More about Lilias Trotter: newsletters, show and tell, and single women on short-term teams

As I mentioned briefly in The Legacy of Lilias Trotter, Lilias served in and around Algiers, on the coast of North Africa, with easy access to Europe. In contrast with some other pioneering missionaries (say, David Livingstone, who famously dropped off the radar and refused to go back to England when he was finally found) Lilias made time for public speaking tours, refreshing vacations in the Alps, mission conferences, and Keswick conventions. Keeping up with her contacts in Europe does not seem to have dampened her commitment to Africa or her appreciation of Arab ways and mindsets. And the ministry seems to have benefited a great deal through her connections.

The growth and support of the ministry may have owed something to her faithfulness in sending what we now call prayer letters:

“At the beginning of 1907 Lilias started the habit of sending out a bi-monthly prayer circular to a large group of friends in England and France. They were beautifully written and illustrated and, no doubt, greatly increased the volume of believing prayer that ascended to God at that time; and all this tied in with what she had been learning the past few months, for God was about to send new workers and open new doors of opportunity in a remarkable way” (Patricia St. John, Until the Day Breaks, p. 118).

Around that time, Lily got a letter from a friend letting her know that a two ships carrying some 600 American delegates to Rome for an international Sunday School convention would be stopping in Algiers for a few hours. The leader was hoping they could stop in and meet with missionaries in Algiers and learn about the work. Sounds like Lilias was felt pressured to sum up her work in such a short visit, and embarrassed that they didn’t have schools, hospitals, and what she calls "the ordinary outworks of a Mission Station to show,” but she told them they could have the chance to see a work just at its beginnings and carefully prepared an engaging, hands-on exhibition that introduced the visitors to some of those they were serving among and showed their work at its best advantage.

When an offering was later taken, that short shore excursion would bring in full funding for five women who arrived to begin work in that year (Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible, p. 199; St. John, p. 119).

A few years later, in 1911, Lily used a summer visit to England to recruit short-term missionaries, “educated girls who could ‘come on a self-supporting basis for a time of service in all the countless ways in which such can be rendered with a small knowledge of the language, if hands and hearts are ready.’”

The short-term mission movement would not take off for another 50 years or more and I’m not sure what other early models may have existed. But a steady stream of young ladies-of-leisure came to Algiers for periods of different lengths until World War I interfered. Lilias, who would have been in her late fifties at this point, seems to have enjoyed having the young people around (Rockness, p. 200).

The tributes that came in after Lily’s 1928 death claim “she never lost her enthusiasm or her capacity for wonder,” that she was “always interested in new points of view, or new methods, even though she might not agree with them,” and never failed to offer mercy and encouragement to her younger coworkers (Rockness, p. 274-5).

Sending out engaging reports, inviting fans and supporters to see the ministry up close, hosting short-term teams, and committing oneself to benefiting from the fresh wind of new people and ideas also characterize many of the healthier ministries I know today... just as they did in Lily’s day.

Global Glimpse

"You don't have to know me very well to know that I am terrified of spiders," writes a Pioneers worker in South America. Can you relate? The difference is that this woman lives among spiders, in this case, the jungles of Peru. That's part of cross-cultural life; living with things you would never choose.

While culture stress is one of my least-favorite experiences, I do sometimes miss the way it pushes or even forces a reliance on God and others, a living by faith that seems so optional when your location, culture, and relationships let you rest on your own understanding and competence.

Anyway, back to the tarantulas. "Peru is trying to help me get over that fear by strategically placing them in the most shocking of places," says my correspondent. "I thought I would take a minute to share the three most disturbing encounters."

1. In my shower (this is never convenient)
2. Cooked into my rice at a local restaurant (Didn't finish that meal!)
3. In my laundry (I apparently rudely interrupted a tarantula mid-nap while picking up my laundry)

"I have no pictures of these encounters because they are normally followed by shortness of breath, strange noises and often running and yelling for Daniel."

Contextualizing the Messenger

"Are your efforts to contextualize the gospel all about you?" asks Eric McKiddie in a recent article for The Gospel Coalition. Like many who hear about the concept, those words brought to mind the goateed, hipster urban church planter or the foreign missionary in native dress. Contextualization was, well, kind of cool. And here he was moving from a somewhat stuffy church in the heartland to a more casual, trendy church plant in the Bible belt. Score! Preaching without a tie!

But as much as Eric enjoyed adapting to his new context, he came to realize he had yet to learn some of the lessons from 1 Corinthians 9.

Though I had read this passage countless times, I noticed something I never saw before: sacrifice was the hallmark of Paul's contextualization. Verse by verse, the Spirit began to show me that my enjoyment of my next context—even if not in egregiously sinful ways—betrayed more of a concern for my preferences and pride, not the lost.

Are You Serving Others or Yourself?

"I have become all things to all people" (1 Cor. 9:22) is a theme verse for contextualizing the gospel. Paul determined to meet people where they are. If we are not willing to bring the gospel to unbelievers in the midst of their mess—just like Jesus met us—then it will be hard for unbelievers to see that Jesus can save them out of the mess they are in.

But when you scan your eyes up a couple verses, you see the way Paul becomes all things to all people: "I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them" (1 Cor. 9:19, emphasis added). Contextualization starts with service. Becoming all things begins with serving all people.

Over and over Paul shows how he set aside his preferences to see others believe the gospel.

Are You Contextualizing to All or to Some?

In every sport I've played I've been coached to stay on the balls of my feet. Back on your heels, you are unprepared to react. But if you stay on the balls of your feet, you are ready to move toward the action. For Paul, contextualization was about doing gospel ministry "on the balls of his feet." He was ready to serve anyone at any time in any way.

This is different from how I often hear people discussing contextualization. People often talk about aiming at one context: the poor, the city, the university students, and so on. But Paul was ready to contextualize the gospel to anyone at hand:

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. (1 Cor. 9:19-22)

Wherever you live—whether city, suburb, or rural—are you willing to contextualize the gospel to all, even people you don't like so much? Or are you merely willing to become some things to some people, that by some means you might save some?

If you have an overly defined segment of the population that you are trying to reach, it is possible you are merely trying to reach people whose company you prefer.

Jesus Served Us

In Philippians 2:7, Paul describes the incarnation as Jesus "taking the form of a servant." At the outset, Jesus looked to the needs of others. Moreover, Jesus was a servant through his death, "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42). These bookends show that Jesus' entire ministry—from birth to death—was marked by giving up his rights as the eternally begotten Son to serve sinful people like us.

How do we respond to the way Jesus served us? By giving up our rights and serving others, whomever they may be, to bring them the gospel. It will require sacrifice, to be sure. But that sacrifice does not come without a reward, as Paul says, "I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings" (1 Cor. 9:23).

Read complete article.

Talking about Church Planting

Someone reminded me the other day that they don't understand some of the things I talk and write about, even though it's good to hear from me. It stung just a little - I wondered how often I'm simply not connecting with people, too enthralled with my own voice to realize I'm not making sense. Happens too much!

On the other hand, the ways I'm trying to grow as a research and  missiologist may not be enough to get me into a crowd of academics and experts. Every now and again I test those waters, show up at a conference or something. Sometimes I find more welcome than I expect. Other times, less. My social anxiety tends to increase the chances that whatever comes out of my mouth will sound awkward and come from a place of fear and uncertainty. It would be better, I know, if I learned to relax and listen and adjust a bit more.

And meanwhile, such pursuits may also cost me the opportunity and ability to be make sense to people who walk around more in the "real world," who are more concrete and relational. Hmmm.

Resources on church-planting

With that said, though, here a couple of things you may find interesting, if you're still reading, and interested for some reason in the missiological questions I've been exploring lately.

Church Planting and the Mission of God (article)

Planting Churches and Planting the Gospel | Ed Stetzer

When we talk about church planting it can be a little different than church starting. What's the difference? Well, I think church starting happens a lot of ways. The most popular church starting strategy involves a group of people getting mad, leaving their home church, and starting another church. In most cases I wouldn't advise this strategy.

Church planting, on the other hand, involves an individual, mother church, and/or a group of people going out to start a church for the purpose of engaging a community through gospel proclamation and demonstration.

Church planting, unlike church starting, should/must be mission driven.

Church planting grows in the soil of lostness (hence "planting") where men and women far from God are challenged with the claims of the gospel of Jesus Christ by a group of intentional believers.

Read full article.

Church Planting Movements: Making Disciples and Planting Churches in Hard Place (video)

This video from a webinar explores some of the practices and assumptions that characterize a few common church-planting approaches being attempted in some of the places where there are few followers of Jesus - among the least reached. Production values on the video are a tad low, but the content is significant. Watch it in full-screen mode to view the charts clearly.

A Fresh Look at Exploring the Land

Last month I spent just under two weeks in a major European city which has long been home to a large and growing immigrant population. The Europe-focused ministry that sponsored the trip brought me along to help train some of their staff in the principles and practices of ethnographic field work (as well as beginning such work in that city). Doing ethnographic surveying is one of the first 2-3 steps in their plan to try to launch rapidly reproducing church movements there among the immigrant peoples there and in dozens of other cities in the next five years. The subsequent steps involve a well-developed strategy for prayer, a structured evangelism blitz, and following up all who respond by organizing discovery Bible studies and simple, reproducible churches - ultimately encouraging those who are part of the movement to begin taking it back to their homelands.

One reason I wanted to participate in this project was to help me re-think my assumptions about culture. Specifically, I'm struggling to understand what place cultural differences and cultural learning have in ministries that are operating with pre-determined strategies and tactics. These guys knew exactly what they wanted to see happen and how they were going to go about it. Why would they want to learn about culture?  Were they prepared to change anything on the basis of what they might learn? If not, was the research really necessary? Ethnography - seeking an insider's perspective by learning about a culture from face-to-face interviews with the insiders - is something I haven't been willing or able to let go of, over the years. It's something I love, and who else will wave the flag for it? But maybe I should look for other avenues and give up my ideas that church planters should be interested in this kind of stuff.

I realized, as my questions crystallized, how much my early training in ethnography was focused on developing strategy. Our big questions were 1) who are the people groups (stratification), 2) what are they like (social structure) and 3) how can they be reached? The last question we usually explored through the lens of social dynamics and the studies of receptivity, ministry history, and church growth.

The thing is, as the years have gone by, those three big questions seem to resonate less and less with people I train. The mission community as a whole has found answers to question #1 and has relatively little felt need for people group studies. I would like to see missionaries hold their people-group lists a little more lightly; they don't tend to reflect many of the sociologically significant divisions that really exist on the ground - functional "tribes" - because language and ethnicity don't tell you everything or reveal the ways communities are affected by social dynamics like globalization, government policies, and immigration. At any rate, as the lists of sociolinguistic peoples have improved and gained acceptance, interest in stratification studies of any kind has waned.

Interest in question #3 has also declined. For one reason or another few seem interested in developing strategies highly informed by cultural research. Even the whole area of "contextualization" is often discussed in broad sweeping terms (what words should we use for God when we talk about him with Muslims?) as if it has little to do with on-the-ground contexts, the ways in which one community, city, or region differs from another. And here I thought that was the point of contextualization!

So, more than a decade ago I stopped thinking of our research reports as strategy reports, and focused more on writing them as cultural descriptions. And if I'm honest about it I have to admit that even in our earliest days of ethnography for church planting, few of those who embraced the research used it in any great degree to develop their strategies (though they did use it; see below).

One factor in our lack of influence over vision and strategy was that most of our researchers had little training in ministry models. They did not know how to use language that would show respect to their readers' training and assumption and still make a difference in how missionaries pursue church planting. Since I had learned everything I do more or less on the job, it was hard for me to see beyond the models I'd inherited. I sensed they were limited or broken or waning in relevance, but I didn't know what do do about that. That's one reason I decided to go to grad school, actually.

One thing I noticed was that even those who did not think we had anything to contribute to strategy development often ate up our prayer materials, videos, and cultural descriptions. There's still a niche market for people group profiles, National Geographic style articles, prayer guides, great photography and all that. As long as those things were part of the picture, both those who had very loose ideas about strategy - maybe considering it arrogant to go in thinking they knew what they were doing - and those who had their strategies all figured out in advance - like my colleagues on this trip to Europe - could see the value in doing ethnography. They wanted us to do it, or to do it together with us. Maybe it was time for me to let go of my high-minded ideas about why.

Here's what remains. I think it's more than enough. Even for those who don't see ethnography as a building block for their strategies can experience the following benefits:

1. Doing ethnography and/or reading the results of it still provide anyone involved in a church-planting effort with valuable help in loving and understanding the people they want to reach.

2. Ethnography also uncovers moving and significant stories to share in raising up prayer and more workers.

3. Ethnography can uncover anticipating obstacles and opportunities for ministry efforts - felt needs, hopes and fears, and patterns of relationship.

4. Ethnography can reveal  a better idea what stories and principles are likely to mean the most to people, informing evangelism, discipleship, and teaching efforts.

In my book, that’s plenty. Maybe we were just taking ourselves - and the role our work could play in strategy! too darn seriously. 

NEXT STEPS

Our ethnography training sessions in Europe were all videotaped and the ministry plans to use them in creating a curriculum to train teams in other cities. The video team also got footage for promotional materials they’ll be able to use in raising up prayer teams and evangelism teams. They’ll probably use some of the stories we heard to create a one-week prayer guide for supporters of the prayerwalking teams to use back home.

Maybe it won't all happen. Maybe it won't all work. (I'm not the only one carrying around models that may not be sufficient for their purpose!) I could turn my hands to other things, but I am no longer haunted by a fear that I must, that the model would have to be thrown out all together. I can rest easy that my investment in passing on what I do know about ways to explore another culture was worth it. I got some answers to my questions.

Church-planting movements and my questions about culture

A Wind in The House of Islam

Recently I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by David Garrison. It was a small group so I was able to corner him with some of my big questions, ones I struggle with every time another ethnography project comes along.

More than a decade ago Garrison wrote a book called Church Planting Movements. It sent a lot of ripples through frontier mission world. Although he definitely came out with a model (the basis for many of the models frontier mission agencies are using today) he built it on pretty solid phenomenological research. That's a fancy way of saying he's thinking descriptively, not prescriptively. Lots of stories, lots of case studies... then look for the patterns that emerge, after. He basically "reverse engineered" the movements he found and looked for best practices. Plenty of people responded negatively though, and some accused him of developing a formula and saying it would work anywhere. I don't think that's what he meant to do, but it came across that way, especially in the hands of folks looking for a "silver bullet."  

Now Garrison is writing another book about these movements, with similar methodology, and this time focusing on movements to Christ taking place in the Muslim world. According to Garrison, though hundreds of formerly Christian people groups turned to Islam in the first 1300 years after Muhammad, we only find one or two movements in the other direction during that time - a movement of Muslims becoming followers of Jesus. All along there have been individual conversions, but not growing, reproducing movements.

This though, has now changed. From 1980 to 2000 there were eight movements like that around the world. Since 2000 he's been able to document about 70! Continuing research suggests the number of these movements is growing. This is historically unprecedented, and a lot of people in the circles I move in are pretty excited about it.

Garrison defines a movement to Christ as being voluntary (not a matter of coercion) and involving at least 1,000 baptized believers and/or 100 churches within a ten-year period. And for this research, he's been careful to confirm that these churches were made up of people from Muslim backgrounds, not animistic or Christian elements within a Muslim culture or country.

Movements, Models, and Diversity

With my background in cultural research, my ears perked up a bit as he explained that his title, A Wind in the House of Islam, alludes to a global "house" with nine rooms, the nine major affinity blocks - I realized he wasn't talking about cookie-cutter movements that all had to look the same.

"Nine Rooms in the House of Islam"

I think this a healthy step back from what Stone described as "essentialism," (see previous post) which would lead Christians to think Muslims are all alike and that there may be some common strategic key to reaching them.

Garrison says on the book website,

"Though Muslims everywhere share many common bonds... Muslims are by no means a monolithic culture. Muslims vary widely in their culture. From West Africa to Central Asia to Indonesia, Islamic cultural practices are as diverse as the people themselves.”

"For this reason, we have chosen to examine what is happening in the Muslim world with special respect to each of those distinct cultural regions or affinity blocs. These nine regions share mutual history, languages, geography and intertwining ethnicity. By examining movements within each of these distinct cultural zones, we are better able to understand how God is uniquely at work within each one.”

After hearing Garrison's presentation, I introduced myself and told him I was trying to figure out how cultural differences, cultural understanding, and cultural training might fit into the church-planting, disciple-making movement models currently being adopted by more and more mission agencies and Christians working cross-culturally (CPM/DMM). He was aware of some of the ethnographic work I've been part of and did not seem to see a conflict at all.

But he did make this distinction:

The now traditional model for incarnational missions focused heavily on training and sending out foreign missionaries to the least reached places, where they attempted to contextualize their message and their way of life out of love for the people in their host culture and in hopes of being able to say, "follow me as I follow Christ." The end goal, though maybe seldom realized, has been to reach those who will reach others; to work oneself out of a job and gracefully exit as the church or ministry becomes self-sustaining.

The new models place much less emphasis on the role of missionary, but work to empower and encourage highly reproducible local leadership from the get-go. It doesn't work like magic, but if it works at all, the problem of missionary contextualization quickly fades away in favor of indigenization (which I am pretty sure nobody disputes is much more effective; and it's the goal of the incarnational/contextualizers, too).

Cultural training, cultural understanding, are still crucial, Garrison told me. "Keep doing it!!" he urged when I asked flat out. If an outsider is involved in the movement at all, he or she will need that cultural savvy to establish credibility. And probably to navigate the issues that arise, though they may be - perhaps always have been - out of our control. Just because we're not putting so many eggs in the incarnational basket doesn't mean we don't need to appreciate cultural dynamics, he said. They still play a significant part.

This was helpful, but I still don't "get it." I need to ponder these things more, I think. I am not entirely convinced that what I've been taught - and what I've taught - about the importance of culture meshes with the CPM models. I'm trying to figure out what we need to rethink and revise, at least in teaching culture to folks who have fully embraced CPM models and assumptions. And off I go to Germany to teach it one more time with a colleague asking the same questions. Please pray for breakthrough in our thinking on these questions.

Another thing I'm trying to keep in mind is Matthew Stone's warning in Reaching Muslims with Love and Logic against cultural determinism - itself a form of essentialism, it seems. May our research never become dogmatic and directive, assuming that people always do what their culture tells them to.

"Muslims are not products of cultural factories; Arabs are not all the same. Understanding someone's culture is tremendously helpful in understanding that individual, but I shy away from embracing cultural determinism that glosses over differences and can, in its worse form, view individuals as merely an expression of culture."

Models for Ministry (and their limitations)

Every Christian model for evangelism and discipleship claims to be grounded in scripture and yet often these models contain contradictory recommendations or approaches, points out Matthew Stone in the book Reaching Muslims with Love and Logic: A Non-model Model.

One problem with models is that they tend to leave out personality. God gave you a personality, and he wants you to use it. Maybe the best way to do that is to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness of the models that exist and the practices and perspectives of others... and sort out what you think will work for you. Or try it and find out. Just trying to work the model without alteration, to force it, may be an exercise in frustration and futility, simply because of who you are.

Similarly, ministry models usually fail to adequately account for the individuality of those you are trying to reach. When your assumptions and generalizations don't accurately describe the person in front of you, your model will not fly. It doesn't respond to who they are. And in spite of the many observable patterns that describe the thoughts, feelings and behavior of members of the human family, few principles apply to all of us all the time.

For example, you've probably experience discomfort at some point attending an event designed to please people like you but based on assumptions that didn't ring true. I've felt the rub, myself, from the belief that teens are supposed to love rock music and playing sports, or that you can touch women's heart by appealing to them as wives and mothers and doing crafts together.

Stone, who has a background in philosophy, cites the distinction between essentialism and nominalism as a key factor in how we approach models for ministry. I found this very helpful. Basically, these two deal with the question of whether we see abstractions and theories as being the "really real," more real than the individual or specific (essentialism - we focus on what we consider the 'essence,' I guess)... or we see abstractions, theories, and labels as being helpful tools for communicating, and possibly quite applicable, but not as fully "real" as what's individual and specific, such as the person in front of us (that's nominalism).

Where you are on the spectrum between the two will have a great affect one how you understand and approach Muslims, says Stone:

"If you tend to see Islam as the primary reality and groups of Muslims as somehow participating in that larger reality... you might be predisposed to expend your energy trying to get at the essence of Islam and its message, trying to understand 'the Muslim mind' or 'Arabs,' etc. If you see particular expressions of religious beliefs and practices of Muslims as primary and view Islam as merely a word that is helpful to communicate with others... you might then try to study specific beliefs of particular Muslims, the diversity of expressions of Muslims as they live and believe, the multiple interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunnah (the example of Muhammad as captured in the hadith), etc." 

"When we think that Islam is the really real, we tend to lump Muslims together and blur diversity."

Models are helpful, but they are like maps, drawing a picture of reality by simplifying it.

"Models of mission are helpful when viewed in a big brush stroke kind of way, but they are not helpful to the degree that they get in the way, when they have us focus too much on the model and our loyalty to it and too little on the uniqueness of the [person] in front of us."

In the circles I move in, it seems pretty easy for people to get a little carried away about their strategies and techniques, so I found Stone's explanation of his reservations about models very helpful. Do you?

Tomorrow: Movements, models, and cultural diversity

How Not to Sabotage Your Efforts

One of the objectives of the class I'm taking this summer is to develop a personal awareness of the ways one is most likely to sabotage relationships. Well, specifically, cross-cultural relationships with people who happen to be Muslims. Seems a lot of us get a little touchy when others - Muslims, or anyone - look at the world very differently than we do, open their mouths and talk about what they think and feel, and reject or even criticize things about how we think and feel. We think we're being attacked. We may have the same reactions in marriage, or getting along with our coworkers, or being riled up about things on the evening news or passed around on Facebook.

One of our books includes a chapter called "How Not to Sabotage Your Efforts to Reach Muslims." As the author points out, Christian books about reaching Muslims tend to externalize the tension we feel, as if Muslims are the problem, and if they just wouldn't be so Muslim we wouldn't be so upset about things. But if Muslims are just being themselves, do we have to get ourselves upset about it?

It shouldn't surprise us that people sabotage their efforts to reach Muslims the same way they - or should I say we - sabotage all kinds of efforts and relationships. If we are upset, likely our communication and behavior is going to be effected. And underneath that agitation are unhelpful thought patterns like these:

• Demandingness: absolute shoulds, oughts, musts, “have to’s”, and needs (I need to be perfect, people have to listen to me, they shouldn't reject me if I tell the truth, etc.) 
• Awfulizing: believing that something is terrible, horrible, or awful (maybe dwelling on and inflating something negative and being unable to accept or let go of it).
• Low frustration tolerance: believing that you can’t stand something, that it is too much, or intolerable. (thus increasing your own sense of psychic pain - you think it's more than you can take and will make you explode or crumble or something).
• Self-downing: believing that the self is no good, beyond hope or redemption.
• Other-downing: believing that someone else or a group of others is no good, beyond hope or redemption.
• Overgeneralization: believing about a situation, person, or group that it will always be a particular way or will never change.

Source: Reaching Muslims with Love and Logic, by Matthew Stone.

I don't know about you, but I recognize those thoughts as pretty familiar ones. And they sabotage me in life, generally, and especially in relationships.

When our emotions are those of anger, frustration, anxiety, depression, and fear - rooted in such thought patterns - we then engage in unhelpful behaviors like defensiveness, blame, aggression, avoidance, rudeness, and dwelling on the negative. Those kind of emotions and behaviors may be normal and seem justified, but they don't help build relationships, do they? So we need to find a way to deal with those emotions and behaviors - and the thoughts that lie beneath them - if our goal is to build effective relationships or have a "ministry."

I found it helpful to hear my professor, who is a practicing psychologist, talk about "upsetting ourselves" instead of "being upset." That kind of language helps me take responsibility for my own emotions and emotional reactions - I have to acknowledge that nobody is forcing me to be upset, to worry, to be stressed out. Those things are not mandatory.

One problem, he said, is that we don't have an effective theory of emotions. Most people believe that circumstances, people, or the way we are raised are the causes of our emotions, despite the fact that research and other sources of authority (e.g., the Bible) do not support this theory. So our instructor offered us what he called the "ABC model of emotions." This is easy. I think I remember it. And, in digging a little deeper, I see it comes from cognitive behavioral therapy.

A = Activating event, or trigger. The situation or experience (past, current, or anticipated).
B = Beliefs about that event. Thoughts we have when the situation or experience happens.
C = Consequences. Our responses, both emotions and behavior.

Most people believe A causes C. (e.g., that situation frustrates me; that person makes me mad, etc). But A triggers B, and B causes C. Our emotions and behaviors are largely caused by our thoughts and beliefs about the way things are supposed to be. And that is good news, because we can't change other people and often cannot change our situation. While changing our thinking is difficult, it can be done if we're honest with ourselves about what we think, willing to work at thinking differently, and ask for God's help in doing so.

So, how can we avoid sabotaging our relationships and other efforts? Stop and consider what things are getting us upset - or, more precisely, what things we are upsetting ourselves about. What are our unhelpful responses when we are upset? What are we thinking? Is what we are thinking true? Is there another way to think about it or something else we can focus on that might be more productive?

Note: I've queued up several more posts on significant ideas from my latest grad school class - come back tomorrow for the next one. 

Perspectives on my Perspectives semester

I started teaching Perspectives classes in the mid or late 1990s, and have been an instructor at 6-12 classes a year ever since. Once I got my groove on (teaching the history of Christian missions) I only had to make relatively minor adjustments from one class to another. Usually if I changed something up it was more because I was getting bored with the old stuff and discovered something new that I liked better than that what I'd been teaching wasn't working.

Most years, teaching opportunities came in twos and threes. I'd teach in one church on a Sunday afternoon, another that Monday night, and maybe a third on Tuesday. With many classes within a couple hours' drive of my house, I could pull off all my responsibilities for a semester - preparation, travel, and teaching - with an investment of maybe 50-60 hours per six classes.

When I moved to Oregon, though, I told my previous contacts that I didn't want to teach outside the West. I hoped I'd still be invited to Colorado (and get a free trip to visit friends there out of it!) But they have an abundance of qualified teachers in that area, so nobody has contacted me about coming back. Opportunities in the Northwest have been fewer because they don't know me here. I've traveled long distances for each of the six classes this term. I've also been invited to teach different topics each time, so I've had to prepare a new material, and put in 150-200 hours of my work time instead of 50. That's meant I've worked very long hours these last six weeks. I've had less time to put into other projects, including some I'm pretty sure would mean more to my supervisor.

A couple of people have asked me, lately, why did I make trying to get into these classes such a priority? What makes it worth it to me to do this kind of thing? I wasn't sure how to answer.

I have to acknowledge there's some performance motive. I've got a lot of stuff in my head I want to share with other people. It was great to be able to pass along some ideas and questions that have piqued my interest in the last year, and that helped me grow and refine my thinking. And now I have half a dozen interesting and effective lesson plans that are up-to-date and ready to use for the future. Normal life provides few opportunities to take on concrete challenges, perform in some way, and get meaningful constructive feedback. So maybe teaching classes is like my mom making something to show at the county fair, my sister entering an adjudicated art show, or my stepson signing up for an optional swim meet. I don't need the blue ribbon, but just being accepted and making a good show helps me improve my own "performance."

There are some other things I get out of this, for myself. I made about $1500 in honorarium payments and book sales. Not much if you're thinking of the hourly rate, but this goes toward my salary and helps bolster the ol' ministry account. I signed up a bunch of new people for our online magazine. The all-expenses paid trips to Alaska and Michigan were certainly a treat, and so was the opportunity to make some meaningful connections with mission leaders and other like-minded people across the state of Oregon. I certainly made some new friends for myself and possibly for Pioneers, an organization many of them had never heard about before.

Other motives are more external. I like to do my part in keeping the fine institution of Perspectives rolling along. I believe in what they're trying to do. The coordinators of the six classes were helped in accomplishing the goals of their programs, and they were glad to have my help. A number of the participants told me how much they felt encouraged or informed by something from my teaching or example. Somehow just having a woman show up and talk about missions makes a huge difference to people. Most of the instructors are still old white guys. Many of them do a fabulous job, but sometimes people need to see someone different in that position, someone who doesn't fit the profile, in order to say, hey, maybe what they are talking about is for me, too.

It's good to get enough feedback to know that my contribution is making a difference. But I have to resist any tendency to try to be a superstar in this rather small mission-speaker world. The temptation is there. When I asked questions about the speakers before me, I felt a stab of jealousy at hearing students and leaders praise the most popular speakers on this circuit, all men who impress classes with their flashy performances. It's probably a good thing that I don't do this kind of thing full-time. By this time of year my job there is done. I organized and packed everything away and will likely not need it again until 2014.

It's better for my soul to put in more hours behind the scenes than on the stage. It's also more consistent with what I'm trying to teach and model - being a servant and willing to be forgotten, not an impressive hero about whom others say, "I could never do that."

The last class I taught was the one on incarnational ministry ("building bridges of love"). I tried to emphasize approaches that major on listening to learning from people in your host community and affirming and empowering them. I shared this story and asked them to wrestle with it. I closed with this quote and the story of this man.

I think it all worked pretty well this year. To God be the glory. Here's some of the student feedback.

"I really enjoyed your lecture. I thought your personal experience in the field was very on point for this lesson. I enjoyed the open discussion in class. I thought it was great that you allowed us to process through some of the material as a group." 

"I really appreciated the way Marti's presentation facilitated open conversation and dialogue among us students. This class was by far the most open and comfortable session we have had so far as a group, and it felt REALLY good. Thank you Marti for being so personable, approachable and letting the Spirit lead."

"She was one of the best teachers yet! She knew how to engage and make us think."

How can you know?

One of my big editing projects these days is cleaning up contents for AskaMissionary.com. The site gets about 200 visitors a day – great numbers for this niche. Many seem to find it helpful for finding their place in global mission, with various opinions on how to get there from here. The best of the material was polished and published in a book in 2010. The web site, though, did not get all the updates. And, in general, it needs someone to give it a little love. That's where I come in.

Using the book version to guide my revision of the web contents, I’m impressed by the publisher’s thorough edits. Phrases sing. Every word carries its own weight. Well done, Authentic! I'll strive to follow your lead.

Whoever edited the book also tried to translate much of the religious jargon. For example, references to "knowing God has called you" are rewritten to speak of God's leading, direction, or guidance. Does this reduce some of the barriers to service? When I look at the original submissions, I see some contributors felt strongly about the word (and idea of) "calling." What do you think about it?

Some people consider a personal, mystical call from God essential. Others warn against that expectation. Perhaps the best answers take a middle-of-the-road approach. They explain that God leads us in various ways and that each story may be different. I find some of these articles quite challenging and inspiring. I thought you might, too! Consider the following:

Q: How can I know if God is leading me to become a missionary?

A: Ask yourself the hard questions.

Answer from Elisabeth Elliot, who worked with her husband Jim Elliot on translating the New Testament into the language of the Quichua Indians in Ecuador. Later, as a widow, she lived and worked among the Aucas.

Amy Carmichael was the founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship in India. When people wrote to her suggesting that they might like to come and work in India, she would ask three questions:

– Do you truly desire to live a crucified life?
– Does the thought of hardness draw you or repel you?
– Are you willing to do whatever helps most?

Amy established a wonderful home for children who otherwise would have been consigned to temple prostitution. Don't make up your mind that you are going to Africa or to China or to India to do a specific kind of work. In my experience, virtually all missionaries are asked to do many things not in their job description.

When Jim Elliot was considering missions, he didn't know where to go or what to do. But he did have two ideas. So he started corresponding with one missionary in India and another in Ecuador. In view of the information he received, he made a choice – Ecuador. But before deciding, he first did a lot of thinking and praying. It wasn't a wild guess but an act of faith in the God who promises to guide.

Jim used to say, "you can't steer a parked car." It makes sense to move in the direction you believe God is leading – trusting him as a faithful shepherd to lead you in paths of righteousness.

A: No special guidance is necessary.

Answer excerpted from an article by Robert E. Speer, chairman of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in 1901.

If people are going to draw lines of division between different kinds of service, what preposterous reasoning leads them to think that it requires less divine sanction for some to spend his or her life easily among Christians than it requires to go out as a missionary to the unreached?

Is it not absurd to suggest that a special guidance is necessary to become a missionary, but no direction is required to gratify personal ambitions?

There is something wonderfully misleading, full of hallucination and delusion in this business of missionary guidance. With many of us it is not a missionary call at all that we are looking for; it is a shove. There are a great many of us who would never hear a call if it came.

» Read more.

Gift-based Ministry Mobilization

Hubs is taking a class on "ministry mobilization." Nerdy girl that I am, I used my Labor Day holiday to go to school with him and check it out. After all, I've been calling myself a mission mobilizer for a long time now. I wanted to see what his seminary professor meant when he used the word mobilize. I wondered how much of what is being taught and written about mobilizing people for ministry, in general, might apply to mobilizing and strategically placing people in pioneering mission efforts.

This week's class explored theological foundations. The professor started by talking about the reality that God, as Creator and Redeemer, made each and every person the way they are on purpose and made them in his image. That's why gift-based ministry mobilization is the way to go. Because everyone is gifted by the Spirit of God for the sake of the common good - for his mission in the world. And when people turn toward God, his power is at work within them to redeem their experiences and to restore and renew them, working his purposes out in and through them.

Anyone who's been a recruiter or mobilizer very long tends to discover this. People ask you, "What kind of people are you looking for? What should I major in? What kind of person do I need to become if I want to serve overseas?" But you can't just talk to them about the job market. You have to ask them questions about who they are, what their story is, what they have a passion to do, what they care about ... and what they've learned about how God designed them to serve.

Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:10-11)

Churches for People Who Don't Go to Church

From "Stuff Christians Like."
Read the whole text here.

All are welcome!

"I wish every church said what this church says in their bulletin," says Jon Acuff, referring to the "awesome welcome message" at a church a friend of his had visited. What do you think? How many churches really want to put out the welcome mat for everyone? Should they?

Here's something I think may be related.

Churches for those who don't go to church

I continue to think about a class I took at the beginning of this year, a course on church-planting issues. My teacher, a church planter and trainer in Germany, advocated planting churches deliberately and openly designed for their non-members, and yes, for people who don't yet know Jesus (but are interested).

Although it may not often occur to most evangelicals, missionaries and missiologists would suggest that the people who most "need" new churches are those who don't have any. It's pretty obvious if you think about it. So, if you're going to try to plant a church, you should consider starting a church for people who don't go to church.

So, what are the implications of that?

1. Watch out for those who DO go to church (at least some of them)

Planting a church to reach those outside the church can mean disappointing a lot of people, including the people who have rejected and/or been rejected by other churches and are pinning their hopes on your fresh, new, and as yet invisible thing. If it doesn't materialize they way they hoped, these are the kind of folks who could become hypercritical and really hurt you and the church.

So I guess there's a group you want to hold at arm's length. At least when all you have is a fragile, new church plant that could so easily be destroyed. People hurt by other churches and overly excited about your new, different church could be the death of it. So try not to court them.

2. What will the church be like? Whose "style" will prevail?

If you are trying to start a new church for people who don't go to church, stuff like the location, logo, name, music style, and the like should not be chosen based on looking within your own heart and asking yourself what you prefer. Nor even by looking around at your team of church-planting allies and asking them what they think would be good. Nope.

OK, disclaimers first: Study up on what the Bible has to say about what the church is and does and is all about, and make sure you know what your mission is, what your calling and best contribution and values and convictions are. For such things, yes, look within and study scripture, history, how other people do things. And be very clear on all that before you start. Communicate what you're about and what you're trying to do, repeatedly and consistently. Stay focused.

But... the Bible doesn't tell you what you should call your church or present it or where you "put it," do they? And how to draw people into prayer and worship, how to teach them in ways that reach them where they are, well, you have to know the people, don't you?

In all those areas, you should ask the kind of people you want to reach. Focus groups, man-on-the-street interviews, talking to community leaders, and a nearly endless series of "let me take you out to lunch and pick your brains," meetings with people you encounter, those will illuminate your path.

3. Finding a name

So, with all that said, you don't choose the name; you let your city choose the name.

My instructor gave the example of a process by which he got the folks he'd gathered for a church plant in inner-city Toronto to submit possible names, and told them, "we'll take these recommendations and see what the city says." He made a list of all the names they turned in and had the people vote, promising to take the top four names to the streets to see what people would say.

He had to swallow his pride when the name that he liked, the one that would link them to the church of his pastor-hero in New York, that was the name that nobody liked. Everyone liked the name with the word "grace" in it. They offered all kinds of reasons. Somebody said it's a very "Canadian" word. Also, there are "Grace" hospitals all across Canada and they have a very good reputation. Grace Toronto Church was born.

It's not about trying to be cool or something, but about trying to accomplish your mission. If the mission is about connecting with and influencing people, you need some cultural savvy to do it.

4. Flexibility

Grace Toronto Church and other churches my instructor helped plant used similar processes to come with a byline, logo, promotional materials, meeting times and locations, and more.

They got local people to help them understand things like the direction of traffic, the atmosphere of certain neighborhoods, the tacit assumptions and lifestyle patterns people might bring with them that could influence  how the church might connect and take shape.

In their early, experimental worship services - and even these delayed until the "listening" and networking process had gone on as long as they could afford - they tried out all kinds of things to see what would work, what would stick. They changed things up.

They didn't commit themselves in advance and try to present some kind of done deal. I like that.

What do you think? 

Some of what we studied doesn't jive so well with the simple church, cell-based, contextualized church-planting movement theories that form the bedrock of assumptions about church planting that I get from my work in the world missions community. Stuff like where to put your signs and fliers and how to design your church lobby or website seem a little silly when you're talking about house churches in a restricted-access country.

On the other hand, these conversations helped me see things a little more through the eyes of the US church-planters who use the same words as we do and yet don't seem to mean the same things by them. I think I see how American church planters and church-planting missionaries can be such separate camps.

I'm not sure how to harmonize all this or if that's even possible, but I'll keep chewing on these things and would be glad to talk to anyone who can help me with that.

See also: Aubrey Malphurs' book, Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century.

Making Connections

It's been about a year and a half since I flew to the Midwest and met up with N. She and I traversed the Pacific and all of Europe to land in a city on the western edge of Asia. It was a grueling and costly trip, but a necessary one I think. We made connections and explored local dynamics in a way that just couldn't happen without that face-to-face contact.

Recently N. also connected me with P. He is interest in building relationships with another people group, a group of people from South Asia who have relocated in large numbers to a couple of big cities in Europe. It just so happens I've been to one or two of those cities and spent some time among them. It was a few years back, but I was on the ground for about a month setting up and encouraging a cultural research effort.

It turns out that P. is currently living in the same Atlantic Seaboard town as some of my contacts from that research project, now home on what's basically a furlough.

Meanwhile, back in the Midwest, N. is getting ready to take some people back to the area we visited in Asia. Joining up with her team there will be an ethnomusicologist who lives thousands of miles away from that region but has a keen interest in the people they will make contact with there, as he studies and works among people who speak the same language and have a related history and culture. I'd almost forgotten about him, but we had a couple of phone calls two years ago; I think I found him through a guy I "happened" to meet at an unrelated event in Colorado Springs. Looks like the folks in the Midwest have stayed in touch with him.

The face-to-face meetings? Those are golden. If P. meets up with my friends in his town they'll build a much stronger bridge than I can sitting behind my computer in Oregon. And N. will soon know the ethnomusicologist better than I do (if she doesn't already).

I'm grateful for my trips to Asia, Europe, and Africa, and I expect there will be some more of those in the future. But I also love this: that from the small town where I live I can be part of ministry efforts worldwide with just an internet connection, a broad web of like-minded contacts, and a knack for networking.

Windy woods, the miracle market, and making disciples

Even though I lived there for a little less than a year - and about a decade ago - my mind often goes back to the time I spent in Sofarawayistan. It's not that I loved it or flourished there, but it was such an unusual and intense time of my life that it left indelible marks and memories.

The shady, somewhat public hazelnut orchard near our new house somehow evokes bog shamol ("windy woods" or "breezy park"), the pretty, shady place where friends in Sofarawayistan would retreat for a picnic - especially on a hot summer day. I need to ask a few more questions about the orchard. As in Sofarawayistan, my new hometown has somewhat vague boundaries for private and public. But I think I'd find the soft dirt will be easier on my joints for jogging than the neighborhood streets would be, and it lends itself to "laps."

Independent businesses flourish in my new hometown. One is a home improvement store called Jerry's. Don't go in if you aren't prepared to come home with things that weren't on your list. Reminds me of the hardware bazaar I used to walk past in Sofarawayistan. It was a man's place, there; I couldn't browse too long or often without drawing too much attention. But every corner offered a sense of possibility. You could fix or make anything with what you found at the hardware bazaar. I wonder how many guys could accurately identify what it all was? Someone once told me that the Russian name for that place translated "The Miracle Market." Does Jerry's hold the same promise for the handy handyman (or woman)?

The language of Sofarawayistan tended - tends - toward economy. Despite a long history of complex and gorgeous poetry, most of the time ordinary people in ordinary situations tend to use the simplest words available. Helpful for a beginning language learner.

Maybe that's how the word usta came to be used both for a handyman - the kind of guy who would shop at the hardware bazaar - and for someone who serves as a teacher or master. The first is a master of a trade, the second, the master of a body of knowledge. The same language describes someone who served as an apprentice to a trade and mastered it, and someone who was discipled and now makes disciples.

I like it. And shouldn't making disciples be like taking on apprentices and training them toward mastery and to make disciples of their own?

Gaining traction in ministry circles are variations on an approach called "T4T," training for trainers. Lots of people like to think they are being strategic by training up the next generation of leaders. Many mission agencies advertise themselves as focusing on church planting and leadership development. T4T challenges or focuses that kind of thinking. They don't try to train leaders. They train trainers. No one's a leader. Everyone is seem through the lens of their capacity to equip others. I'm not sure if that's an over-correction. It may be. Perhaps it's just a more disciplined, results-oriented way to look at the work of making disciples.   

"We Value Relationships"

Since the mid-1990's a number of churches have begun to re-evaluate their mission strategies. They've recognized that supporting a variety of ministries doing lots of different things around the world gives them a nicely diverse profile, but that their ministries can make a bigger difference both out there in the world and among those involved in their own church if they focus their efforts on fewer initiatives. Sometimes they will "adopt" a specific mission field, people group, or ministry focus. They support fewer missionaries.

When I hear people talk about this, they often say things like this: "We say no to most funding requests. We choose to invest in a smaller number of ministries/missionaries at a higher level. That's really what's best for them, too, so they don't have to travel from church to church raising money or visiting supporters." (Hmm, maybe they don't realize that the days of having 10-15 supporting churches are long gone. Now a typical missionary who makes it through the fundraising process will come out with 2-3.)

Those who hesitate to be that focused say things more like this: "We can't cut off the missionaries we already support! That feels too heartless. We want to stand with them too, no matter what their calling and current assignment may be." Also an admirable sentiment, I would say.

In both cases, these folks are expressing a high value for relationship; cultivating and honoring relationships with the missionaries they support is something they really care about.

I recently heard a presentation that took a closer look at the claim, "what we value is relationships." Is this an actual value that works out in a church's priorities and practices in relating to their missionaries? Or is it just a "aspirational value" a pattern to which we aspire but don't currently practice?

The presenter suggested that in most cases, even though people say they value relationship, their decisions don't line up with that value. At least not when it comes to their partners in global outreach, their missionaries.

"Two Women Having Tea," painting by Frank Desch.

Maybe it's time to admit many sending and supporting churches have relatively weak relationships with their missionaries, be they few or be they many. Or to look at it from the other side, many missionaries have relatively weak ties to their home/supporting churches. When the need for money does not drive them back toward the church, the field or agency's policies - or church requirements - sometimes can. But often these are only sporadically "enforced."

A woman I met a few years back wrote to me with a relatively simple and fun approach to cultivating and continuing relationships between churches and the missionaries they send and support. She'd read my post  Church Mobilization: Handles for Global Outreach and wanted to suggest a good "handle."

"One thing that our women's ministry does that really connects us with the missionaries we support is hosting teas. Hosts chose a female missionary from those our church supports. She invites a bunch of her female friends to her home for tea (or dinner or...) and can be as frilly or casual according to her personality. The host is responsible to connect with the missionary and learn about her beforehand to share or Skype with her at the tea. The women hear personal stories about the woman, what she does, her challenges, her environment, etc. Hearing the personal stories in an intimate context endears the missionaries to the women. The women spend time praying and writing cards to the missionary (birthday, Christmas, etc). The women's ministry collects the cards to mail throughout the year and uses any special donations to send a Christmas check to the missionaries." 

A tea-party and card-writing session sounds a little old-school, but fun. And fun is an important motivational factor. I also like the idea that you could add your own touches to this and make it into a special event; this isn't something that's meant to be "as simple as possible" (and possibly the kind of thing everyone will forget immediately after). Online video-chatting makes for a new and more personal dynamic. You could have tea with a woman in China just as easily as one who lives down the street.

Ambiguous Adventure

It sounds funny to say it, but my mission agency just took a good chunk of the staff on a four-day cruise to the Bahamas. Yes, that's right. What do you think of that?

I don't think anyone's going to ask me to take this blog post down - guess we'll find out - but I'm not going to share it on my Twitter feed or put a link on Facebook. I doubt my colleagues will trip over themselves to put cruise pictures in their newsletters. In fact, we were given strongly suggested text for out-of-office messages and instructed to keep the news of the exact nature of this event out of social media.

This was ostensibly due to concerns that bad guys would try to break into our homes and offices in our absence, not fears (unspoken) that people will think that poor missionary beggar-types should not have (or spend supporters' money on) nice things like Caribbean cruises. The latter may be a concern as well. Now we're all safely back home, though, I'll take my chances and write a little bit about it.

If you are hung up on the idea of a mission agency bringing their staff into the lap of luxury (as I was) - I was embarrassed that we were doing this - consider the following. Some 90% of the participants live within an hour or so of the cruise-ship launch spot, so travel was not an expense for most. And this actually seemed the cheapest way to accomplish the goals of the event. Finding a spot that could host, house, and feed nearly 200 people for a four-day retreat anywhere near Orlando, FL is apparently a very expensive endeavor.  Accommodations like the stateroom I shared with S. ran just over $300 apiece, including all shipboard expenses and 12 meals (or 24, or even more if you had the hankering. Food was virtually unlimited). Starts to make a cruise look like a reasonable option. Our organization did something like this before but it was five years ago. Someone decided it was time to do it again.

Apparently Caribbean cruises are no more "weird" for an average Floridian than the occasional trip to ski or snowboard at Vail and Aspen would be to a Coloradoan (I'm sure that such a thing would sound like quite the jet-set activity to a Floridian.) Several people told me a cruise was the cheapest way for Floridians to take a vacation (unless you compare it with loading everyone up in the minivan and driving to Grandma's). 

Well, I wasn't sure whether I would like being on a cruise. I had a hunch it would not be my cup of tea, and it wasn't. But it wasn't bad. More about that in another post, I think.

Really my only goal for going was to get to know more of my colleagues, and that was a little difficult in this enormous and overstimulating environment, even if we were all in the same boat. I know some by sight but not all of them, and it was hard to find even those among 1500 "cruisers" and 800 crew members. We couldn't use our cell phones, not outside US waters. While some colleagues shared my networking goals - a stated purpose of the retreat - many others considered themselves primarily on vacation. This was a company "retreat." Many brought family members. It was really both a vacation and a work thing. The ambiguity of that and the fact that I had never been on a cruise ship before made it hard to know what questions to ask in advance or how to chart a course through these mysterious waters. Should I just chill out, or try set things up (and if so, how?) 

One thing that took me by surprise was the amount of paperwork. Why did it all have to be so complicated? The endless waves of emails with instructions about things that had to be read and/or decided months in advance put a serious damper on any pleasurable anticipation I might have had for this event. It really seemed excessive. Have I mentioned how much I loathe admin and logistics work? But now I know what to expect, so I think that would not bother me as much if I went through this again.

I'm glad to report the networking was moderately successful. It was a rare opportunity to meet new people and have unstructured time with others I already know, and with whom I have some rare patches of common ground. I enjoy and admire these kind of people. Most are open-hearted, grace-oriented, intelligent, and often very, very capable. And they have the same kind of experiences that sometimes make me feel like a freak around the people I may meet in daily life.

I think my favorite moment was when the survivor of a seriously traumatic season in Indonesia gave a high five to a fellow worker who had gone through hell in North Africa before she was willing to admit she was suffering from severe depression. Both now find themselves in the home office, the former after a longer journey through PTSD, depression, alcoholism, recovery, counseling, restoration, serious family issues, and years later finding a place in (you guessed it) member care - and the latter after reporting with great transparency how she always thought working in the home office was only for sniveling wimps who couldn't hack it on the field, though her nervous breakdown gave her a new perspective.

Anyone who has been in our line of work very long has heard the horror stories and probably has a few of their own.

Here, we knew we could be real with each other.

We could even be real about how weird it felt for some of us to be on a cruise ship, fawned over by all these (probably poorly paid) foreign crew members who were separated from all their family members for months on end, forcibly cheerful, and working like dogs to pamper us.

My stateroom attendant seemed mystified and fascinated that so many of us could exchange greetings with him and thank him in his heart language.

I guess we are a strange bunch.

How Do Churches Decide Which Missionaries to Support?

Which way is the wind blowing?

One of my big projects this week has been crunching the data from a survey I helped my mission agency design and conduct. The survey was sent to mission leaders in about 3000 churches that support field workers sent out through our agency. We were not trying to understand the American church at a whole, just trying to do a better job understanding the churches that partner with our agency in some way. We wanted to know what the global outreach in these churches really looks like, how they make decisions, what is important to them, what they want from mission agencies, and yes, what they think of us. 

We received 331 completed responses as well as another 50 or so partial responses. Since the survey was conducted over email and went out over a weekend - in the deadest month of the summer - I am actually surprised we got such a high rate. I think this data could be very helpful.   

My research consultant says we would need at least 500 responses to draw the strong correlations between the different bits of data that we were hoping for. But what we got is kind of a windsock, he said. After a second I realized he meant that they would show us which way the wind was blowing. Fair enough. I watched the data as it was coming in, and later responses largely echoed the initial ones. I think if we had twice as much data it would stack up along the same lines. Our data is good, as far as it goes, but it's not enough for statistically reliable correlations.

I have virtually no experience in this kind of data analysis, so I don't want to draw conclusions too quickly. I'm learning. If you are interested I can share the final report when it is done. Here's a glimpse, though. One of the questions we asked was about how churches decide which missionaries to support. I thought it might interest those of you who raise your own support. On average, each of these churches supported 24 missionary families/couples/individuals (though many supported fewer than ten and several supported more than 100).

What selection filters do you prefer or require for missionaries you support?

10 = Always …………….……………………………………… 1 = Never

	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1
Raised up from within our church	70	50	63	37	21	32	2	11	8	19
Connected to someone in our church	48	42	50	28	27	27	4	30	18	30
From within our tradition or denomination	24	26	38	37	34	36	14	17	24	53
From other churches in our community	4	7	8	25	34	41	25	44	35	76
Aligned with our strategic focus or values	144	70	45	11	17	12	2	7	4	10

I was not surprised at the high number of churches that placed a high value on supporting home-grown missionaries. Many churches are only really interested in supporting those they consider "their own people." This came up in an informal interview I had with a long-time leader in our agency while I was deciding what to put on the survey. I asked him if he'd noticed any big changes in how and where new workers are raising financial support. He told me it used to be common for a missionary to have 10-15 supporting churches, but now most did not have more than 2-3. 

Looking at this from the point of view of the person trying to raise their support, it might be a little discouraging. If being - or having been - an active member of a church is a requirement for support, trying to raise support from churches that "don't know you" is a pretty tough sell. If you grew up in one church and your parents are still there, and your spouse is from another church, and after college you were worship leader or youth pastor at a third, and then you moved to another city and became part of a church there - well, you might have a lot of church support. Otherwise, maybe not. Better to look to individuals. And maybe some of those individuals will help you foster a relationship with their churches... a relationship strong enough to get you the "connected to someone at our church" points.

I'm sorry if this all sounds a little greedy. I'm just trying to sort it out. And I do wear several hats: mission committee member, mission mobilizer, mission supporter, and support-raising missionary. So I've felt the tensions.

I was a little surprised to see community and denominational ties ranked so low on this survey. For the support-raiser, maybe that suggests that while referrals may be a good way to raise support from individuals they are not so useful when it comes to contacting churches. But that may reflect the culture of our agency's conservative-leaning support base. Many are independent Bible churches and my guess is that they are a bit hesitant to link arms with other churches. Since that's not really the sea I swim in, I'm not sure. I suspect my Presby pals would be more likely to see nearby churches as allies than competitors. Sure is nice for the missionary if they can have multiple supporting churches in the same community. But maybe that's not happening so much these days.

Of course the stand-out number in this dataset is the priority given to supporting mission efforts and missionaries who are aligned with the church's strategic focus or values. Really? Do that many churches have a strategic focus or articulated values? The church I'm part of has had trouble setting any kind of strategic focus. Feels too much like favoritism. We treat our support commitments more like marriage (a matter of loyalty) rather than business (a matter of strategy). Our support decisions say to our ministry partners, "Where you go, we'll go with you." We hate to say no, except to strangers; we hate to drop people, once we have a real relationship with them. 

But maybe other church mission leaders think more critically. To me, this result suggests that someone raising support would do well to look for support and other connections within churches that already show a high commitment to the kind of work they are doing. I mean, you could be your church's first, only, and most beloved missionary, but if that church falls apart or loses interest, you'll want to have some allies elsewhere. You may be able to find them among people who really dig (and support) your kind of ministry already.

There were some things we didn't ask, and maybe couldn't. Do you think mission committees and other gatekeepers really make decisions about money based on something else, like where you're going to be serving, the size of your family or budget, how cute your kids are, or if you can tell stories that make them laugh and cry?