by Gordon White
I had been in West Africa only three months when the worst thing I could imagine happened — an African worker was killed in a horrible accident in the front yard of our home. A band of armed policemen broke through the angry mob that quickly surrounded our house and arrested me, declaring that I was a criminal and would go directly to prison.
I had been in West Africa only three months when the worst thing I could imagine happened — an African worker was killed in a horrible accident in the front yard of our home. A band of armed policemen broke through the angry mob that quickly surrounded our house and arrested me, declaring that I was a criminal and would go directly to prison.
As they were taking me away, I managed to hurriedly ask one of the local Christians to get away as quickly as possible and get help from our mission director. Later that night, the mission director’s reply arrived. Whenever the police released me, I was to try to telephone him myself.
After interrogating me several times, the police finally released me. When at last I reached by telephone, my supervisor still didn’t think the situation was serious enough to warrant the four-hour trip to my outpost.
Yet, I needed desperately to see a friendly American face and talk to someone in English. My family had gone through hours of stress while we desperately sought help for the dying African worker. I had been taken away by the police leaving my family alone in a house surrounded by an angry mob.
I had been interrogated by the police in a new, and still difficult foreign language. Finally, I had been taken late at night to the house where the dead man lay, his arms and legs still twisted in the rigid shapes of his final agony. Now, a busy missions director had no time for us. It was the final straw. Breaking down, I wept into the phone and begged him to come.
At that moment, I desperately needed pastoral care. Although missionaries don’t often face such extreme circumstances, they often need pastoral care. Most often, they do not get it.
In a 1983 survey of missionaries, 35 percent of respondents said lack of pastoral care caused considerable or extreme stress in their lives and work. Pastoral care is one of the richest resources of the church. Missionaries need such care throughout their lives.
STRESSED TO THE MAX
On the field, the greatest sources of stress are likely to be emotional and spiritual. Missionaries are often surprised to find themselves embroiled in intense spiritual struggles. Most missionaries view themselves as agents of change in the societies to which they have come. They do not expect to be suddenly confronted with the urgent need for personal growth under the impact of harsh self-revelation. This discovery is stressful enough. The missionary who resists or rejects this process lives with constant stress.
Stress is a key factor in the need for missionary pastoral counseling. The Holmes and Rahe "stress scale" of common life experiences for North Americans assigns a point value for stressful situations in order to determine cumulative stress in an individual’s life.
Measured by this scale, the average healthy missionary family leaving for overseas assignment amasses a total of more than 300 stress value points even before facing any of the unique missionary stressors awaiting them on the field. According to Holmes and Rahe, 80 percent of those measured with this stress level become ill within one year.
Added to this are the special problems of life and work in a foreign culture plus the insecurity of dependence on financial support from sources far removed, and the continual pressure to present a good picture of themselves and their work to supporters.
NOWHERE TO GO FOR HELP
In view of these stressors, where can missionaries go for on-going counsel and pastoral care? Most often, they cannot express much of their emotional and spiritual needs to the nationals among whom they work. Fellow missionaries may have little experience in pastoral ministry, and too often are anxious for their own future and advancement. They tend to be either coercive or indulgent toward fellow missionaries—”but not truly supportive.
Missionaries must rely for help on the resources of the mission organization that deploys them on the field and that sustains them materially. Most often, little help is available here. Mission organizations have done much to meet their missionaries’ physical and material needs. There has been some study and analysis of emotional needs, but most agencies do not deal with this area until an individual’s situation has become problematic, or until therapeutic treatment is required.
Moreover, missionary leaders tend to view themselves as administrators whose first priority is to direct or control missionary personnel so that their problems do not disrupt the operation of the system. As a result, they employ crisis and confrontational methods to "put out fires," neatly ending the disturbance and assigning guilt, rather than providing pastoral care and counseling to enable real healing and basic personality growth.
The answer to any problem, it is assumed, is a proper attitude on the part of the missionary, and "real" dedication to the work. Secular workplace studies, however, do not bear this out. In his widely-accepted studies, Rensis Likert found organizational structure and style of management was far important than employee attitudes and dedication in determining the effectiveness and productivity of organizations. In fact, he found the greatest productivity in those organizations with a concern for healthy inter-personal relationships and a system designed to promote such relationships. Quite simply, the most efficient performance takes place in those organizations where people and their problems occupy a central place.
THE MISSIONARY MACHINE
The mission organization’s context may further militate against a pastoral relationship with the missionary. North American mission agencies operate out of a competitive, success-oriented, materialistic society. The key model is a hierarchical system of supply with a high degree of accountability for material. As a group, missionaries form one of the essential elements of the system. As individuals, they are highly expendable.
They are expected to operate as well-oiled machines, requiring little or no attention from supervisory personnel. Missionaries often have no contact with field chairmen for weeks at a time. They may not see area representatives for months; and they will not see the field secretary from one year to the next.
The normal form of communication is written correspondence with mission offices thousands of miles away. If a missionary wishes to discuss a personal problem, he will find little, if any, guidance in a policy manual as to how or with whom to discuss such needs.
If after months or even years of lonely failure to relieve stress, resolve conflicts, or deal with spiritual or psychological ills, the missionary decides to terminate his foreign service, the mission agency most often views the situation as a missionary failure, rather than as a possible failure of the organization to provide supportive care.
Mission agencies continually search for better testing methods and better quality in recruitment to insure against field failure. Most often, they assume the real problem is quality of recruits, rather than a need for supportive missionary care.
PASTORAL CARE FOR MISSIONARIES
What can mission agencies do to improve pastoral care of missionaries on the field?
—First, obviously, they must see the need for such care and make a commitment to provide pastoral care on all levels. Importantly, pastoral care can begin only when an organization becomes truly people-oriented, rather than primarily logistical.
•Missionary recruits should be prepared for the stresses that lie ahead. Orientation and training should include study of mental health principles, with special emphasis on causes and effects of stress in a missionary environment. Psychologist Fran White says people need to know what to expect and how to handle their own emotional responses.
•The sending organization should make certain new missionaries understand:
—The problems they have will not be unusual; they should feel free to talk with other missionaries about the they experience.
—No one will seek to lay fault or assign blame. The issue will be problems to be resolved, rather than faulty personalities or guilty individuals.
—The policies of the organization will focus on what can be done to relieve stress and find solutions to problems in order to help free missionaries for more effective ministry.
—Mission decisions affecting the life and work of the missionary will be made in consultation with the missionary.
—The mission organization will give the missionary time to deal with his problems, recognizing that growth is often painful and slow.
•to discover how they and their families are dealing with stress.
•The mission organization should have a well-developed procedure for reintroducing the missionary to life and ministry in the home country, if he feels he cannot return to the field. This would help relieve the sense of being "trapped" in missions without viable alternatives.
•All reports and evaluations of the missionary and his work should be written and signed with copies going to the missionary. There should be no hidden sources of power or unseen (and unaccountable) influences working to determine what his status or ministry should be.
•All these procedures would help the missionary to perceive the system as trustworthy, people-centered and supportive, rather than controlling, manipulative, and indifferent to individual needs.
•Frequent seminars taught on the field by trained professionals could give missionaries the tools they need to deal with a wide range of emotional and spiritual problems before they become serious.
•Supervisory personnel should plan their visits to the field with extra time allotted beyond the minimum necessary for conducting business sessions. Once missionaries realize they have access to supervisors who can listen in a relaxed and informal setting, they may feel more free to share personal problems.
• All supervisory personnel should be asked to take a course in pastoral counseling techniques as part of their portfolio and job description. Not only would they then be better prepared to offer such care, but their heightened awareness would make them more sensitive to the need and opportunity to do so.
•The mission might employ a trained psychologist to visit the field at regular intervals. Such contacts should be maintained on a professional and confidential basis; reports should not go into a missionary’s file unless his condition represented a real danger to himself or the mission. This policy would make it possible for the counselor and counselee to interact in a climate of mutual trust.
•A variety of other resources could be provided, including audio cassettes, video tapes, books, encounter groups, and group counseling sessions among field missionaries. Other methods of support would develop as the organization becomes attuned to people-centered ministry and pastoral care.
In order to be truly effective, mission agencies must give adequate attention to the development of strong, positive inter-personal relationships. They must better prepare missionary recruits to deal with their own mental health needs and those of others. Missions must provide a nonthreatening environment to enhance counseling ministries. There must be a process for requesting help, and many more resources, both people and material, must be available on the field.
Mission agencies have seen the need already to carefully screen missionary recruits and to conduct thorough diagnoses as to why missionaries leave the field. But these methods do not go far enough. Pastoral care, with its healing, sustaining, guiding, reconciling, and nurturing characteristics, is essential to the well-being and success of the missionary.
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