EMQ » January–March 2018 » Vol. 54 Issue 1
Book Review
Training Missionaries: Principles and Possibilities
Evelyn Hibbert and Richard Hibbert
William Carey Library, 2016, 371 pages, $24.95
Reviewed by Cameron D. Armstrong, International Mission Board, Bucharest, Romania; PhD Intercultural Education student, Biola University.
Research has proven time and again that effective training keeps effective missionaries on the field. In Training missionaries, the wife-husband team of Evelyn and Richard Hibbert draws from their extensive experience as field missionaries, mission agency trainers, and academics. The product is a thorough guide for future missionary trainers, specifically church planters, that explores both missiology and educational theory and culminates in an in-depth plan for practical application.
Hibbert and Hibbert divide their analysis into ten chapters. Chapter one sets foundations, beginning with the need for missionary training designed specifically for cross-cultural ministry. The authors outline how the Bible sets forth particular character qualities for elders (and, by extension, missionaries). Training that is primarily character-based is best taught through mentoring and modeling in what Hibbert and Hibbert term a “learning community.” Learning communities are led by experienced practitioners who pair their teaching with ongoing cross-cultural ministry, thereby giving trainees on-the-job experience and modeling how learning is a lifelong reality.
Chapters two through seven develop character profiles for effective missionaries, such as cultivating one’s relationship with God and relating to people in other cultures. Chapters eight through ten detail how Hibbert and Hibbert distilled their learning into a robust training program called Journey, used by WEC International in the multicultural city of Sydney, Australia. The book concludes with a series of appendices with helpful training materials other organizations could use to implement this form of “learning community” training.
Training missionaries is a welcome addition to missionary equipping literature with its multiple strengths. Besides being well-researched, Hibbert and Hibbert rightly call for character development that trainees see lived out daily by trainers. Personal holiness is far greater than extensive knowledge. One other area that made quite an impression on this reviewer is the authors’ emphasis on partnering with local churches to select the right missionary candidates. Continual conversation between the local sending church, mission agency, and trainee are integral to each step of the training process.
One weakness is the lack of personal illustrations alongside the book’s many recommendations. Even though chapter nine is a case study of the Journey training program, readers are often left to wonder what some of the trainees’ responses were at each stage. The content is thorough and believable, yet the absence of real-life examples could lessen persuasive power.
All told, Training missionaries is an important work that should be read by mission leaders, future trainers, and church leaders considering how best to direct future missionaries in their congregations. Hibbert and Hibbert call the mission community to first reconsider why missionaries are trained, thereby reworking the question of how. Effective training for cross-cultural ministry needs such an approach.
