Discerning and pursuing your calling can be a confusing process.
It may be long or short. However our hope is that, by the time you leave, both you and your support team will be prepared to keep you there for the long haul!
Calling
If you feel any kind of calling to work cross-culturally, we suggest seeking early endorsement from the leadership in your local church. Our calling mini-course will help you!
Confirming
Take time to process and test the calling. Don’t do this alone! Look to your church, loved ones, and other trusted voices.
Equipping
Practically prepare for the road ahead. We strongly advise taking cross-cultural training. Our own Crossing Cultures 101 courses will give you key foundations.
Resourcing
Commissioning
Leaving is a process, not a single event. How are you preparing for a smooth transition? We’d advise building a RAFT and ensuring everything practical is ticked off.
On-Field
A Sender’s Role
Any fieldworker needs a great team of friends, family and colleagues supporting them. You have a huge part to play in ensuring their success. Check out what you can do to ensure your fieldworkers thrive!
- A church should establish a discernment process for anybody who may feel a call to work cross-culturally.
- The call needs to be tested, and the candidate’s maturity and readiness need to be assessed
- The church’s role is critical – sadly many missionaries who end up leaving prematurely for preventable reasons should never have gone in the first place!
- Give opportunities for the candidate to learn by serving and leading in the church.
- Ensure good mentoring is in place for the candidate. Make use of people with prior cross-cultural or mission experience.
- Consider mentoring for practical skills such as financial management or pastoral care.
- This is a season of practically preparing for the road ahead
- Choices need to be made about an agency or a process for training and equipping. Ideally, the church leaders would walk alongside the candidate through this.
- We strongly recommend the raising of personal support teams by the candidate and the church’s backing in that endeavour would be important.
- If the church endorses, hopefully they will also partner with the pre-field missionary in the matter of financial support.
- Clarify the level of support required with the field worker and consider how the church can support through the process of fundraising beyond providing money.
- Remember it is much easier for others, particularly those in authority in the church, to advocate for their financial support than for the candidate to do that on their own behalf!
- Read Acts 13. You will see that this is more than just a rousing send-off, with a ‘goodbye’, at the end. The sense of still belonging, even when serving at the other end of the world, is so important.
- Maintaining that connection through thick and thin might make all the difference between success and failure.
- Encourage the field worker to maintain the connection to the church – and make sure you do too!
- See our on-field resources for more details on what is next.
Start Your Journey
Here are some useful materials for you
Cultural Pride
In our interview with Christina Winrich, she shared openly about the challenges and joys of serving God in another culture….
Go and do likewise…
Ross speaks from the story of the Good Samaritan with a powerful call to us all…
Article 4 of the Serampore Agreement
The original version: Fourthly. It becomes us to watch all opportunities of doing good. A missionary would be highly culpable…
Article 7 of the Serampore Agreement
Seventhly. Another important part of our work is to build up, and watch over, the souls that may be gathered.In…
Article 6 of the Serampore Agreement
Have a read of this article 6 (in the original form and then in modern English). Realise that for this…
Article 3 of the Serampore Agreement
Thirdly. It is necessary, in our intercourse with the Hindus, that, as far as we are able, we abstain from…
Article 5 of the Serampore Agreement
Original text: Fifthly. In preaching to the heathen, we must keep to the example of Paul, and make the great…
Article 2 of the Serampore Agreement
I have posted it first in the original English and then in a modern English version, so that it can…
William Carey’s Serampore Form of Agreement – Article 1.A
First. In order to be prepared for our great and solemn work, it is absolutely necessary that we set an…
A Lost Missionary Treasure
I have been a missionary for over 50 years, yet I have only just come across an extraordinary document called…
Eric Liddell – Olympic Gold Medal Winner in Paris, 1924
Eric Henry Liddell (1902-1945) is one of the heroes of the Oscar winning film “Chariots of Fire”. The film tells…
Frank Laubach – A Look Beneath The Surface
Frank Charles Laubach (1884-1970) was born in Benton, Pennsylvania. He was a missionary who worked for thirty years among Muslims…