MentorNet #12
Missionary Team Building:

Things that a Mentor Should Know

© 2003 George Patterson and Galen Currah

Missionaries often ask for advice to build teams. Five questions about missionary team building have kept arising over the last thirty years. We try to answer them here. None of these answers is infallible or true everywhere. Use these observations as a checklist when seeking to build teams or solve team problems, especially with North Americans.

1. Why bother forming missionary teams?

Caution: Include national workers on your team when on the field. Reorganize and form several teams or task groups at the same time, so that expatriates do not outnumber the nationals. Let nationals lead the teams as soon as possible, while expatriates coach them from behind the scenes.

Caution 1: Do not use the word "personal" to describe faith in the sense of being private. That would destroy your ability to work through families and networks of friends. God does not see seekers as isolated individuals. The apostles always went at once to the families of seekers. Christ let Zacheus and Levi gather their friends at once, in order to let the gospel flow.

Caution 2: When starting a new church or cell in the home of a seeker or new believer, do not let Satan make you flee at the first bit of opposition, into a rented building or the home of a missionary. James 4:7 tells us to resist the devil and he will flee from us. Stick with it. Deal with paganism’s counterattacks within the homes and within the culture, or you risk starting a culturally irrelevant work that fails to attract the entire family.

2. What do the more effective expatriate teams do? They...

Caution: Some agencies require so much education that only academic types with the gift of teaching end up on the team—a devastating mistake!

3. What do effective mixed expatriate and national teams do? They...

4. What common pitfalls must we avoid?

5. Why not simply send Western dollars to national workers who will serve for only a few dollars a day and already know the language and culture?

Greed. The dollars attract money-hungry workers and national organizations whose main motive is wealth—not church reproduction.

Fear. National workers, fearing that the "pie" (the funds from the West) will be cut into smaller portions if they start new churches, fail to sustain their church planting movement.

Dependency. National workers, especially pastors, soon come to rely on Western aid and to neglect Christian stewardship within their churches.

Independent spirit. National agencies with expatriate resources operate without regard for the national churches that trained and supplied their personnel.

Disobedience. Jesus’ Great Commission, to "go" and disciple the neglected people groups, applies to churches of both East and West—not just to those that are geographically near to them.

Disorder. When new, spiritually immature churches send untrained missionaries, they commit the errors mentioned under the questions listed above. New workers from a newly developed field need to partner with experienced workers who mentor them, so they can follow the positive guidelines listed above.

Poverty. Dedicated field workers serve the Lord on a dollar or two a day while their spouse and children go malnourished, because they are not allowed to receive anything but what the national agency deems to be enough.

To find mentoring tools and sites, visit <http://www.MentorAndMultiply.com>.

We invite those who use Train & Multiply™ to write to George Patterson at <GPatterson@cvimail.net>.

For information on T&M™, visit <http://www.TrainAndMultiply.com>.

For information on Paul & Timothy Training, visit <http://www.Paul-Timothy.net>.

For information on "Come, Let Us Disciple the Nations" (CD-ROM) <http://www.AcquireWisdom.com>.

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