Newsletter
Of Christ and Caesar |
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“MISSIONARIES are not rugged individualists, committed solely to tasks, devoid of personal needs. Needed are people who are willing to be both strong and vulnerable, capable of developing relationships that provide mutual support.” So said Dr Jim Tebbe in his paper on pastoral care in the mission field. Dr Tebbe, the international director of Interserve, was speaking at the Member Care Consultation held on Oct.1st and 2nd at the NECF Conference Hall in Petaling Jaya. Whether it be prayer or a listening ear from a core group of friends or information, ideas and practical help from a wider network of persons from the community or mission agency, missionaries on the field need such “coming alongside” ministry to be effective. Mission agencies, besides providing traditional ‘member care’ services such as orientation courses to prepare missionaries to anticipate common problems in the field, also “instill values, reinforce work habits, and establish social and work environments that can either help or hinder missionary growth and performance,” added Dr Tebbe. He said agencies can enhance spiritual life through retreats, prayer and Bible studies, develop children’s ministries and increase sense of community through regular social and fellowship times. Member Care cannot be confined to ‘counselling missionaries in distress’ said clinical psychologist Dr Thomas Lee. Dr Lee, a former cross-cultural missionary with The Navigators defined such care as caring for the whole person (physical, psychological, spiritual) from recruitment through retirement, and involving home office staff, administrators and children as well as field personnel. Member Care first arose in the mid-eighties out of a concern for the welfare of missionary children. Today mission agencies and churches are considered enligthened and on the cutting-edge of missions when they embrace Member Care as “a vital part of the overall deployment strategy in fulfilling the Great Commission.” In evaluating the suitability of candidates for missions as part of Member Care (the ‘better early than sorry’ premise), Dr Lee said a person’s history of mental health, employment, academic achievement and spiritual maturity needs to be assessed first. Dr Danny Martin challenged churches and mission agencies to make a paradigm shift in their concept of missionaries: from the traditional one of a lone, Bible college-schooled individual serving life-long in the field to mission resource teams on frequent, but shorter assignments comprising the whole congregation of the church using their diverse professional skills and training to fulfill the Great Commission. “The entire church, in other words, can be involved in world missions,” said Dr Martin, the international director of Mission to Unreached Peoples and associate director of Tentmakers International Exchange. For example, those in medicine can do internships in field clinics and hospitals, architects and builders can set up houses, orphanages and hospitals, businessmen can be keys to access to difficult access nations and unreached people groups, journalists, researches and computer experts can provide information and communication links and administrators, secretaries and accountants can give much needed expertise to run offices in the field. In this way, Dr Martin said, we can tap into a huge pool of resources for missions. Churches will no longer have the problem of meeting targets of the number of missionaries to send out when they realize missionaries are sitting in their pews - only they are now better known as tentmakers. Other speakers at the meeting was OMF’s Yap Heong Mong who spoke on benefits, support and retirement issues and Polly Chan from Hong Kong who spoke on missionary children’s welfare. Some 60 participants from 27 churches and mission organizations attended the consultation. |
