00 cmg chapter 18

Mentoring Potential Church Planters, Evangelists and Missionaries

"When Priscilla and Aquila heard Apollos, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately." Acts 18:26

Click the explanation you want now, of how to mentor the missionaries that your church sends:

A. Provide Wise Career Counseling for New Workers
B. Make Sure That Mission Career Counseling Is Unbiased
C. Keep Reviewing Mission Outreach to Prepare for Current Needs and Opportunities
D. Let People Serve Freely, out of Love for Jesus

18A. Provide Wise Career Counseling for New Workers

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 18.

The purpose of this chapter is to see church reproduction and pastoral work from the viewpoint of a Christian career advisor, and explain how to mentor the missionaries and other serious workers that your church sends.

Mr. ''Traditionalist'' complains, "I have a problem with career advisors. Don’t take this church and mission career guidance so seriously! Just go where the Spirit leads you."

"The Holy Spirit uses godly advisors to guide us," Mr. ''Foresight'' replies. "That’s why the Lord established pastors, prophets and shepherding elders with the gifts of wisdom, discernment and exhortation."

Find in the book of Jonah both good and bad attitudes for a cross-cultural missionary. Wise advisors help new workers adapt to the culture and avoid the wrong attitudes.

Do your people have someone to go to for wise career guidance--someone who will listen, find out their spiritual gifts and strengths, and present all options that are open for serving the Lord? If not, pray for the Lord to give you or a coworker this wisdom.

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18B. Make Sure that Mission Career Counseling Is Unbiased

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 18.

Churches, schools and mission agencies should provide unbiased counsel, so that workers can follow the Holy Spirit’s leading with freedom. If counselors only try to recruit for their own organization, then they do not leave other doors open for the person seeking guidance. Such biased counseling gives an unbalanced focus. Wise counselors will not overlook fruitful ministries and fields by channeling workers into their own favorite or familiar programs, thereby clustering them in fields with excessive concentrations of workers.

An unbiased career advisor will bear in mind the entire scope of mission work from sending churches to neglected fields. Patterson observed cases of grief caused by poor career counseling. He cautioned:

The need for unbiased, comprehensive training for new missionaries is clear when I began mentoring missionaries who had problems. As students or when they are nearing the time to go to the field, they receive counsel from recruiters representing mission agencies or training institutions. These counselors mean well, but their advice is often biased. Many are only allowed to recruit for their own organization, field, or ministry. Sometimes they know little about the student’s calling and gifts. The family disasters and career failures that resulted from following such counsel are heartbreaking. Students need recruiters, but not until potential missionaries have accurately assessed their gifts and the options in view of the entire scope of mission work.

If you are providing career counseling, please take a moment to reflect on it. Is it truly unbiased. If not, you are limiting the options that the Holy Spirit might want to keep open, so that He can lead without restrictions from men.

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18C. Keep Reviewing the Mission Outreach of the Churches to Prepare for Current Needs and Opportunities

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 18.

Advisors in a local church or mission organization should review their missionary outreach at least annually, to assess progress and make suggestions. If you mobilize persons or groups in a sending church, then consider these activities and mark those that you plan to deal with.

Train potential missionaries. Missionaries, including short-term workers, bivocational workers and partners from churches, need special training. For many new fields, someone in the task group needs the following skills:

Business or other vocational expertise. They may do an apprenticeship to gain the skills.

Training pastors on the job rather than in an institution.

Non-public, family oriented evangelism.

Giving new Christians discipleship training for obedience.

Leading worship in small groups. On new fields most churches start as small home groups.

Training new missionaries on the job.

Normally missionaries from the poorer countries should receive training in their own country or in their new field rather than in the industrialized West. Serious problems often result when training in the West moves missionaries from poorer economies into a higher income bracket than what their churches can pay, or higher than that of their compatriot coworkers. It also often weakens the advantage they otherwise would have of being culturally closer to the people than Western missionaries are. Make an exception only for experienced, mature leaders who are authorized by their church or denomination to receive higher education in the West for specialized work.
Mobilize missionary trainers. Many trainers need more experience in order to gain the training skills required in today’s neglected fields. These skills include the giving of help to small churches reproducing cross-culturally, and the preparing of leaders through discipleship training on the job. They may also have to learn how to deal with two-thirds world workers and with cross-cultural entrepreneurs.
Explain to your church how to prepare and send church planting task groups. Leaders of a sending church should plan for their church body to adopt a neglected people group and to make disciples among it.
Help mission agencies to send task groups that are equipped with the needed pastoral and vocational skills. To reach many of the remaining neglected fields, mission agency administrators must bring together small business managers, entrepreneurs, pastoral trainers, and workers from other places in the world, all in the same task group. They should do this in cooperation with sending churches.

Do any of the above tasks to facilitate career guidance need more attention? If so, please pray for guidance and wisdom.

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18D. Let People Serve Freely, out of Love for Jesus

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 18.

Make sure career workers serve out of a desire to obey Christ, not because their organization demands it. If they aim to serve overseas, then verify their commitment. Is it to go and simply do what Jesus says? Or is it to spend a limited amount of time overseas to satisfy their conscience, to please people of influence in their lives, or to fulfill a desire for adventure?

Please take a moment now to plan how you and your coworkers will provide mission career guidance for those whose motive is love. Arrange for an unbiased mission career advisor—one who is not trying to recruit for a certain program or organization—to help new workers think through their plans. Plan this with your coworkers, if possible.

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