EMQ » January–March 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 1
By Harry Hoffmann
The Global Member Care Network (GMCN) is a network under the auspices of the World Evangelical Alliance – Mission Commission that exists to resource, equip and connect Christian member care/missionary care practitioners worldwide. Specialized professional missionary care networks exist around the world in different languages under specializations such as “Pastors to Missionaries,” “Crisis Response” and “Third Culture Kids.” In addition, geographic networks have been an important part of member care development over the last twenty years. Examples are “Member Care Europe,” “Member Care South Pacific” and “Member Care Africa.”
GMCN seeks to synergize all of these on a global level by actively connecting regional and national member care movements as well as specialized individuals and organizational practitioners and networks. GMCN is a professional community in which mutual learning, training and sharing take place. It also facilitates the connection of local missionary care needs with global resources.
Diversity of National Mission Movements
Twenty-five years ago, the missions workforce consisted mainly of North Americans, Europeans, Australians, and a few Koreans. Today I interact with countless nationalities on the mission field including highly energized workers from emerging national mission movements.
Member care questions and needs from newer mission movements – for example, those in places like Fiji, Ethiopia, Bolivia, China ,and Latvia – that are just preparing to send out missionaries are different from national mission movements that have already sent 100 missionaries, and from those that have sent 10,000 missionaries. Each national mission movement has different resources and approaches to mission work and missionary care, which makes cross-fertilization and networking a necessity. All have something to contribute, and all have something to learn.
What is Member Care?
Member care addresses all aspects of a missionary’s life including personal, spiritual, emotional, and relational needs. It encompasses physical, economic, and familial well-being. It develops and educates. It seeks to empower missionaries to make healthy choices by offering ongoing training, resourcing, and equipping in all these areas. It is integral to all aspects of mission and begins with candidate selection all the way through the missionary life cycle to re-entry or retirement. The responsibility for this care rests collectively with agencies, churches, supporters, member care providers, and the missionaries themselves. This is a big field. When you add cultural needs and special requirements for each nationality it can start to feel impossible to manage.
History of the Network
In 1999, I heard Larrie Gardner (Wycliffe Bible Translators) speak at a mental health and mission conference about the importance of a “Member Care Facilitator.” This encouraged me to start physical member care centers in Thailand and China. Then in 2006, I launched the first GMCN website and a monthly member care email to get member care information out further. In 2014, I started a private group on Facebook for sharing member care information. This has effectively connected people all around the world.
Today the GMCN Facebook group has over 3,150 members and is growing weekly. I facilitate the group and hundreds of member care practitioners, as well as missionaries from around the world, communicate, share resources, ask questions and receive knowledgeable and up-to-date help, sometimes within seconds.
To give you a brief snapshot, posts to the group include:
- an upcoming member care training taking place in Brazil in Portuguese
- a new book written by Asian third culture kids
- an urgent call for help with a crisis from a mission team in Central Asia
- a request for a conflict mediator in Asia
- a three-month interim member care provider for a mission agency
- specific psychological counseling requests
- spiritual formation retreats
- fundraising ideas for missionaries
- references and best practice guidelines for member care policies
- schooling options for Chinese missionary kids
- free PowerPoints on member care topics
- resource requests from sending churches in different countries
- weblinks to resources in different languages
The power of networks comes to life every day in this group, and I am in awe.
What is even more amazing is that GMCN operates on the service of volunteers. Even my coordination role is part-time without a salary, which means I need to manage my time wisely for other ministries and personal fundraising.
A Different Leadership Role
Several years ago I read the book, The Starfish and the Spider, by Brafman and Beckstrom (Portfolio, 2006). It is about the hidden power of leaderless organizations. The idea that leadership is about one person who “knows it all” and has all the “information power” always irritated me. The concept is not true, fair or healthy. The authors share that if you cut off a spider’s head it dies, but if you cut off a starfish’s leg, it can grow into a new starfish. That’s what I wanted for GMCN – a facilitated member care network not dependent on one person, but able to carry on independently, or rather interdependently.
Twenty-five years ago, leadership was often defined as a singular person, like Moses or Nehemiah, who leads as CEO, president, or general manager. A network leadership functions quite contrary to that, as it works with facilitators, administrators, and coordinators.
I sometimes compare network leadership to the role of a conductor of an orchestra – sometimes they have to ask the trumpets to play quieter in order for the harp to be heard. The diversity of GMCN’s constituency requires its leadership to have strong intercultural competencies and knowledge. Sensitivity is needed to multilingual communication in writing, audio, or video calls and in-person presentations and conversations. Furthermore, it requires an interdisciplinary understanding of the broad spectrum of member care. However, GMCN’s main spotlight is on member care specialists within the network who respond to urgent needs while the administrators of the network conduct quietly in the background who often remaining hidden and exchangeable.
Obviously, a globally facilitated and “headless starfish” kind of network affects a leader’s persona. It involves a certain level of death: death of pride and death of being recognized as the person who “knows it all” or as the first contact person. My email inbox was quite full in the past. Now it is rather empty, and I am not important for the survival of the GMCN.
Many Christian leaders struggle with egocentric self-branding, the need for support-worthy ministry results, or collecting career development points for future job opportunities. Networks often don’t serve these leaders well. From a ministry sustainability and building the kingdom of God point of view – where God is the head and is given the glory – there is nothing better than networks. It utilizes and facilitates the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of all members. This is something a singular leader will never be able to accomplish.
Newsletters, Conferences, and Online Learning
Besides the successful Facebook network, GMCN sends a monthly email newsletter, organizes conferences, and soon will facilitate online learning. The newsletter focuses on newly established member care centers and ministries around the world, latest resources, and member care event announcements. We organize a Global Member Care Conference every three years focusing on global member care gaps or responding to specific requests by national or regional mission movements. Because we purposefully do not want to compete with national member care networks, but rather support them, we seek to use our conferences to help ignite and further stimulate member care development within a region.
In 2012, we went to Thailand to help inspire Asia’s emerging member care movements in places like Pakistan, Korea, and Indonesia. Nearly 200 people came to the event. We focused our conference in 2015 on member care in the Arab world and the Middle East. More than 350 participants came to Turkey representing not just traditional mission agencies but also Christian Aid organizations and local churches. In addition, we facilitated a pre-conference seminar on hostage crises and critical incidents.
For 2018, we chose the topic of Latin American member care and organized the GMCN conference in collaboration with COMIBAM in Quito, Equator. Two-hundred and fifty people came for mutual learning and sharing. About half came from Latin America. The conference was conducted in three languages – English, Spanish and Portuguese – and it brought together expert speakers from all over the world.
A new emphasis of GMCN will be online learning and video podcasts. We are currently discussing the best use of Vimeo and YouTube platforms for short, introductory, free-of-charge, member care related teaching videos in support of the development of member care around the world.
Conclusion
GMCN is a network of and for agencies, churches, supporters, and missionaries around the world. We prepare, equip, and empower missionaries from all nations and cultures for effective and sustainable life, ministry, and work. We know GMCN’s service has been effective when missionaries are spiritually and relationally resourced and healthy. And we know we have served faithfully when the global mission community serves God with the character of Christ and in unity with both sending and receiving churches. We are here to serve you.
Connect with Global Member Care online: Facebook Group (facebook.com/groups/globalmembercare/), Newsletter (app.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/k8h5i8), Website (globalmembercare.com).
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Harry Hoffmann (harry@globalmembercare.com) is the founder of several counseling and member care centers in Asia and is the current coordinator of the Global Member Care Network (WEA-MC). He has a master’s degree in Chinese studies, B.A. in theology and leadership, and is a licensed mediator (Germany). His life’s passion is to invest in start-up ministries and to help revive dysfunctional intercultural teams.
