EMQ » April–June 2022 » Volume 58 Issue 2
By Sampson Dorkunor
Care for the Lord’s workers is a challenge for missionary leaders around the world including for those in the Global South. However, while all of God’s workers are subject to burnouts, stress and exhaustion from legitimate hard work, needs are different depending on the cultural context of each missionary. Issues of care for missionaries from older sending countries (OSCs) – like the United States, Canada, and Germany – and newer sending countries (NSCs) – like Ghana, Argentina, and the Philippines – are not the same.
For example, for African missionaries a lack of financial resources to provide even a minimum salary is frequently a stress that drives many off the field. Matters like this that present great challenges to Global South missionaries often don’t fit into member care processes and principles developed by the Global North agencies. We need to develop care models that are strategic and relevant to the forms of relationships, partnerships, fundraising, and collaborations not only for the Global North, but also for the various Global South contexts.
[memberonly folder=”Members, EMQ2YearFolder, EMQ1YearFolder, EMQLibraryInstitution”]What Really is Care?
From the biblical perspective, care involves showing love to all people – especially the members of God’s family (Galatians 6:2, 9). Compassion, encouragement, respect, and sincerity are adequately demonstrated by Jesus Christ and apostle Paul. Jesus cared for his disciples. He called them aside to rest from their labour, refreshed them, and debriefed them occasionally after ministry work (Mark 6:30–32; cf. Luke 10:17–19; John 15:12). The apostle Paul salvaged a drowning crew and then encouraged and inspired hope for the future (Acts 27:33–38). He also taught his followers how to live as a family and team (1 Thessalonians 3:1–10; Colossians 3:12–14; cf. Hebrews 3:13).
Kelly O’Donnell defines member care as, “ongoing investment of resources by mission agencies, churches and other missions organizations for the nurture and development of personnel. It focuses on everyone in missions (missionaries, support staff, children and families) and does so over the course of the missionary life cycle, from recruitment to retirement.”[1] Beyond this institutional perspective, it is becoming important to look at the personalized dimension of member care. The expectation is that all members of the missions team (home office staff and field staff alike) will be equipped and empowered to offer help to one another in critical times of need (Ecclesiastes 4:9–12, emphasis mine).[2]
Laura Mae Gardner mentions that effective care will reduce attrition, increase missionary retention, boost morale, enhance productivity, improve recruitment and generally provide protection and prevention of certain avoidable problems in the field.[3] In the Ghana Missions Handbook, Ruby Adaobi Nartey, commenting on the limited number of workers for the harvest, suggests we “ensure that these few missionaries are well enough to do their work equally well and last long on the mission field.”[4]
Avoiding Pre-packaged Member Care
In a globalized world, one might assume that care is uniform and produces the same results across board. On the contrary, missionary work is complex and demands different approaches. Likewise, member care defies strict packaging and cannot be mechanical or prefabricated. Whilst K. Rajendran warns on issues of blindly copying, David Maranz cautions against hurrying to help people without considering their cultural and contextual environment.
Krishnasamy Rajendran says, “We have seen too many ‘faithful missions’ copying everything of the past ideas, methods and means even if they were outdated … many of these were controlled by the funding origins from both within India and overseas from both Indians inside India and Indians in exile/Diaspora![5] He contends that Indian churches and mission organizations must find solutions to bring the gospel to India with relevance, independent thinking and funds generated from within.
Craig Ott maintains that uncritically receiving any form of help can become a problem that brings unintended consequences.[6] In like manner, David Maranz maintains that good-hearted outsiders and idealists who truly want to help Africa often find themselves being impeded and sometimes come across as rude or domineering.[7] He warned against being in a rush to help. It’s always necessary to consider contextual and cross-cultural factors in our attempts to administer member care.
Contextualization of Member Care
Member care has long been a concern of OSCs. However, many NSCs haven’t yet fully developed member care structures. Local churches and mission agencies in NSCs frequently put little emphasis on financial support, health/psychological assessment, and a candidate’s ability to cope with stress. Nor do they often require cross-cultural experience before releasing missionaries to the field. The needs of children are frequently overlooked as well.
The number of missionaries from the majority world countries is gradually growing. Such missionaries need personal and team care. While NSCs can learn principles from OSCs, member care must be customized to the home contexts of NSCs and made applicable to their missionaries that are serving others cross-culturally in their respective fields. To be relevant, member care needs to be assessed and shaped through the cross-cultural lens.
Take for example, Adwoa, an indigenous African single missionary. She served for 20 years, and when it was time for her to retire, she had no insurance, pension, or current family support. After years of faithful service, how will she now take care of herself? Adwoa needs care to overcome the financial stress and embarrassment, but how will this be resolved? Most indigenous mission agencies don’t have any support systems in place to plan for retirement in ways that work in local contexts.
In Africa, extended family members want to know what provision the mission organization has for the retirement or death of its staff. Let’s consider the case of Esinam. Her missionary husband died on the field. Whilst mourning his irreplaceable loss, the Church provided Esinam emotional support, but she was soon summoned by her husband’s family for enquiries. She was informed of rituals to exonerate her, pacify her husband’s family, and fortify her and the children against future calamities.
She was overwhelmed by these customary demands on her. Could plans have been made for this that would have reduced Esinam’s plight? In this case, families also expected the missionary agency to be responsible for funeral expenses because he died in service. How can the organization help Esinam through such stressful, emotional, and doctrinal mess?
These situations reveal deep spiritual issues which must be prepared for and tackled biblically. Each example shows how comprehensive and contextualized approaches to member care – including localized provisions for retirement, and life and health insurance – are essential and needed. We cannot continue to look on whilst precious missionaries endure preventable hardships.
The Call for Contextualized Debriefing
In Jesus’s work with the twelve disciples, he instructed them on where to go, what to do, and how to deal with conflict. He was not kidding when he went on to tell them to be on their guard because he was sending them out like sheep among wolves (Matthew 10).[8]
The wolves we face include persecutions – spiritual, physical, and emotional. Self-inflicted wounds and lack of personal care contribute to the dangers of the field. All these demand clearly defined and contextualized debriefing sessions to answer the needs.
Debriefing involves pre-field, on-field, and continuous ministry life (Luke 10:1–19). Areas to address include health, finance, spiritual realities, and interpersonal relationships. Being conversant as a cross-cultural missionary with how the local culture handles each of these situations enhances resilience, health, coping strategies, and much more. Debriefing is additionally relevant for annual leave sessions, home assignments, announcement of deaths, and even transitions towards retirement or resignations.
Timothy Olonade recommends that debriefing is prioritized to enable missionaries understand, interpret, and integrate their own experiences in the field – becoming conversant with the field realities. If early warning signs of attrition are addressed in the debriefing process, it facilitates contextualization of the needs. Debriefing and care will also help missionaries in the long run to accept and prepare for the unpreventable causes of attrition such as normal retirement, political crisis, death in service, and other forms of losses.
Critical Areas for Future Considerations
Other areas worth mentioning for critical contextualization include cross-cultural and inter-cultural marriages, reporting systems for financial management between expatriates, donors, and local managers of such funds. How to handle demonic challenges, spiritual warfare, and syncretism are also critical. For a successful member care, contextualization is necessary on both the individual and organizational levels.
Sampson Dorkunor (sdorkunor@gmail.com) is the general overseer of Living Bread Missions – an indigenous Ghanaian agency committed to training/discipleship, outreach, and church planting. Sampson is a past president of GEMA (Ghana Evangelical Missions Association). He served with MANI (Movement of African National Initiatives), as anglophone West African region one coordinator[KA1] . He is passionate about member care and the SYIS (Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills) workshop which he facilitated alongside the former Mobile Member Care Team of West Africa.
[1] Kelly O’Donnell, “Introduction: To the Ends of the Earth, to the End of the Age” in Doing Member Care Well: Perspectives and Practices from Around the World, ed. Kelly O’Donnell (California: William Carey Library, 2002), 1.
[2] WEA Mission Commission, “Member Care – From Recruitment to Retirement,” Connections: The Journal of the WEA Missions Commission 2, no. 1 (February 2003). WEA devoted a whole research and publication to this theme.
[3] Laura Mae Gardner, Healthy, Resilient, and Effective in Cross-Cultural Ministry: A Comprehensive Member Care Plan (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Komunita Katalis, Grha Gloria, 2015), 15–16.
[4] Ruby Adaobi Nartey, “Member Care: It’s Much More Needed Than You Think,” in Ghana Missions Handbook (Accra, Ghana: Ghana Evangelical Missions Association, DEmario Glow Ent., 2020), 140.
[5] Krishnasamy Rajendran, “Heart to Heart Letters to Leaders: Missional Implications for Today” (Andhra Pradesh, India: IMA Publications, 2010), 216.
[6] Craig Ott, “Globalization and Contextualization: Reframing the Task of Contextualization in the Twenty-First Century,” Missiology: An International Review 43, no. 1 (January 2015): 43–58; cf. page 47.
[7] David E. Maranz, African Friends and Money Matters: Observations from Africa, 2nd ed. (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2015), location 680, quoted in Richard Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), 29–30.
[8] Ronald L. Kotesky, “What Missionaries Ought to Know About Member Care,” Missionary Care, accessed on October 5, 2021, http://www.missionarycare.com/member-care.html. Timothy O. Olonade, Sustaining the Harvest Force (Nigeria: Print-Biz-Marc Books Publishing, 2005), 62.
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.
