Starting Into Missions: When The Questions Are Overwhelming
The most daunting portion of mission work is often the first step of the journey. It can make any potential missionary candidate to sweat a little, if not a lot, over any number of things that can crop up. There are so many questions, and a slew of potential unknowns.
The questions break down to roughly four words; When? Where? Who? How?
When?
Especially as mission organizations wade through the constantly changing and evolving COVID-19 restrictions for many countries, this question is on the forefront of many missionaries’ minds. When will we go? When is it a good time? Is there a good time?
Where?
In the same vein of wondering, with travel restrictions, it can begin to feel like a game of whack-a-mole trying to discern, pin down, obtain visas and actually make it to a country. I know many friends who are launching into missions for the first time who have had to roll with multiple changes of where their airplane would land them. It can feel daunting to submit an application not knowing for certain where it could send you.
Who?
This was a question that stumped me for several years. Who do I go with?
In the winter of 2018 I attended the Urbana Missions Conference, and during the day there were easily 200 booths set up with information about different organizations in the main center. I could narrow down my search by country, task, and length of term. “Southeast Asia? Church Planting? Short Term? Two booths down and take a left!”
I came home with seven brochures, all for wonderful agencies, and I was absolutely overwhelmed by the options.
How?
The entire financial practice of a missionary’s life is blatantly counter-cultural. I can’t speak for our readers in other countries, but I know in American culture, the standard for a successful American is financial independence.
Missionary life involves submitting yourself to being financially “dependent” on the goodness of your church body. Your work may not directly make money, so your wage is being supported by the generosity of the community that sent you.
This means writing prayer/support letters. It means having to verbalize needs. It’s humbling and difficult. There is a challenge to use that money with wisdom and not as you feel like spending it.
There are a large portion of missionaries who do work to directly fund themselves. This is referred to as “tent-making.”
Tent-makers are the missionaries who cannot travel into countries that are closed to evangelism efforts and instead enter these countries as businessmen or women. They utilize their position in the community to spread the gospel relationally and to come alongside local church planting efforts.
Some tent-takers are still financially supported by the organization sending them, but the “how” question looks very different for them.
Instead of asking, “How will we raise the money?” the questions may sound more like, “How are we going to start a business there?” or “How are we going to balance traditional work and missions?”
Finding Answers
Staring at these questions for too long can make missions feel like an impossible task. We can begin to feel the weight of the operation is falling upon our shoulders, and we begin to believe we alone can figure out the answers.
This can lead to burnout straight out of the gate, as the idea of continuing on in our strength with these problems drains us.
However, missions is blatantly counter-cultural for a reason. For although we may answer to heads of organizations and church leadership, ultimately, missions has one founder, one CEO and one director.
That’s God.
“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”- Proverbs 19:21
I have discovered the greatest peace and contentment in my work within missions when I stopped asking the questions from the worry of my own capabilities and fears. Instead, I began to turn those questions to the God who called me to serve in the first place.
I found myself having to move past a place of passive faith and into active belief. If I believed that God created me, intimately knew me and had ordained every day of my life, I should be able to trust when He opens an opportunity.
This is daily bringing our anxieties to the cross and trusting that truly, God is ruler of all.
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” - John 15:16
This verse has often been twisted to indicate that we can invoke the name of Jesus to get whatever we want out of God.
That is not what Jesus is getting at in this passage. He is instead calling us to not withhold our questions, our needs, or our situations from God. When we are bearing fruit, walking in obedience, pursuing the heart of God above all else in our lives, our desires begin to align with the heart of God.
We are no longer begging God for a job so we can climb the social ladder and make our personal legacy. That’s trying to bottle God down to no more than a genie or a divine Amazon Prime.
Instead, it is truly acting in faith. In faith we lay the when, where, who and how at His feet and know there will be answers.
These answers don’t always come in clearly miraculous ways. Sometimes they come through ordinary conversations, decisions and plans that are divinely turned without our awareness.
Some of my craziest God moments came through perfectly ordinary means.
Piece by piece, as I surrendered my own questions, and in their own timing, God began to lay the stones on the path. This is your where. This is your when. This is your how. These are your who.
I didn’t sit at home twiddling my thumbs the whole time either, though. I sat with mentors, prayed in quiet, read through many resources, asked questions, submitted applications, said no to the opportunities God made clear weren’t mine to take, but continued to lay simple prayers at His feet when I was tempted to turn to my own strength to solve my problems.
Little by little, those simple prayers were answered. Some within a day, some within a week, and some I had to wait years to see answered.
But He answers.
So, for the girl at the beginning of this all, looking to start, wondering where to start, and feeling overwhelmed, I encourage you to pray.
I encourage you to keep stepping on the next stone He puts in front of you, and to trust He knows where, when, how and to whom He is leading you.
Ask questions. Read. Explore. Keep yourself open (not to take any “good” opportunity that comes your way) to step out on stones that may be uncomfortable or different than you pictured.
I thought I was supposed to go overseas in the next year or so, but then I married a man who has a heart to serve locally for now, and the Lord made it clear that He had different plans for me.
In my own strength, I wouldn’t have even considered marrying a man who wasn’t interested in exactly what I wanted. But, God humbled me in the reminder that a missions-minded heart is not always oriented towards going overseas.
I discovered instead a new heart for missions within my home:earning the heart of God for homemaking, and preparing for our son who is due in a couple months. My prayers shifted from,
“God, I only want to serve in the jungle or nothing else” to “Lord, here are the desires you have grown within me, and here are my skills. Use me as you see fit.”
I ended up stumbling across a website for an organization I had not heard of before, and seeing their listing for a remote administrative assistant.I would be able to honor the desires God placed in my heart, and practically, it would utilize my skills.
I talked it over with my husband and submitted an application. After multiple interviews and prayer, it was clear I would perfectly fit their need, and this was an organization I could see myself working for.
The questions are still daunting, and there are more of them than ever before. But, I have peace as I reflect on the steps behind me. I have seen God answer, and I will see Him answer again.
Missions cannot be accomplished on our own strength, but in tandem and through the leading of the Holy Spirit, with complete faith in the God we seek to proclaim.
When? Where? Who? How?
The best place to start with these questions is with Jesus, with peace knowing He already has ordained the answers and is walking with you in the revealing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mia Grace loves sunflowers, words, old hardcover books, and fountain pens. She adores Jesus Christ, and seeks to listen and obey him in her life. Her life verse is Isaiah 52:7, and her prayer is for every girl to grasp the height, weight, depth, width, and power of Christ's love for them.