Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Welcome, friend, to Episode 212 of Missions on Point. This episode will begin a new series on pre-field missionary training. Our Missions on Point episodes will basically follow the outline of here to there. It's a book on pre-field missionary training, and the subtitle is How to Get to Your Mission Field. So don't turn that podcast dial.

Who is this series for? Well, obviously it's for the person who wants to be a missionary or thinks that God may be calling them to be a missionary, but it's also for all those concerned around the missionary candidate who want to help them, encourage them, and be a part of their getting to the field. It's for everyone in the church to understand what lies ahead for the missionary candidate, to sympathize with them, to pray them through, to see them get to the field.

Preparing to go to the mission field is a serious process. We have to understand that as a missionary candidate, many people around you need to help you qualify to be a missionary. Your desire to go isn't enough by itself. Your willingness is necessary and important, but your actual fittedness for the field will be determined by your local church.

There are three major areas you will need to develop to prove your readiness. First, you must learn to be a qualified Christian in every respect. This has to do with yourself, your person, that you have the qualities of a godly Christian to be a missionary. Secondly, you must learn to know spiritual truth with conviction. There is a body of knowledge and understanding that you need to take in and make a part of you and your understanding. Thirdly, you must do ministry with skill through experience, and that takes time. All of these things back to back or even in parallel take time as you develop to become qualified as a missionary.

Becoming a missionary is not unlike preparation for any profession or trade. It requires certain personal qualities and disciplines. It requires professional knowledge of your specialty, which in this case, is the specific missionary work that you intend to be doing out on the field. And it also requires certified practiced skills to accomplish the end results of that profession. And all of these requirements are observed by authorities who then certify you as a professional or a tradesman to do the work. And we're talking about missionary work now.

When you leave to the field, you want to be competent in every way possible to have the best probability of being successful and faithful for the long term in doing that ministry on the field. You will embark on a journey of transformation by God's grace to be qualified as a full-time minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You will represent Christ and His word. You will articulate and demonstrate the gospel with your whole life. You will live and communicate and thrive in a new language and culture, maybe more than one new language, depending on how remote or how unreached the people group is that you're going to minister to.

You'll be radically dependent on the Lord as never before. You'll face multi-dimensional and unexpected spiritual warfare in body, soul, heart, and mind. You will face inadequacy, loneliness, disappointment, and fear. You will also face inexpressible joy and satisfaction as you see God work in and through your life.

As you start this journey, it might be fun to ask some questions of some missionaries that you may know or that you may come to know. Ask them things like, "What are the ways that you should have prepared that you didn't know about until after you arrived on the field?" Ask them, "What things surprised you about gaps in your learning or expectations after you arrived on the field? What surprised you when you arrived on the field that you were not aware of previously? How did your first months or years on the field impact your personal spiritual walk with the Lord? Is there one thing that you wish someone who was wise told you about before you arrived that would've made your arrival and adjustment easier?" And last question, "What can I do as a missionary candidate to learn about these things and be prepared better before I arrive on the field?"

Here's a heads-up about the kind of topics we're going to consider over the next few weeks. We're going to talk about how to get started, how to tell people and how not to tell people about your desire to become a missionary. We'll talk about getting a sending church and just how important and central the local church is to your entire ministry, both in getting to the field in your preparation and qualification as a missionary, but also in your shepherding as they send you out and as a result of your ministry on the other end, that when you're in that mission field, you need to be about developing and strengthening indigenous local churches.

The next topic is finding a sending agency partner. This is not easy. It's not something that is automatic, but it should be done with consideration and wisdom of many counselors. It may come later in the process.

The next topic is getting ministry experience, and we'll focus particularly on getting ministry experience within the local church. You may have lots of ministry experience in VBS or summer camps or in a campus ministry at your college or university, but we're talking about local church ministry experience and experience in church planting, if that's possible. Ideally, even experience in cross-cultural church planting before you ever leave home.

So the next topic is cross-cultural church planting, both in studying and knowing what it means, talking to people who understand this subject, but also finding a way to get some experience with cross-cultural church planting before you leave.

Finally, we get to the place where you're close to being fully qualified and topping up all of those skills both in being, knowing, and doing will be important for your church to give you the full green light to go to the field.

You also need to get a support team, and the support team, we'll discuss, is more than just financial funding. We'll talk about that last stage of actually getting launched or commissioned and what that means to everybody in your life.

Then lastly, we'll talk about getting humble. It's more natural to feel proud when you've achieved a certain approval and commissioning from the church, but we need to adopt a humble attitude for our ministry's sake and for our own personal sake. There's also the humility of maybe not making it, and there are a lot of people who aspire to become missionaries who never make it to the field, but there is still a place for you in the church. You don't need to bail out just because you didn't make it all the way. God is sovereign even in that and can use you and wants to use you and your aspirations and your gifts and experience and your character for his glory.

And we will take one last episode to wrap it all up and conclude, so I hope you'll come along with us. We have some really cool things to talk about, and I trust that that will be valuable to you and your friends as a missionary candidate, as a friend or mentor of a missionary candidate, or just someone in the church who wants to know what it's like to go through the process to become a missionary.

142 years ago, Dr. David Livingston was asked by the Regions Beyond Mission Magazine to write a statement about what he thought was a good description of missionary qualifications. Here's what he wrote. "Missionaries ought to be highly qualified in every respect. Good education, good sense, and good temper are indispensable. A sound mind and a sound body. Independence of character, strength of judgment, aptitude, both to learn and to teach are of great consequence. An ability to acquire and retain languages, tact in managing others so as to conciliate and yet to retain proper dignity and self-respect are of great importance. There should also be an intrepid spirit of enterprise, decision, cool courage to meet sudden emergencies and to overcome dangers, gentleness, powers of endurance and temperance. We want our best, most able, and greatest men," and I would add, and women, "to do the highest and most important of all work, making known Christ's gospel where it has not been hitherto heard."

Do you or someone you know aspire to this? It is a worthy thing to do. So the upcoming newest revision of the book, Here to There: How to Get to Your Mission Field, will contain much of this Missions on Point series and more. You'll be able to find it on Amazon in paperback before too long.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at Propempo.com and MissioSERVE.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God, be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.