. Allowing people to come on short-term trips, even briefly, can go a long way in church support. When lay people go on trips, they come back excited and become some of the best advocates for the work. They tell others what God is doing among the people group. They lead others to join them on their next trip, project, or funding initiative. When people hear my excitement, it can be dismissed as a “ That is his job” response. But when lay people lead the way, I have seen results like, people being called to serve in full-time work on the field, providing more money to help carry out their tasks and becoming serious prayer warriors for the cause.
I have seen this happen over and over. People go on a short-term trips, come home, and are all on board with the missionaries and the work. My job as a missions pastor is to help the missionary see that they play a crucial role in mobilizing those in the states for the cause of Christ among the nations. In the past, some missionaries encouraged the church only to send money. In a new church in America, the Church wants to participate also. To survive, missionaries must see the church as a fully participating partner in the work.
I never thought that being a missions pastor would mean that I would be a counselor seeking to bring people together. But it is precisely that. Getting churches and the field together is imperative to what we do. It is hard work, but we must work together to help both sides see the other side's point of view.