The Importance of Competence

“I want to be a missionary!”

Pastors and church leaders alike are often thrilled by missionary zeal, but is it wise for everyone who wants to be a missionary to be sent as a missionary? The question itself seems foolish to many. Of course, they say, we want to have as many people on the field as possible. Why would we not send any who are willing to go?

Yet if you ask field workers this question, many will bemoan the difficulty they’ve experienced with those who were sent ill-equipped for the work. Passion and competence don’t always go together, and zeal without wisdom can do great harm to cross-cultural work. It can hinder the chemistry of the missionary team and hurt the long-term confidence of the one who was sent unprepared.

Like any vocation, there are aspects of the work that are a matter of hard-wiring and personality. Not everyone is built for cross-cultural ministry and church planting. However, the combination of a healthy sending church and a zealous potential missionary can provide a potent context for teaching the requisite skills ahead of time.

Here are some questions I’m learning to ask those who want to be sent:

Do you know how to build meaningful relationships and share the gospel?

We tend to assume those wanting to go know how to share the gospel. And yet, people’s affections can be stirred for the plight of the nations even if they don’t actually know how to talk to people about Jesus. Some lack social skills. Some have been isolated from non-believers and have forgotten how to enter new relationships, build trust, and take conversational opportunities to drip gospel truth. Others lack gospel clarity. They assume people start with a Judeo-Christian worldview and lack the ability to explain Jesus to someone who’s never even heard his name.

To develop this skill, I press people to find places where they have to enter new relationships and journal the gospel conversations that take place in those settings.

Can you embrace new cultures?

There’s a vast difference between enjoying a weeklong visit to a new place and planting your life in that culture. There’s even a meaningful difference between a midterm appointment and a career-long one. It doesn’t take long for the novelty to wear off and the frustration to build. Those who prove to be effective in the work must embrace the challenge. They must learn to endure the added complexity that a new culture brings to everything from finding a place to live to grocery shopping. They must be able to persevere in doing hard things and coping with added pressure like visa uncertainty or struggling kids. New does not mean bad, and those who make it over the long haul know the difference. They have patience to see the work through. Those who leave after only a year or two often prejudice locals against future workers. The locals assume that when the heat rises, the new workers will also leave.

Healthy sending churches can help future missionaries by pressing them to find pockets of other cultures in their cities or align with ministries that engage internationals. Sending churches can challenge them to tackle a big project and persevere. This may not be a convincing test, but it’s at least a baby step toward seeing if a person is adaptable to the complexity of different cultures.

Do you enhance the unity of a team?

If you want to make it in the work, then you need the soft skills that foster relational unity. You must know how and when to sacrifice preferences. Know how to say what you mean and do what you say. Know how to square up after conflict. And know how to own your sin and say you’re sorry. American churches can too easily be relationally frictionless. In other words, the weaknesses of a prospective missionary won’t have been exposed and tested. We should do everything we can to test people before they get on the field or at least not promote them to leadership too quickly.

I usually force aspiring missionaries to work on a team, often as a subordinate under a team leader where they are asked to submit and defer, and I see how they do. As growth areas are identified, I watch them grow. Then I have some measure of confidence that they’ll bring unity, not division, if I send them to a new team around the world.

Can you make mature disciples?

Sometimes, future missionaries are zealous to build relationships with the lost and share the gospel. However, they lack the knowledge and perseverance needed to talk with established believers through months of growth and sanctification. Many have grown up in settings where personal discipleship was outsourced to pastors or programs, so they’ve never had to develop these skills for themselves.

This is an easy area to press. I simply have the aspiring missionary meet with a new convert for the next year. I give the aspiring missionary some tools to help the new believer grow and see how the discipler does. Throughout the year, we debrief on how these meetings are going, and I see if the new convert has benefited from the discipler’s investment.

Do you love the church?

Church in a cross-cultural setting can be tough, especially if that church is led in another language. For missionaries to persevere, they must have a dogged conviction that the end and means of God’s mission is the local church. They must be willing to fight for the church, even if the church they find (or don’t find) in their new home doesn’t match up to the church they left. Far too often, I’ve seen zealous men and women go to the nations out of a reactionary disdain for the American church, particularly for its perceived institutionalism. So, they go overseas, share the gospel, and engage the culture, but they never join a church or pursue starting a healthy church where one doesn’t exist. What a shame. I’ve also seen the opposite happen. I’ve seen men and women who are so in love with certain forms of their church in the States that they struggle with church differences on the field. Again, what a shame.

I want to see missionaries who are genuinely passionate about Christ’s bride. I seek men and women who long to see healthy churches birthed in a new place, even if that will take years of work.

No preparation is perfect. But these questions and practices should help sending churches and their pastors honor the Lord by sending well.