In an effort to better communicate our own philosophy of ministry with potential teammates, and with supporters and supporting churches, I (Daniel) have decided to begin writing some short pieces. This is the first in a serious outlining our posture towards missions; one which we’ve learned the hard way over the years of ministry. Rather than a comprehensive map, each piece is meant as a signpost along the way saying “Here is what we’ve learned so far, and here is where we are heading.”
Why Missions Needs a Long-Term View
Much has been said about the potential downfalls of short-term missions. While I agree wholeheartedly with many of the critiques, my wife and I were led into long-term missions through short-term trips that created new relationships. This blog post is not about that particular side of things, but rather an attempt to flesh out the kind of ministry we are signing up for in long-term missions as missionaries, mission committees at supporting churches, home churches, and supporters. I desire to speak honestly about the nature of this ministry, and how that should shape our expectations.
Most things I say here aren't unique to missions, but are true of local parish ministry as well. There may be reason why the Bible does not have one set of vocabulary for church ministry, and another special vocabulary for missionary endeavors.
Two sources of anxiety in this arena, which I believe to be misplaced, need to be addressed:
Missionaries feel anxiety that their ministry is newsletter-worthy, being 'effective' enough, converting enough people, making enough of an impact, both for reporting back home and for their own encouragement.
Mission committees and supporters often feel an anxiety around finding and investing in effective and important ministries.
Both of these arise from a desire to do good work in the kingdom, which ought to be applauded. However, our ways of deciding what is valuable are often naïve to the realities of ministry. We often look for glorious ministry, when the Lord calls us to a cruciform one.
With these things in mind, I will be writing a some blogs about the reasons we need a long-term view in missions alongside our sense of urgency.
Many of your intuitions have to be retrained.
THE Weakness of Moving Cross-Culturally
A cross-cultural move is almost always one of losing power, dignity, and confidence. This has expressed itself, in our case, with the contours of international life.
Power
Its a loss of power in losing the right to vote, the right to move about freely (visas often carry travel restrictions), or to take up jobs as you please. Its also a loss of power in what you leave behind: the community in whom you had influence, the language where you could be understood (less so in the UK, but, aye, nae bother), and an established institutional status. The last one was the most surprising for me. We had taken for granted how much status we relied on in being known and vouched for by many US institutions. One small example will suffice. Setting up a bank account in the UK requires that you have proof of address in the UK, and thus a house rented. But setting up a rental requires that you have a bank account from which you can set up a standing debit. How exactly can a stranger break in? These and many other hurdles describe the experience of powerlessness inherent in being an outsider. While things in our case have been tempered through my status at the University, we nonetheless have faced some of the weakness an outsider faces.
Dignity
Its a loss of dignity because you have no idea what you are doing 90% percent of the time. We remember this especially from our early days in our two years Malawi. Just trying to buy tomatoes and bananas, not to mention figuring out how to drive on the left side of the road, left you feeling small. This was emphasized in our missionary language training. When you begin learning a new language, you take on the role of a baby. You are dependent on others to help you with everything. You can't even order an ice cream for yourself. This was still true in the UK. In our early months here, we faced numerous situations throughout the week where we simply don't know what was expected and end up getting honked at (multi-lane roundabouts!), appearing too brash (Americans don’t conform), or letting others down because we don't have life together quite yet (see paragraph above). All of this results in a loss of dignity.
Confidence
Confidence is lost through losing power and dignity, but especially through losing your community, and your sense of place. Church community and close friends provide regular support, affirmation, and more than all else, a sense of belonging. So much confidence is gifted to us through other's regular presence in our lives. When this is lost, we are left to shore up our own insecurities, our sense of what is right in the ambiguities of life. But that still sounds a bit to triumphalistic. It’s more like a wilderness journey than a victorious Marine mission. The result of all this is questioning everything from which bread to buy to moving houses ending up feeling like an existential crisis. Once or twice a week for our first 4 months, I often asked Bethany "have we made a great and elaborate mistake in doing this?"
In a nutshell, relocating is better described as dislocating. It takes time to restore those ruptured roots in the new soil. Of course, we are not meant to shoulder these things alone, and in our case, God has supplied very dear voices at the needed times from among our supporters and colleagues at Serge. However, I believe that what we experience in every cross-cultural move is not only common, but essential for what God intends to happen in us to make us ready for ministry.
Cruciform Ministry
While all of this may sound very depressing (and at times it is), this is part of God's genius. None of these things stay this way forever. Rather they are an entry point. However, at the entry point we have a choice to make: will we submit to God's conforming us to the way of Christ's cross (cruciform), or will we find ways to insist on and replicate the life we once had? Practically speaking, this is not such a black and white decision; every missionary navigates the gray toward humble love between apparent luxury and micro-managing asceticism. The point, however, is that much of the loss the Lord engineers for us is meant to put us in a place of waiting on him.
Waiting is the practical side of cruciform ministry. Waiting on him to send friends, to give us a place, to send us a language tutor, to connect us with the right people at the right time for the right purposes. And much of this waiting, is meant to make us into people who are not so obsessed by our power and dignity that we miss the very place the Lord intends to bring life. Paul says as much about his ministry:
... For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 2 Corinthians 1:8–9
Despairing of life has never sold well on newsletters. But this is exactly the place where we begin to depend on the Lord to act, to show himself powerful, attentive, kind, and immeasurably gracious. It is when we have despaired of protecting ourselves from harm, despaired of our ability to pull off the life we expect (or which we think others expect), that we are free to minister without having to prove anything about ourselves. When the Lord has met us there, we can start to love others with more exposure, more vulnerability, more abandon.
1 Year Down, Untold to Go
If this is how the Lord had us begin our ministry, as he does for most missionaries, we can begin to see the need for a long-term vision. The rule of thumb is that it takes about 1-2 years for all the dust to settle, to form friendships and find community, and for relationships to deepen (the subject of our next blog post). That's about when we went home from Malawi last time, just as things were getting sweet and showing potential. Another way to put this is that missions is an investment, and it’s just as costly spiritually as it is financially. It takes years to see the fruit of that early investment.
So for us, things are no different and we do not intend to hide it. Our first 6 months were very difficult and disorienting. There are still disorienting times, but we are praying, walking, and waiting on the Lord in them. We trust him that their difficulty has been part of his forming us into the image of Christ, who, "Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered." (Hebrews 5:8) We anticipate going about the slow work of investing in relationships both here in Scotland and in our connections in Malawi. Part of what we want to invite our supporters to is joining us in praying and waiting. Would you pray with us as we watch and wait for the Lord to work? Prayer is the work of ministry, precisely because we are asking God to act in those areas beyond our reach. Missions and cross-cultural ministry serve to highlight just how much is beyond our reach.
This is the first part of a series of blogs on why missions needs a long-term vision. Upcoming topics:
Change is at the Pace of Relationships
Strategy vs. Urgency
Love Takes the Risk of Investment
Why Long-Term Ministry Needs Short-Term Visits