EMQ » April–June 2022 » Volume 58 Issue 2
By Curtis McGown
What makes a missionary successful? That is the $100 million question. Literally. Many missionaries, or global workers, have left the field unnecessarily because either they, their leaders, their sending organization, or their sending church did not know the answer to this question.
One sending organization has quantified the loss as $750,000 for every family unit that does not return to the mission field for their second term (based on 4-year terms). They calculated that is the approximate amount invested to recruit, train, and mobilize a family of four to the field. Most organizations do not expect much productivity of missionaries in their first term as they are adapting culturally and learning the language and their job roles. What happens to that investment if we don’t also set them up for success in staying long-term?
[memberonly folder=”Members, EMQ2YearFolder, EMQ1YearFolder, EMQLibraryInstitution”]If you are a stakeholder in global workers being successful, then you have to identify what it takes to make that happen. After years of practice and observation, serving hundreds of sending organizations and thousands of missionaries, and collaborating with dozens of other member care providers and ministries, our team at Valeo (valeo.global) has had the privilege of gaining a unique perspective on this question. I want to share with you what we have found to help you succeed whether you are the global worker, sending organization, sending church, or partner.
We distilled the answer down to four outcomes. We define outcomes as fruit we want to see developed, grown, or nurtured in missionaries so they can be faithful, effective, and content in their ministry and life callings. These outcomes are aligning, equipping, healing, and struggling well.
You will notice that these are present progressive verbs. These outcomes are fruit, but they are also trajectories of ongoing processes. We acknowledge that all of these are organic and fluid rather than static realities. We also believe that because they are organic, they can typically be nurtured and grown in individuals.
Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
1. Aligning
“The deck of life is always shifting,” a former professor of mine used to say to his students. If you stand still, or static, you will fall off one side or the other. The application is that we must continually adjust, shift, and lean in different directions to remain faithful. We call this aligning. Aligning is making adjustments throughout life to stay focused and resolute in our calling.
Generally, there are two contexts for aligning:
- External change: unexpected events occur, or circumstances change, that require a particular response to what is happening.
- Internal change: maturing occurs, a new season in life begins, desires or focus is refined, or thinking or skills shift.
Ongoing aligning is necessary for enduring faithfulness and for maximum contentment and effectiveness. Although many people experience feelings of conflict, accusation, blame, or guilt, we believe that aligning can be a healthy process and does not have to conclude in hurt feelings or unreconciled relationships. One analogy that can be helpful is that we are on the same team and sometimes players need to change positions to help the team win.
Many global workers do not recognize their stress as an opportunity for aligning. It is only after deeper reflection they begin to see that their discontentment, stress, and conflicts are indicators that a change is needed. We have met many missionaries who struggle mightily in one setting, job, or structure, but thrive personally and professionally in another position or environment.
If we collectively take the approach that ongoing aligning is a natural, healthy, and faithful process in our lives, we will be less likely to treat misalignment as a sin, character deficiency, or systemic deficiency. What if we proactively anticipated and initiated aligning processes for missionaries? That may lead to new opportunities, personal growth, and professional development.
We have identified six points of consideration when going through a process of aligning. To learn more about each of these six points of consideration, you can download our free Global Worker Field Guide here: www.valeo.global/field-guide.
2. Equipping
Most global workers raise financial support, get some orientation about living cross-culturally, pack a few suitcases and boxes, and attempt to be as equipped as possible to move to another culture. The most important factor in longevity, effectiveness, and contentment living and working cross-culturally is resilience: the ability to bounce back from adversity. How do we go about equipping people for that?
Geoff Whiteman conducted research on resiliency among global workers.[1] He found that resilience is less of a character trait and more of a skill, meaning that it can be grown, built, or acquired. Highly resilient global workers and low-resilience global workers had three areas in common, but in a converse way. Highly resilient workers had adequate skills in their relationship with God, others, and self. Low-resilience workers had inadequate skills in their relationship with God, others, or self.
The implication is that if a global worker acquires adequate skills in these three relationships, they are much more likely to enjoy longevity, effectiveness, and contentment in their life and service cross-culturally. Conversely, if a global worker does not acquire adequate skills in these relationships, they are likely to find it challenging to stay.
We usually find that global workers are most equipped in their relationship with God and have the most resources in this area of development. Some are equipped in relationships with others through personality tests, team building tools, or pre-field training. Although we find that many missionaries still struggle in relationships with other people.
The area of least development tends to be in relationship with self. Global workers often come from communities that do not talk about or train Christians in how to understand, steward, and enjoy themselves. Most workers that we serve struggle with their self-concept and self-talk, especially in the area of shame.
Many feel a great deal of shame for having the struggles that they have. They have an expectation that they should be fundamentally different than they are, or not be vulnerable in the ways that they are. Equipping missionaries to have a healthy relationship with themselves may be the most important current task in the missions world.
3. Healing
We define healing as moving toward redemptive processes both in the places we have been wounded and in our patterns of wounding others. To be human is to be wounded and to have wounded others. Left to themselves, our wounds lead us to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms and perpetuate hurting others. This is particularly true for those in helping roles.
Our presupposition is that all global cross-cultural workers carry wounds, sometimes even subconsciously, that impact the way that they serve others. Harm often occurs to oneself and those being served when those serving others are not healthy. A trajectory of healing can lead to increased blessing to others and self.
Many times, workers don’t feel the need to heal wounds for their own benefit. However, when they realize that their unhealed wounds are harming those they care about most, they become motivated to seek healing.
4. Struggling Well
We see two themes of calling in Scripture. One is to shalom: abundance, blessing, peace, joy, fullness, well-being. This is the hope of the healing outcome. The other is to suffering. Since this is a calling, we don’t want to interpret all suffering as a sign of unfaithfulness or assign undue meaning to the suffering. We also don’t presume that we must resolve or eradicate all suffering in this life. So, we have identified the outcome of struggling well as a hope for all global workers.
Struggling well is in tension with healing. Some areas of life can and will be healed. In other areas, faithfulness means struggling well while not being completely healed or unfettered by the suffering. In these situations, we see faithfulness as accepting and stewarding these struggles.
The story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord illustrates a pivotal picture. Jacob relentlessly pursues a blessing and won’t let go despite admonishments to do so. His struggling well leads to a blessing, which is a new name, Israel, meaning “to wrestle with God.” God was pleased to identify his chosen people as those who wrestle or struggle with him. The other reality of struggling well is that after this Jacob walked with a limp for the remainder of his life.
Our observation is that global workers who struggle well tend to be gracious to themselves and others, no longer allowing shame to constrain the fruit of their work.
Conclusion
What makes a missionary successful? Movement toward aligning, equipping, healing, and struggling well is a significant part. If all sending organizations, sending churches, and global workers themselves focused their development energies in these four areas, we believe that we would see a globally scaled increase of contentment, faithfulness, resiliency, and effectiveness in the gospel ministry.
If you would like a free resource that will help your missionaries grow in these areas, share the Global Worker Field Guide with them. You can download it for free at valeo.global/field-guide. We just ask that each person who receives it, downloads it directly from our website and does not distribute the Field Guide to others. This helps us know who received the Field Guide.
Curtis McGown, LMHC, LPC (curtis@valeo.global), has been a professional counselor since 2000 serving in a variety of roles both in the United States and abroad. In Thailand, he was on staff with The Well, an international member care center which serves global workers throughout Asia. In 2015, he became the executive director of Valeo (www.valeo.global), a member care organization providing professional online counseling and psychiatry to Christian global workers worldwide.
[1] See the Resilient Global Worker Study, https://resilient-global-worker.ck.page/af0cd3c53f.
EMQ, Volume 58, Issue 2. Copyright © 2022 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
