Editor’s note: Go. Serve. Love knows the decision and process for becoming a missionary can very quickly become complicated–even overwhelming. It’s why we’re thrilled to partner with the brand-new Mission App, a 15-20 minute application sent for you to mission agencies who match your chosen criteria!
We’re excited to welcome the Mission App today as they hand you their ultimate preparation checklist for becoming a missionary. Drumroll, please.
Editor’s note: Tucked away in my family room sits a box made of exotic African wood, lugged back using precious luggage weight when my family returned from Uganda. It is one of our most beautiful possessions–not physically, but in its emotional cargo. It was fashioned by hand in the workshop of our organization as one-of-a-kind. Tucked within are loads of letters and laminated photographs of lives we loved and shared in our efforts to build community overseas.
You likely share the goal of my family: to dig in deeply enough to love well, intimately enough to change each other. To work toward the brand of enduring, life-on-life love that models God’s Body.
When you’re headed overseas, it’s easy to underestimate the effects your organization’s health could have on the ability to thrive overseas.
As I type, I think of the friend who called me recently, voice throaty with tears, as she discussed their lack of ability to care for her after stepping off the field.
Or I remember my conversation with the missionary couple who felt they had no option but to leave their organization once they’re on the field.
Would you believe me if I said emotionally-healthy missions could determine how long you stay overseas? If I said it was a predictable gauge of the longevity and success of your ministry?
You will meet them. I promise: Emotionally-unhealthy missionaries. I wish I could tell you this is a category of people, offering you a litmus test. But in reality, our level of emotional health links closely to our sin.
Sometimes their emotional lack of health pulls them off the field. Other times, it simply creates a toxic environment for disciple-making.
Recently Go. Serve. Love has enjoyed a flood of traffic and dialogue from our post, 10 Realities a Missionary Probably Won’t Tell You. One of its tenets? “We feel like our children are getting shortchanged by our choices.” Here, contributor and Third Culture Kid (TCK) Rebecca Skinner explores ways her parents succeeded in nurturing Rebecca and her brothers as missionary kids.
Pistachio or Rum and Raisin?
Today’s post on racism is gratefully reprinted with permission from OMF.org, home of OMF International, whose heart is to reach East Asia.
As you prepare to venture out to serve overseas, you may face thoughts and reactions like these, challenging you outside the limited surroundings you may have grown up in.
Perhaps, like me, your gut sinks like a stone over the events of the last few weeks–precipitated by issues centuries old, accentuated by the deaths of people named Ahmaud. Breonna. George. In lieu of online services, my husband and I have led “home church” with our kids about racial discrimination. I’ve talked with beleagured police families, with brown friends.
As a person looking overseas, how have you personally responded to a nation exploding in anger and riots? (Here’s a helpful perspective from The Gospel Coalition: “Oh, God, Make Us Angry.”)
