“A.W.? How are ya? Daniel* here. Listen, I’ve got a job offer I want you to consider. Can you come by my office for some tea?”
Daniel was the middle-aged British manager of a five-star hotel in our Central Asian city. He had recently come to faith while attending the international church. I didn’t really know him very well, but I loved his story. It was just like God to bring this British man all the way to our corner of Central Asia for a hotel job so that he could hear the gospel and be born again.
I was not looking for a new job. I was happy and busy working as an English teacher while also engaged in cross-cultural church planting. But I was always on the lookout for good jobs for local believers or for other foreign believers who might move to our city in order to be Christian tentmakers.
After I arrived at the hotel, Daniel greeted me enthusiastically and offered me a chair and a cup of tea. Then he began to explain the situation.
“Right. So our hotel has a close partnership with the UN, given that their office is right next door.”
He indicated out his window to the unmarked building which was nestled into the hillside next to the hotel. So that’s where the UN offices are. I took note, thinking that I might need to visit them at some point if things got bad for certain local believers – something that did eventually prove necessary.
“Their foreign staff live here at the hotel during their six-month assignments. And we take good care of them. So they trust me and occasionally ask for my help with some of their internal workings.”
I nodded, sipping my Earl Grey and wondering where all this was going.
“Well, last month one of the vice presidents for the UN came to visit the UN office here. Problem was, someone dropped the ball at the local office so no driver was sent to pick up this VP – who then had to wait hours before finally being picked up. Well, as you can imagine, she was positively livid and gave the foreign and local staff quite the talking to. Do you know how the UN staff operate?”
I shook my head. In spite of seasons of doing relief and development work, I’d never been directly connected to the UN.
“Well, there’s a complete turnover of the foreign staff every six months. This means that just as the new foreign staff are learning how things are done, they are shipped off to another part of the world. Terrible way to run an organization if you ask me.”
I nodded in agreement.
“So it’s the local long-term staff who really know what’s needed, but of course, they’re the ones without any power to make decisions. Meanwhile, the foreign staff don’t even have time to get their heads on straight. Anyway, after the VP left our city, it was decided among the higher-ups that this type of mistake must never happen again.”
Daniel gave me a look as if he wasn’t sure if I’d believe what he was about to say next.
“They’ve created a new position for a long-term foreign employee to organize their airport pickups – and they’re going to pay this person $10,000 – $12,000 a month. Can you believe that?”
I sat back in my chair. “Wow, why would they pay that much?”
David threw up his hands. “It’s the UN. Who knows? Either way, that VP must have been very angry. But listen, they want me to send them recommendations for this job. It’s fantastic pay, of course. But the work is very very simple. They want someone to stay on top of the UN airport arrivals and oversee a team of local drivers so that all visitors are picked up and dropped off in a timely fashion. And that’s all they want them to do. They seem to be very serious on this point because they kept telling me that whoever they hire needs to completely ignore everything going on with projects and cases and such.”
“They’re even going to test people on this front during the interview,” Daniel continued, “which is why I wanted to meet with you. When you sit down with them they’ll ask you about your interest in the UN’s projects in the city. But you have to act like you know nothing and care nothing about any of it. ‘I don’t really care about food for refugees’ and all that. They’ll probably stage a phone call interruption and then ask you afterward what you overheard in the conversation. You’ll need to ignore it or pretend to ignore it. They’ll use it as a test. They told me if anyone shows the slightest bit of interest in anything other than airport pickups and drop-offs, they’ll absolutely not get hired. Once hired and the driving schedule is set, you’ll have most of the day to read, watch telly, take a nap, whatever. Just don’t poke your nose in anything else going on in the office, and you’ll be all set.”
On hearing this condition, I knew this kind of setup would never work for me, even if I had been interested. I would be way too curious about the different projects going on and way too bored if all I had to do was make sure the airport runs were happening on schedule. But what about solid believing friends back in the US still trying to pay down their student loans? Could be a Godsend for them. Maybe they could use all the extra time to learn the local language and build solid relationships with the local staff?
“It has to be a foreigner? They’re not open to hiring a local?”
He shook his head. “Has to be a foreigner.”
Listen,” Daniel continued, “I wanted to tell you in case you were interested. Or if not, maybe you could give me some good leads. They are really hoping I can help them find someone reliable.”
I thanked Daniel and told him I’d keep in touch if I had some friends who were interested. He promised to keep me updated.
“Just don’t forget,” he told me as I stood to say goodbye. “If you go for the interview, play dumb and uninterested – but don’t let them know I told you that,” he said with a wink.
“See you in church this weekend?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
The actual interview process kept getting delayed over the following months, much to the disappointment of those back in the States I’d texted about the job. In the end, it was too good to last. Someone with some sense and power in the UN must have found out about this wildly overpaid new position and shut it down. Good for them. When local staff were only being paid $500 a month to work for the UN, paying a foreigner $12,000 a month to merely arrange airport pickups would have been a stunning example of resource mismanagement – even if we had been able to leverage it for other believers.
Bizarre situations like this remind me that at the end of the day, secular organizations – including the UN – are just collections of people – and people are nothing if not flawed and inconsistent. People make mistakes, get angry, overreact, underpay some people, wildly overpay others, and yet somehow still manage to do important work. A couple of years later, UN lawyers were key in keeping Patty and Frank from getting deported back to the country they’d originally fled from. God can certainly use large international bureaucracies like the UN for his purposes. And they can also be bloated, foolish, and corrupt. They’re not quite the evil entities anti-globalist Christians make them out to be. But neither are they exactly agents of light like my Central Asian friends expect them to be. Rather, they’re somewhere in between.
That means they can at times be leveraged for the kingdom. A well-placed believer working on UN refugee cases in our part of the world can make all the difference for a Christian family needing to flee the country or fight deportation. I’d bet that even a believer organizing airport runs could make a difference.
Who knows? God brought Daniel all the way to Central Asia to be a hotel manager so that he could save him. He just might bring you over so you could do wildly overpaid airport runs. If you were faithful to use that money for the kingdom, then that could be a pretty great story in itself.
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Tonight I was enjoying some fish and chips at a downtown Indianapolis plaza while recovering from a long day of support-raising training. Suddenly, I found myself recruited by strangers to join a team for the Taylor Swift trivia competition about to begin in the plaza. I warned my three enthusiastic new friends that I was one of the worst people they could possibly find for knowing pop music trivia. When it comes to superstars like Taylor Swift, I have very much been living under a rock. Or, as my Central Asian friends say, sleeping in the ear of a bull. And I am okay with that. There are Central Asian idioms to learn, after all.
Alas, the Swifties recruited me anyway. Funnily enough, I did help them get the answer right to the first song Swift ever learned on her guitar. But this was only because anyone who was a teenager beginning to learn the guitar in the 2000s was bound to quickly learn Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer. It was easy, catchy, and made you sound much better than you were. This deduction shocked us all by actually being correct and left my much younger teammates (who had been stumped by the question) thoroughly impressed. I also helped them spell the name of Zayn Malik, not because I know anything about him as an artist, but simply because I’ve had Muslim friends named Zayn or Malik. You really never know when two utterly isolated fields of knowledge are going to suddenly intersect.
Anyway, back to Central Asia. “Have you been sleeping in the ear of a bull?” is the kind of idiom someone would throw out when a person is ignorant of something that has become common knowledge to seemingly everyone else. In English, we would say things like “Where have you been?” or “How could you not know that?” or “Have you been living under a rock?” Imagine someone in the US not knowing that America is facing the slow-motion train wreck of Trump vs. Biden 2.0, for example.
My unbelieving Central Asian friends might use this saying when they’re insisting that it’s really the US who controls groups like ISIS as part of its grand puppet master strategy for the Middle East. And my believing local friends might use it when foreign Christians reveal that we don’t really understand what Jesus is talking about with the whole wineskins thing. Their common experience with using goat skins for liquids that ferment makes Jesus’ parable about the kingdom needing new goatskins super straightforward, something everyone surely knows – unless they’ve been asleep under a rock, that is, or in the ear of a bull.
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It’s good for us to remember that affirming the humanity of Jesus is just as important as affirming his divinity. Not only the life of Jesus, but even his titles teach us that he is The Godman – fully human, fully divine.
Like many Christians, when I was growing up I assumed that the title Son of Man emphasized Christ’s humanity and the title Son of God emphasized his divinity. I was very surprised to later learn that I had it somewhat backward. While both titles can teach us of Christ’s humanity and his divinity, Son of God emphasizes Christ’s humanity, telling us that Jesus is the true Adam, the true heir of David, the true Israel – all three of whom are called God’s son in the Scriptures. And Son of Man emphasizes Christ’s divinity by linking Christ directly to the Daniel 7 Son of Man who comes on the clouds of heaven, is worshipped by all the nations, and rules an eternal kingdom. All of those descriptives are shouting in OT imagery and language that this figure in Daniel’s dream is, in fact, divine.
Yet even though Son of Man’s primary emphasis is Christ’s divinity, it truly does have a secondary emphasis that this figure is also human. When the original audience read Daniel’s dream account, they would have understood his “and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man” to mean essentially, “get this, someone who looked like a man came on the clouds.” Son of Man at this time was a phrase that meant human, son of Adam, not all that different from how Aslan uses it when addressing the Pevensies.
The events of Daniel 7 confirm this. What’s going on in the rest of the dream is that Daniel is shown four earthly kingdoms represented as four violent beasts. He is then shown how God, the Ancient of Days, judges them. Then this is where the Son of Man comes in. Whereas the four violent kingdoms are described as like a bipedal wing-clipped lion, like a lopsided bear, like a flying leopard with four heads, and like a mystery monster beast with iron teeth, this next figure is – mercifully – like a man. A Son of Man comes and is given dominion over the beasts. Sounds a lot like the creation account.
This connection to creation and the phrase, Son of Man, is made explicitly in Psalm 8.
[3] When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, [4] what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
[5] Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. [6] You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, [7] all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, [8] the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. (ESV)
Just as Adam and the Son of Adam/Son of Man were given dominion over the beasts of the field in Genesis and Psalm 8, so the heavenly Son of Man in Daniel 7 is given dominion over and against the kingdoms of the earth that have become beastly. A contemporary reader of Daniel who knew their Psalms and their Torah would have been picking up on these connections. Son of Man communicates human at least, but a human as he’s meant to be. Perhaps the original audience wondered if this figure in Daniel’s dream might somehow be a new Adam.
There’s also a good possibility that readers of Daniel were also readers of Ezekiel since their ministries were happening at roughly the same time. Anyone who’s ever read Ezekiel can’t help but notice the dozens and dozens of times that God addresses Ezekiel as Son of Man. As a prophet, Ezekiel is sent into exile with his people. He suffers with his people and his acted-out punishment is even viewed as being for his people (Ez 4:4-6). Jim Hamilton* says of Ezekiel, “The role which the prophet has assumed among his people is one of representative, intercessor, and substitute.” It is possible that these kinds of roles of the exiled prophet might also be assigned to the heavenly Son of Man by Daniel. If so, then his identity is to be understood as a man who enters into the suffering of his people and bears their punishment with and for them.
The divine imagery of Daniel 7 can’t be missed. The Son of Man is clearly somehow God, even though he is also somehow distinct from the Ancient of Days. This is why the Sanhedrin freak out when Jesus applies this passage to himself. Yet the Adam and Ezekiel connections are there in Daniel 7 also, secondarily emphasizing the Son of Man’s humanity. In this way, the title Son of Man means divine and it also means human.
The result is a wonderful mystery that must have had the original readers engaging in quite the theological chin-scratching. There’s only one God. Yet this Son of Man figure is clearly divine. And yet he’s also distinct from the Ancient of Days and clearly some kind of human. How??? To echo a question from future centuries, “Who is this Son of Man?”
What a privilege to live in a time when we know exactly who he is.
*Hamilton, With the Clouds of Heaven, p. 150
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Someone must have been praying for us. It was 2 am and I was strangely and suddenly wide awake. The house was silent and cold, so I rolled over to go back to sleep.
Suddenly, I heard the slam of the national electricity turning on and hitting our breaker box. Normally this would be followed by the cheerful chirp of our electric heater unit turning on. It used too many amps to run on the neighborhood generator and so was wired to only work when the limitless government power came on. But this time there was a distinct popping and fizzing noise. There could only be one explanation. Electrical fire.
We can’t predict how we’ll respond in crisis moments like this. When we’re suddenly faced with an emergency we are at the mercy of reflex, reaction, whatever random prep we may have received for said crisis, and the sovereignty of God. Somehow, I had the presence of mind to spring out of bed and into action. I sprinted to our little half kitchen next to the house’s light shaft (a feature in many local homes built to provide more natural light given all the power outages).
On top of the fridge, we had a little imported fire extinguisher covered in Persian script. I grabbed it, pulled the pin as I ran to the breaker box, and let it blast all over the small multicolored fire coming out of our wall. This was the first time I discovered just how messy fire extinguishers are. As the extinguisher sputtered out its final hiss, half the house had been covered with yellowish-grey dust. Yet the fire wasn’t completely out.
I peered into the breaker box and saw small flames still flickering in the innards behind the breakers. Plastic melted and oozed and the little flames flickered and threatened to grow larger again. Suddenly a random bit of trivia came into my mind. Somewhere in the distant past, perhaps while scrolling Facebook circa 2007, I had read that you could use cooking flour to put out kitchen fires. Well, I figured, if it works for cooking fires, it just might work for electrical fires too.
I quickly moved back to the kitchen and rummaged around in the darkness in the cabinet where we kept the flour. But how to get the flour into the intestines of our electrical box? It would need to be propelled somehow. I reached over to the dish drainer and snatched a spoon.
Our electricity was somehow still working and we didn’t dare try to touch the melted and smoking breakers now to turn it off, so we flipped on a couple of lights so that we could see what we were dealing with. We saw a large black scorch mark surrounding the breaker box and trailing up the formerly white plaster wall. I also saw the spoon I had grabbed – it was a little blue plastic toddler spoon.
Suddenly doubting the quality of my tools, I scooped the little spoon down into the flour bag, bit my tongue in concentration, and tried to accurately fling powder through into the gaps between the breakers and wires and back into the little flames in the innards. It was a messy job, but before long I had emptied the small bag of flour and the flames were finally out.
I looked over at my wife, smiling. It had worked. She was crossing her arms and judging me for some reason. Was it the spoon?
“You had to use the expensive American flour instead of the cheap local stuff?”
For the first time, I looked at the flour bag itself. Sure enough, I had grabbed the expensive American import flour, the kind my wife and a teammate had been so excited to find in the local grocery store and which she was probably saving for birthday cakes. The flour that wasn’t resting on the mangled wires like so much dirty snow was in a little pile at the base of the wall.
“Oops… well… the house didn’t burn down!” I said, making my point by smiling and pointing the toddler spoon at her. We stood there in our bedheads, bare feet, and pajamas, looking around through the dusty air, surveying the damage. It certainly could have been much worse. The unlikely trio of the Iranian fire extinguisher, the American flour, and the toddler spoon had successfully extinguished the fire before it had spread to anything else.
Of all the things most likely to kill us while living in Central Asia, I’d rank the electricity as number one. This was in fact the first of several electrical fires we’d have in the following years.
The causes of these fires came in layers. There was the issue of the inconsistent and aging government electricity supply. There were the supplemental neighborhood generators with their fluctuating voltage and parallel wiring systems that electricians often mixed up with the government wires. Then there were the locals who would hook up illegal power cables wherever they wanted like so many strands of a spider web, usually an attempt to get out of paying a bill. The quality of the hardware was lamentable – cheap wires, breakers, conductors, and wall sockets that melted and fried often enough for the missionaries to learn to rank them by most to least likely to burn up during a power surge. Finally, there was the construction of the houses themselves, where rebar inside of cement touched electrical wires and somehow caused even things like tile floors to conduct electrical current.
One American electrician came over on a short-term team and spent a whole three days trying to figure out why our house had live walls and floors and mysteriously dead outlets. In the end, he threw his hands up in defeat. Even now I can remember the feeling of sticking my hand into the washing machine and feeling a small current coming through the soggy clothes. One of our colleagues was even thrown across his roof as he tried to repair his swamp cooler (Praise God, he was okay).
When people hear about our corner of Central Asia they want to ask us about the dangers posed by wars, terrorism, crime, and persecution. They’d never guess that all of these dangers are not really that bad compared to that posed by the dodgy electricity.
Future missionaries, take heed. Learn some electrical skills while you can. Keep fire extinguishers on hand wherever you’re living in the world. And when all else fails, pull out the flour.
Just try not to use the fancy American kind.
***Update: I’ve been advised by someone who has been trained as a firefighter: Do NOT use flour to try to put out a fire like I did or you may experience a flour fireball. Instead, use baking soda/ bicarbonate of soda/ sodium bicarbonate or even salt or dirt as a safer option. Apparently flour can’t burst into flame if it’s not compact enough. Yikes!
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This video from the Great Commission Council speaks about the importance of correctly interpreting Matthew 24:14 for global missions. This verse in context is a promise of the unstoppable gospel of the kingdom, not a call to try to speed up Christ’s return by discovering and implementing new and rapid methodologies.
Are the coming of Christ and the gospel’s preaching to all the nations connected? Yes, but we need to be careful how we understand that connection. My kids want to use this verse to say that it’s not really possible that Jesus could come back tomorrow. But given Jesus’ parables, we know that we must be ready for Jesus to could return at any point and we must be ready for his return to be much delayed. See the series How to Wait for Jesus by Don Carson.
Some missionaries want to use this verse to emphasize speed over depth when it comes to global church planting. But God’s work must be done in God’s way, even if the data and research don’t seem to show that we are making enough impact. Like this definition video says, the promise of Matthew 24:14 helps us to keep trusting that faithful work will somehow result in the fulfillment of this promise, even if we can’t yet see how that is possible. Such is the nature of the kingdom.
A small motley crew of Jewish fishermen, zealots, and tax collectors preaching an offensive message couldn’t possibly saturate the entire Roman and Persian empires within a few generations. And yet that’s exactly what happened.
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Some of the most painful lessons of ministry are learned when a wolf in sheep’s clothing infiltrates your church. We had a wolf once, a local man I’ll call Ahab*, and it has taken me years to know how to write about it. The things we learned from exposing him, trying to counter him, and then responding to the carnage he caused have been forever branded on my soul. Wolf attacks leave scars, along with tragic losses among the true sheep. Pray that you never have to fight off a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but if you do, may these lessons we learned from dealing with Ahab help you to spot and deal with your own wolves with both wisdom and courage.
Wolves make excellent first impressions
The first time Ahab and his family visited our new church plant, we were thrilled. Here was a local believing husband and wife who also had believing teenage children – a true rarity in our corner of Central Asia. They were veteran believers, having come to faith nine years previous at a house church I had attended with Adam*, and later were members of another church when they’d lived in a different city. Ahab presented as a humble, happy, and wise middle-aged man from a more traditional background. But the most encouraging thing of all was how well he knew his Bible. To this day I’m not sure I’ve met another local man as well-versed in the scriptures as Ahab is. In spiritual conversation, Ahab demonstrated a deep knowledge of the Word. He had a thoughtful, serious personality, but he was also very fatherly, especially with small children. Our kids adored him with his affectionate greetings and gifts of cookies and pomegranate flowers.
Ahab’s sheep costume was (almost) flawless. Wolves will indeed show up wearing very convincing disguises (Matt 7:15).
Wolves come with mixed reputations
As soon as another missionary heard that Ahab and his family were attending our group, he warned us about him, telling us that Ahab and his wife had in previous years recanted their faith and returned to Islam, in order to receive financial gain. Apparently, there were pictures of them embracing a Qur’an next a smiling Islamic leader that proved this. This missionary also said that the family’s relationship with the Christians in their previous city had broken down completely and they had deceived and burned lots of people. The problem with this intel was that that generation of local believers was positively shot through with division and broken relationships and we also didn’t trust this missionary’s theological discernment. He had recently written off male-female roles in ministry as something that didn’t really matter, among other theological and ministry positions that felt so, well, “evangellyfish.” And we were newly partnering with another missionary who seemed to have more of a theological spine. He had been recently investing in Ahab’s family – and claiming to see evidence of true repentance and growth.
Our mistake here was assuming that a lack of theological likemindedness meant a lack of character discernment on the part of this other missionary – and that better alignment with our new partner meant he was correctly discerning Ahab’s character. These assumptions were dead wrong.
A wolf’s character cannot be hidden indefinitely. Their predatory heart will periodically emerge in predatory actions (Matt 7:16). This means that, like Ahab, wolves will tend to have a controversial past.
Wolves get deeply involved in the ministry and show great potential
We confronted Ahab about these claims of past apostasy and you couldn’t ask for a more (seemingly) humble and genuinely repentant response than the one he gave us. He admitted that the apostasy was true, but short-lived, and claimed to have already repented to everyone of this dark season in their life, and that he was willing to do whatever it took to demonstrate that repentance to us. Given our biases about the missionaries involved, we took Ahab at his word and pressed forward, encouraged.
Ahab soon became deeply invested in our house church. His family were the most faithful and some of the most engaged attendees. They introduced Frank and Patty to our group and even led them to faith. We were so encouraged to finally have some local believers who were committed to gathering weekly with the saints. Ahab soon offered his own home for our house church services and we quickly took him up on his offer. Our team leader was on furlough and pushing us to get the church meetings out of our own homes and into locals’ as soon as possible. This was viewed as one key toward reproducibility. So, all parties involved were thrilled when we moved the weekly service into Ahab’s home. It didn’t take long for Ahab to begin helping us with leading the prayer time and for us to invite him to join our weekly sermon-prep study with Harry*, the other local brother showing leadership potential. This was a weekly gathering that served as a place to invest in men who could be future leaders of the church.
Wolves tend to have a solid season of deep investment in the local church. This is how they build trust and gain influence.
Wolves are unpredictably harsh and judgmental
Every once in a while, Ahab would lash out in harsh and judgmental language when speaking of other local believers, pastors, or missionaries. These statements seemed inconsistent with his measured, wise speech that we typically observed. The tone of these outbursts seemed like it didn’t match the level of the offense nor the grace of the gospel that Ahab professed to be walking in. We took note of this, but viewed it as a discipleship issue that we’d need to help him with over time. In hindsight, it was evidence of secret sin brewing.
Like Judas lashing out at the woman’s gift of pure nard (John 12:5), wolves will sometimes let their true character show via harsh and surprisingly judgmental takes on other believers. This is evidence that there are some very bad things going on in their hearts.
Wolves are followed by lots of smoke, but expertly hide the fire
Ahab and his family’s mixed reputation seemed to follow them like a cloud of gnats they could never quite get rid of. Regularly, we’d hear serious concerns expressed by other missionaries or local believers that just didn’t seem to match what we were seeing with our own eyes. Ahab was one of our promising leaders in training, and nothing that we had witnessed ourselves gave us any solid evidence for the claims being regularly made by those outside of our church plant. But the claims just kept on coming. Surely, Ahab couldn’t be deceiving us so effectively. It must be the other missionaries and believers from other local groups. After all, they were unclear and squishy when it came to the gospel, true conversion, and healthy church, so they must have been confused about Ahab also.
As the wisdom of our forbears says, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Wolves can’t hide all the smoke they generate, but for a time they can expertly conceal the fire from those that they are focused on deceiving. Wise gospel laborers will keep an eye on men whose lives generate an unusual amount of proverbial smoke.
Wolves secretly divide the flock and the leadership for personal gain
“Is Ahab a good man?”
“Yes, he is a faithful member of our church. Why do you ask this?”
“Well, he approached me this week and told me to keep my distance from all you foreigners. He told me not to trust you, but to trust him. Listen, I left Islam to get away from this kind of petty division. If Christianity is no different, then I don’t think I want to be involved with you all.”
This conversation over dinner with a new believer was a turning point for me and my wife. We had been hearing of a lot of smoke, but here at last was something solid, and very concerning. Ahab had allegedly approached a promising new believer in secret and sought to sow division in the church. This new believer didn’t seem to have any advantage in mentioning this to us, but rather to be honestly asking about something that concerned him. Soon other evidence emerged that Ahab was secretly building personal loyalty with other new believers in the church, creating a faction of sorts. He seemed to be doing this by telling the new believers that we foreigners (and me in particular) were receiving fabulous amounts of money for baptisms and that we were withholding funds that were sent for local believers. He was making promises to the other locals that he knew how to get them access to ministry salaries, Christian conferences, and visas to Western countries.
As I looked into things, I learned that Ahab was also involved in slandering me to the other two missionaries who formed our three man church plant leadership until we could raise up local elders. To my great alarm, Ahab’s whispers that I was secretly out for power and control were being somewhat entertained by my gospel colaborers. Ahab’s desire in all of this was to be eventually in charge of the church so that he could receive a good ministry salary from groups in the West, along with funds he could use to set up a patronage network within the church.
When wolves feel secure in their position, they will begin to sow division among the saints and even among the leadership. They are very good at sniffing out existing tensions and then exploiting these (Titus 3:9-11). Their end goal in all these things is their own personal gain.
Wolves are gifted at twisting reality
There were several times that seemingly concrete charges were brought against Ahab. But whenever we would bring up these concerns, Ahab was able to expertly sow doubt in the informant, in the data itself, or even in our own experiences. After this season, I would learn that this kind of behavior has come to be called gaslighting in the West. A gaslighter is able to make you doubt that something really happened, and even able to make you doubt your own senses. We would go into face-to-face meetings with Ahab with clarity and conviction and come away feeling like we weren’t sure anymore what was really true or real. After Ahab had later been exposed, one local brother called him “an artist of lies.” In a culture given to lots of pervasive deception, this was quite the title. After upending reality, Ahab was then able to insert his own narratives into the confusion, with great effect. I remember meeting with my team leader and Harry, desperately trying to unravel the narrative Ahab was pushing on them about me. These two godly men knew me much better than they knew Ahab, and yet he was almost effective in convincing them that in the end, I was the real problem in this whole situation – and the true manipulator. It was terrifying.
Like the serpent in Genesis 3, wolves are able to create doubts about things that once seemed so simple and so clear, about reality itself.
Wolves turn good faith exhortations against those who make them
I remember meeting with Ahab and pleading with him from my heart to turn away from his divisiveness, that the church might not survive what he was doing. I poured out my heart to this man I thought was a brother, sharing very personal things with him and even areas where I had failed or could have done better. I was pulling out all of the stops to try to pull him back from the brink. While his response to me in person was good, he immediately took many of the things I had told him and weaponized them with others. Sometimes this happened even on the same day. I would gave him pearls, truths from God’s word and things from my heart, but he not only despised these, but then used them to attack. As each leader and local believer began to realize what Ahab was up to, he’d proceed to do this with them as well. We had trusted him with our hearts and he was now adeptly using all of this as ammunition to undermine us.
Wolves can be like the swine that Jesus describes in Matthew 7:6, who take precious truths and good-faith exhortations and instead of repenting, use them against you.
When exposed, wolves go on the attack
Humble men respond gently and reasonably when accusations are made against them. Wolves, when accused – or even as soon as they sense someone is beginning to suspect them – go on the attack. This stage is dangerous, but helpful. At last, the true nature of the wolf is being revealed to the broader community. In our church plant, Ahab started by attacking me. My grasp of the local language was stronger, so that meant I was spotting things sooner than my fellow leaders. Ahab picked up on the change in my posture toward him and did what he could to turn the others against me. There was a period where even the other leaders sided with him, but one by one their honest questions and desire to pursue things with fairness meant that Ahab turned on them as well. When this happened, it was like a spell was broken. All of the cobwebs of deceit that had been sewn were suddenly dissolved as the sheep turned on its erstwhile friends – and revealed its fangs.
When wolves in sheep’s clothing are recognized for what they are, they will not run. They will attack. In this attack stage, they will seek to cash in on whatever schemes of division, personal loyalty, and personal gain they have been working on.
Westerners are at a disadvantage when dealing with wolves
Ahab ran circles around us. The other missionaries and I were often caught flat-footed, unable to respond proactively to Ahab, instead reacting as he always seemed one step ahead of us. There are several reasons why I believe this to be the case. First, Westerners operate from a trustworthy-unless-proven-otherwise mindset in their relationships. We are extremely optimistic (some would say naive) in our approach to trusting others. This often works out well for us as that trust extended becomes the thing that actually inspires and creates trustworthiness in the other. But when we are dealing with a wolf, they are easily able to take advantage of this default posture of trust – and to turn it to their advantage. Because of our own cultural background, we just don’t have much experience dealing shrewdly with deceptive and manipulative people.
Second, Western missionaries will often default to trusting a local believer over a Western colleague because of the Western cultural guilt we can carry, plus the emphasis in much of missiology that the locals are always right and foreigners are unwitting contaminators and colonialists. This definitely proved true in our situation, and teammates later apologized to me for their default assumption that in cross-cultural conflict, somehow it is always the Westerner who has screwed things up. Finally, we receive little theological preparation for dealing with those the Bible calls wolves, pigs, dogs, and divisive men – even though these opponents of the gospel feature heavily in the New Testament’s description of ministry.
Wolves and other gifted deceivers are able to take advantage of individuals – and cultures – that operate from a default of extending trust. Westerners especially need to be aware of this and seek to grow in wise defense.
Wolves must be dealt with more swiftly and firmly than other types of sinners
One reason we were so stuck in our response to Ahab is that we didn’t agree on how the Bible would have us respond to someone like him. My teammates and I were at least on the same page that some form of church discipline was needed, but our missionary partner surprised us by saying that he didn’t believe that church discipline would be effective in the local culture. I learned from this experience that even among theological conservatives, it’s important to find out beforehand who is and who isn’t willing to exercise church discipline when the Bible calls for it. If, like we did, you find this out in the midst of dealing with a wolf, then its too late.
I’ve heard it said that some reformed churches have broken church discipline down into an extended process with dozens of steps, often stretched out over months or years. This can be a faithful application of passages like Matthew 18, where the sin is private and interpersonal. But there are other church discipline passages in the New Testament that call for much quicker action. These cases would involve situations such as public scandalous sin (1 Cor 5) and that of the man who sows division (Titus 3:9-11). Because of the danger of great harm to the church, these situations need firm and quick responses from the church’s leadership and members. Someone sowing division and slander in the body needs a quick, united, and firm rebuke. If they don’t repent and change after a first and second warning, then they need a quick excommunication. The danger to the body is simply too great as wolves are able to use extra time to turn the sheep and undershepherds against one another.
When division, deception, or manipulation is exposed in the body, these call for united and quick action. If these things indicate the presence of a wolf, then this swift and firm action is even more crucial.
Wolves cause tragic damage to the flock
We eventually learned that Ahab had begun receiving a secret ministry salary from another evangelical group in our region for having a church in his house. “The workman is worthy of his wages” was the justification for the deceptive claims he’d made to this group that he was the pastor of a separate church. When this emerged, we finally had unity among us leaders to move the church out of his house. When we announced this move at the end of a service (and still in such a way to try to help Ahab save face), Ahab publicly responded by announcing the formation of a new church. Several of the new believers then indicated that they’d already agreed to join Ahab in this breakaway group. They had been seduced by his promises of salaries, conferences, and visas.
Of these local believers, many then proceeded to fall away and to this day are still not gathering with any church, nor growing in their faith. The local brother who first shared with me about Ahab’s secret division is one of these. He washed his hands of us, and to this day is an isolated baby believer. The house church had grown to the point where 20-30 locals were gathering with us on a weekly basis. After this implosion, only 6 continued to gather with us as we changed our location and extracted ourselves from the wolf’s house. Our partnership with the other conservative missionary didn’t survive this season either. Amazingly, even though his eyes were now opened he decided to keep working with Ahab’s family – until he too was irreparably burned by him a couple of years later.
Wolves will seek to devour the flock (Acts 20:29). And the damage they cause can last for generations.
Wolves are inevitable as the gospel advances
Our natural impulse after everything imploded was to use the benefit of hindsight to blame ourselves. There were so many places where we should have, could have, would have done things differently could we go back in time. But one of the truths that comforted me in the wake of the Ahab mess was that wolves are promised as a part of faithful New Testament ministry. Even Jesus had a wolf among his closest followers. Perhaps not every local church will have to fend off a wolf, but many will. When sheep are being gathered and fed, sooner or later, wolves will come around looking to fill their stomachs. When this happens, we can fall back on the fact that we have not only been warned, but the Word of God even equips us to fight off the predators that would seek to devour the flock.
Wolves are inevitable as the gospel advances. Jesus had Judas, the believers in Ephesus had their own fierce wolves emerge after Paul was gone (Acts 20:29). Many of us will face our own “Ahabs.” Wise believers will seek to prepare for this common danger to the church – and act when the wolves are exposed.
God turns even wolf attacks for good
It took a long time to heal from what happened with Ahab. My wife and I had nightmares about the man for about two years afterward. Many of the local believers were scattered, but some eventually came back, now sobered and on the lookout for other “artists of lies” who might try to divide with promises of worldly gain. Our relationships with the other missionaries involved were largely strengthened by the horrible ordeal we’d gone through together, even though apologies needed to be said and trust cautiously built again. And we learned vital lessons that will hopefully serve us and others in many other contexts. In short, God was faithful to use for good what the enemy intended for evil. The costs were real. But so were the ways in which God’s grace and faithfulness shone throughout and after that whole season.
God can even turn wolf attacks into opportunities for the display of his power and glory (Rom 8:28, 2 Cor 8:9). I see this now in part in everything that happened with Ahab, and I look forward to seeing it more fully in the light of eternity.
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Omar Bradley, an American general in WWII, once said, “Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics.” This maxim of warfare also proves true when it comes to global missions.
Solid logistics – or the lack thereof – make all the difference in the end. Think of Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia or the Union’s ultimate defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Frontline personnel, no matter how gifted and strategic they are, simply cannot win a war unless their supply chains hold up. And no global missionary can succeed without a large network of senders, supporters, and helpers working behind the scenes on their behalf. As William Carey said to Andrew Fuller, “I will go down into the pit, if you will hold the ropes.”
A missionary’s network of partner churches provides the prayer, relationship, and funding vitally needed so that cross-cultural workers can do what they do. But there is another crucial and utterly practical area where missionaries are also dependent on their senders: transitional housing. Yes, missionaries need your prayers, but almost every time they come “home” they also need your help in finding a place where they can sleep, shower, and once again enjoy the freedom of cooking bacon while wearing shorts without the possibility of mortifying their neighbors. Thankfully, there is a strong tradition of the US Church doing this very thing and investing in housing for missionaries. Other sending countries may also be strong in this, but my experience limits me here to addressing the US context.
I remember hearing once in Central Asia that a neighboring country had 700 safe houses in our city for the use of their spies. This was an alarming statistic. Similarly, most pagan Americans would be shocked to hear that all across the United States a massive network of houses for visiting missionaries exists, largely under the radar of the general population. I’ve come to realize just how hidden and odd this staple of the missionary experience is for unbelieving Americans as I’ve tried to explain our housing situation to some of my unbelieving countrymen.
There are many worthy things to focus on when it comes to global missions, but I do feel that the humble mission house is not celebrated nearly enough. So, I wanted to write a little bit about why they are so helpful for missionaries and for the churches that host them. And if you are reading this post and your church doesn’t have a mission house, then I want you and your pastors to think and pray and plan about getting one. It may end up being one of the most significant investments in missions you ever make.
First, mission houses are a financial blessing to missionaries who would otherwise be hard-pressed to afford housing on their ministry income. For over a year now, my family and I have been living in stateside missionary housing. The first was a traditional mission house owned by a large First Baptist Church in our area. The second has been an empty parsonage that we are helping to inaugurate as a new mission house for a nearby rural congregation. Together, the provision of these houses has saved us tens of thousands of dollars of rent that we would otherwise need to come up with. In this Icarus-like housing and rental economy, this mostly free housing has been an extremely generous and helpful gift. Different churches have different expectations regarding rent, but the two that we’ve been at only have us paying for utilities. Perhaps your church budget can’t currently support another missionary. But if you have an empty parsonage, then you have on-hand a very significant means of financial support.
Mission houses can also be a blessing of rest for missionaries. Because my family doesn’t own a house in the US, the housing provided for us meant that we had one less thing to figure out when we came back to the US for a long season of medical work and uncertainty about our future on the field. Local churches gave us places where we could stay in relative privacy, and this in turn meant we could prioritize the medical appointments, the counseling, and the rest and recovery that was needed after seven hard years on the field.
Sometimes, it works out for missionaries to go to the field and to retain some kind of housing in their home country. But this is by far the exception. Most missionaries will need to divest themselves of any property as a part of their transition to the mission field. When they do this, they are putting themselves in a tricky place when it comes to their visits back to the homeland, which might be anywhere from a few weeks to a few years long. Living with family or friends can be a good stop-gap measure, but that kind of situation is usually not super restful for either party – at least not for those of us from the modern West who have been raised to rest most effectively in nuclear family-only contexts.
Third, mission houses are a blessing of presence for the missionaries. These houses are often close or right next to the churches that own them, meaning the missionaries have easy access to a body of believers that worship in their heart language. And this presence of a nearby church body might be coming after years of the only other Christians around being new and immature indigenous believers or overworked missionary colleagues. In contrast, churches of Christians like these who have remained stable and rooted in the home country can be a wonderful source of wisdom and refreshment for worn-out and spiritually-depressed missionaries. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of a body of normal, faithful believers when it comes to manifesting the presence of Christ to a tired missionary family. There are many ways they might do this, from pig roasts and potlucks to timely words of wisdom or passionate singing. Mission houses make it easier for missionaries to be in the presence of hospitable local churches. And when it comes to healing, there’s no better place for a Christian to be.
Mission houses are a financial blessing, a blessing of rest, and a blessing of presence for missionaries. But how do they bless and serve the churches that own them, those that have to foot the bill for these houses’ roof replacements, flooded basements, and blocked-up pipes?
First, mission houses are a blessing of joy to the host churches. Jesus tells us that it is more blessed (i.e. joy-inducing) to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). God has so wired the new heart such that Christians are rewarded with spiritual joy when they host gospel workers in a manner worthy of God (3rd John 1:6). This is just as true on a corporate, church level as it is for individual believers. This joy also comes from the many ways in which church members get to exercise their gifts of hospitality and service in the ongoing care of their own mission house and the rhythms of hosting missionaries in it.
Second, mission houses are a blessing of presence to the churches, just as they are for missionaries. If a local church has a mission house, then its congregation has an increased opportunity to spend face-to-face time with international missionaries. This is true even if the church is hosting missionaries who are sent out from a different church in the area. There is a good and healthy sense of mutual obligation that emerges between a host church and its missionary guests, such that most missionaries will be eager to get to know the members of the church and to try to encourage them as they have opportunity.
When access like this exists, mission houses can then also become a blessing of mobilization and equipping for local churches. When it comes to mobilization, few things are more influential for raising up future missionaries than face to face conversation and relationship with those who are already missionaries. Any church that desires to see some of their children one day sent to the nations should do whatever they can to get what some call RLMs (real live missionaries) in front of their people as often as possible. Mission houses are a great way to do this. These opportunities can then also lead to equipping, as missionaries are often able to serve the church in things like preaching or evangelism and discipleship training.
These are some of the main reasons why I believe we should celebrate mission houses, and key ways in which these practical structures of service can be a blessing both to missionaries and to the churches that partner with them. As I said earlier, the US church has historically been strong in providing this kind of resource. But changes in the real estate market and the culture of US churches mean this crucial resource may become more and more rare, even as there’s already a shortage for the current need. This means that we need a new generation of churches and missionary senders to embrace this humble and traditional part of the missionary’s supply lines.
Because my parents were missionaries and now my own family serves overseas, I have probably spent 3-5 years of my life living in mission houses or their equivalents. Some of them have been fancy and stylish. Some have been pretty run down and should have gotten rid of that shag carpet decades ago. All of them have been a solid blessing, places of refuge, welcome, and rest in the midst of our nomadic ministry lifestyle. And each of them communicated to us the genuine love of the churches that kept them going.
If your church doesn’t have a mission house, then let me challenge you and your church to pray and scheme about one day investing in one. Mission houses are an investment in the supply lines and practical infrastructure of global mission, and thereby in the care and ultimately victory of the Church’s missionaries. This also makes them a brick-and-mortar investment in the nations. They’re not just a simple roof and four walls, but instead, houses that can change the world.
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But unknown to the disciples, a fellow Asian of their own time, a Greek geographer from Pontus in Asia Minor, had recently capped a lifetime of study with the most successful attempt in the early history of Greek science to outline the bounds of the inhabited earth. It is true that none of the apostles would ever read Strabo. Even the scientists of that century tended to ignore him. But Strabo’s Geography, appearing about A.D. 20, presented to the world of the apostolic church a better picture of the planet than its people had ever before possessed.
Its basic shape was startlingly modern, for the Greeks knew much that the Middle Ages forgot. Strabo’s world was no flat-sided cube. It was a globe, with arctic and temperate zones, in size about twenty-five thousand miles around at the circumference. True he knew only the three continents – Asia, Europe, and Africa – but with remarkable prescience he conceded that there might be continents or other worlds unknown to him, for he remarked that the only land masses he could describe were too small for the size of the round world his astronomical measurements convinced him existed.
Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. I, p. 4
They say that Paul never met Strabo and was therefore unaware of his work. But just imagine the conversation that might have taken place if they had met – and if Paul had gotten ahold of this map.
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When I was a young child, my family lived in one of the highlands provinces of our Melanesian country. Most of my parents’ colleagues lived one province over from us, near the central town of another mountain valley, the same one where I would spend my middle and high school years. There was one paved road between these two areas, known as the Highlands Highway. The drive from where we were living to the location of my parents’ quarterly meetings with their broader team took about two and a half hours and dropped the traveler’s elevation by about 1,500 ft.
The Highlands Highway is a storied piece of road for a reason. It winds around sharp ridges covered in misty mountain rainforest, over rivers that roar out of steep cuts in the mountainsides, and through valleys populated by enemy tribal groups regularly involved in blood feuds. On a given trip you might encounter a tribal, criminal, or police roadblock, a portion of the road missing because of a landslide, or a free-for-all as local villagers help themselves to the goods contained inside a tractor-trailer that has broken down or tipped over. Almost always, someone in your vehicle is going to get sick.
It was the morning of December 26th, the early ’90s, and I was a happy three-year-old sporting rubber boots and a curly mullet. I was happy because it was the day after Christmas and we had all received big plush teddy bears as gifts. These were hanging out in the back seat of our white ’80s Toyota Hilux pickup with my two older brothers. I was sitting on my mom’s lap in the front passenger seat, presumably enjoying the drive – until the hairpin turns started churning up my stomach.
My mom, ever practical in times like this, told me to stick my head out the window to throw up if I was feeling sick. My dad just kept on driving as I stuck my head out into the chilly wind, hoping that the wave of nausea would pass. It didn’t, and I began losing my breakfast. In later years, my brothers and I discovered that we all have distinct styles of throwing up. They would chuckle at mine, claiming that it’s like someone just turns on and turns off a faucet. The good side of this is that once I’m done, I’m done, and I can return to whatever I was doing previously with minimal bother. “You just threw up? You carry it well, brother,” as a fellow pastor would one day tell me. So, this particular bout of carsickness should have been over and done without too much of a story.
However, what my mom and I didn’t know was that one of my big brothers, the middle one, already had his head stuck out the back window. He may have been on the lookout for the local children who wait at the side of the road, selling small wreaths made of mountain flowers and ferns. Well, to his horror, he was suddenly hit in the face with his little brother’s vomit. So, he did what any six-year-old with a bad gag reflex would do in this situation. He pulled his head back into the cab and threw up all over the back seat, all over the new teddy bears. Our oldest brother, witnessing this carnage, couldn’t contain himself either and added to the horror by also vomiting all over the back seat.
What followed must have involved a lot of yelling as my dad rushed to find a spot to pull over and my mom tried in futility to contain the chain reaction happening among her children. Sadly, the teddy bears did not survive this experience. I assume they were left on the side of the highlands highway, perhaps to be carried off by some jungle animal.
The last thing I remember is driving into the main market of our destination town, a large area teeming with local people there to buy and sell garden produce. I was sitting in the back seat with my brothers – all three of us wearing nothing but our whitey-tighties, our underwear. We must have either been parked or were stuck in bad traffic because we were at a standstill and surrounded by lots of highlanders staring and smiling. The locals tended to stare as it was, but this time we especially felt it, like we were in one of those dreams where you are wearing no pants, but this time it’s come true in real life. I remember really wishing that we had tinted windows.
Now, we are not usually in full control of ourselves when we are about to throw up. But I did learn that day that if you are in a moving vehicle and about to lose your breakfast, it’s best to look behind you. If you do, you just might spare your brother from a rather traumatizing experience, spare your parents from one of the worst clean-up jobs they’ve ever been handed – and spare your new teddy bears also.
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As we’ve been visiting different partner churches, we’ve met a number of high school or college students who feel that God may be calling them to serve on the mission field. Many of them have asked our advice about what they should be doing to further discern and to prepare for this kind of ministry. We’ve loved the zeal that we’ve encountered in these students, but as the book of Proverbs says, “desire without knowledge is not good” (Prov 19:2). So, here is some practical advice to accompany the good desires that many students have to serve Jesus on the mission field.
First, tell your pastors and ask them to mentor and guide you. In our individualistic culture, it’s often our default to wrestle with a missions calling on our own and then to begin shopping for various missions organizations and programs – all without ever talking to our spiritual shepherds about it. But any genuine missions calling should be one that is affirmed by your local church and its leaders. The healthiest way to wrestle with desires for mission and to prepare for service is to do so in regular conversation with your pastors, and ideally, while fulfilling whatever kind of requirements they have developed for future missionaries. This kind of a track might be more or less formal depending on the size and culture of your church – and your request might be what causes them to develop one – but good pastors should be able to put aspiring missionaries on some kind of pathway that includes work on the character, knowledge, affections, and skills that qualified missionaries need to possess. Let your pastors know your desires for future missions service as soon as possible, even as early as your membership interview. And if you’re not yet a member of a healthy church, then join one ASAP.
Second, focus on growing in godly character. Be steady and faithful in the regular spiritual disciplines that make for a growing disciple who may one day become a leader. Be regularly in the word and prayer, giving generously, attending and serving your church faithfully, fighting sin, and obeying Jesus wherever you can. The character of a missionary is the foundation of everything else. And character grows slowly, like an oak tree, so be willing to wait as long as necessary for your mentors and pastors to affirm that it is indeed present – even if this leads to a timeline much longer than you were hoping for.
Along with character, pursue the knowledge you will need as a missionary. You need to know your Bible inside and out, so dig deep into the study of the Bible and theology in whatever avenues are available to you – books, classes, podcasts, sermons, blogs, eat it up wherever you can get it. You need to know with second-nature clarity what the gospel is, what a true believer is, and what a healthy church is. Knowledge of the Bible is far more important than knowledge of missions. That being said, knowledge of missions is an important second. To gain knowledge that will serve you as a missionary, read missionary biographies, listen to missions podcasts, pick the brains of visiting missionaries, and read books, articles, and blogs about issues in missions and about the various peoples of the world. You never know when knowledge of certain events in missions history or a basic understanding of a missions controversy or cultural differences might be the key that unlocks wisdom in a given situation – so soak up as much as you can. Knowledge can grow quickly, so watch out that pride doesn’t also grow with it as your knowledge will often outpace your character.
One often overlooked aspect of missions preparation is the need to foster the right affections. This starts with a passion for God’s glory, his word, and his church, but it extends into a passion for the lost peoples and places of the world. Notice how Paul in Romans 15 has a holy ambition to preach Christ where he hasn’t yet been named. Affection is one of the trickier aspects to focus on. How do you grow the affections, the emotions? Well, the Bible says that your heart will follow your money. So, give your hard-earned student job money to missions. Jesus says that if you do this, your heart will follow. In addition to this, make a plan to fast and pray regularly for the nations and for missionaries, on your own and also with others. Then practically, make friends with lost people from other cultures and language groups. As you invest time in relationships with lost friends who are refugees, immigrants, students, or migrant workers, your believing heart will be stirred to see them come to faith. So, friendships with internationals are another key to fostering the affections needed for a future missionary.
Relationships with those from other language and culture groups are also key to developing the skills you will need as an aspiring missionary. Just like any skill, it takes many hours of practice to learn the subtle art of noticing, learning, adopting, and then leveraging differences in language and culture. You will be forced to do a good measure of how to do this overseas, but do yourself a huge favor by developing cross-cultural friendships now and beginning the long and slow process of training your mind and body to navigate the maze of how different kinds of humans equate form with meaning. How do you find these relationships? A few practical suggestions would be to choose to become a patron of businesses run by internationals – groceries, barbers, cafes, restaurants. Also consider ways you can volunteer as an English tutor in your community, something constantly in demand. And consider how you might be able to host internationals for meals and hangout times. Simple genuine hospitality can bless lonely internationals and lead to strong friendships.
In addition to cross-cultural skill, you will also need ministry skill. Learn to share the gospel, to study, to teach, to preach, to disciple, to risk, to strategize, and to fail with courage and trust in the sovereignty of God. Learn how to navigate conflict with other believers and the what and why of your typical responses to conflict. Learn also to endure suffering patiently, and what your particular responses to suffering are and where they come from. Know your weaknesses and learn to appreciate and celebrate the different giftings of other believers. Much of this practical knowledge can only come through opening ourselves up to wise counselors who can help us see things about ourselves that we can’t otherwise see. And speaking of seeing, it’s going to be very hard for you to reproduce something you have never seen, so if you want to be part of planting healthy churches overseas, then you need some experience of being in a healthy church where you are now. Likewise, if you want to plant churches, then consider being part of church planting where you are currently located.
You also need to work a real world job before becoming a missionary, whether that’s full-time or part-time or ministry work in your home country. This is important for several reasons. One, effective missionaries have to work hard at their task. This is no career for those who want to take it easy. It’s helpful to have real-world work experience as a standard by which to compare how hard you are pushing in the less concrete world of missionary work. Two, effective missionaries will have seasons where they need to know how to submit and follow the lead of others. This is much easier if you’ve already had a boss or two and have some experience doing what you’re told. Three, working marketplace jobs can keep missionaries from getting entitled when it comes to their financial support. When you remember and can still feel how hard it is to make a day’s wage, you are going to be more humble and grateful when you are supported by the money earned by other Christians. For current students (who are part of Gen Z), we are seeing that this willingness and experience in working hard is something that is very important. Work-life balance is important, but so is a willingness to sacrifice when needed.
Finally, consider serving overseas in a mid-term capacity before you go career. Mid-term is a category between short-term and long-term, somewhere around three months to two years long. The benefit of serving mid-term is that you are on the ground long enough to outlast the honeymoon phase and hopefully also the “I hate everything here” phase that often follows. You need to experience the grounding that comes from being able to be honest about a place, a people, and a culture. There will be good things, there will be evil things, and there will be things that are fun or that simply annoy you. When you have come back down to earth and can see things more clearly like this you are in a much better place to gauge whether or not God has indeed wired and called you to be a missionary. Plus you also will have the perspective of other missionaries and local believers to lean on. I love mid-term missionaries because they make some of the best long-term missionaries, but they also make some of the best senders and supporters. If God calls them to stay in their home country after their term of service ends, then they will have been overseas long enough for that experience to color their work and ministry for the rest of their lives. If I had it my way, every pastor would serve as a mid-term missionary before they plug into long-term service in a local church.
So, if you are a student who feels like the Spirit is stirring your heart toward missions, pay attention to those desires. And consider how you can accompany desire with the things mentioned here – character, knowledge, affections, skill, local church membership, real world work, and mid-term service. You don’t have to wait around to see if your desires will pan out or not someday. You can actively work to test them and to invest in a possible future missionary ministry wherever you currently are.
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Entrusted to the Dirt 
