12 Reasons Why Being a Missionary is Very Hard: Learning Member Care
February 7th, 2010Sorry for the slight delay again in posting. I’ll make this one good to make up for it.
As the incoming Regional Coordinators for Europe and the Middle East, one of our big responsibilities will be to watch over the spiritual, physical, and emotional health of our missionary personnel on the field. We call this “member care.” After having been in the system for 10 years this June, I have learned that Member Care is a very important thing. Yet it is often something that is not very present for missionaries. We are hoping to make sure that every missionary in our region feels loved and cared for. And you can help. More on that later. But first, let me share some reasons why being a missionary is one of the most stressful jobs in the world.
People underestimate how stressful it is to be a missionary (especially people wanting to become missionaries). On the Holmes/Rae scale which measures stress, a very stress-out person has a score of 300 and is in danger of having physical ailments from stress. The average missionary has a score of 600! It is a draining job in many ways and here are some reasons why:
1. It’s a 24 Hour Job. Pastors and missionaries are on call 24 hours a day. You never know when people will need you. And when they need you, you have to be there. The job doesn’t go from 9 to 5. You are always “the missionary” or the “pastor.” There’s never a time when you can just hang it up for a while and be yourself. When I used to work in insurance (or deliver Pizzas), I clocked in and clocked out. When my job was finished, I never had to think about it again. Not so for pastors and missionaries. It’s constant. That is exhausting.
2. Everything is Spiritualized. Because being a pastor or a missionary is primarily a spiritual job, everything becomes spiritualized. Every thing, ever decision, every conversation, every relationship is inherently deep. Everything is spiritual and that is exhausting. You are dealing with issues that have eternal consequences. And when conflict arises, that is spiritualized as well which becomes in-congruent. Who is on God’s side? So when, for instance, the pastor and the head of the church board have a conflict, it doesn’t just become personal—it becomes spiritual. That is exhausting.
3. It’s a People Job. Like being a social worker or a psychiatrist, being a missionary or a pastor is always a people job. You are dealing with people’s pains, hurts, and deep emotions. You can’t just type into a computer like when I had a data entry job. You can’t just pack boxes and check out mentally, like when I worked in a warehouse. In ministry, it’s always emotional all the time. That is exhausting.
4. Living in a Different Worldview. So both Pastors and Missionaries have stressful jobs. But being a missionary adds something even more stressful. When you are a missionary, not only are you on-call and at work for 24 hours a day, you are always living in a different culture with a different worldview 24 hours a day. A pastor may move from rural Alabama to Seattle and experience culture shock, but he is still operating in the same worldview. A missionary moving from the USA to South Korea or Kenya is operating under a completely different way of framing reality. There’s no escape. And just because you are in a first world country doesn’t make it any easier. One of the hardest countries for missionaries in the world is Japan. Japan is modern, has McDonald’s, and is safe–however, there will never be a second that you live in Japan where you will not know that you are not Japanese and no one thinks like you. That is exhausting.
5. The Pay is Terrible. Today’s missionary is expected to have quite a few skills and have a pretty good education (which means carrying student loan), but the actual pay is pretty awful. Rarely does the salary keep up with inflation because who is going to give missionaries raises? There’s kind of the assumption that you should be poor if you are a missionary. So you are given a very high stress job and asked to take on the pressure of a low salary. I recently visited a mission agency in Toronto and found out that their missionaries make 3 times what ours make. It is still not a lot by the world’s standards, but it is a lot more than we make. It’s hard to think of another job which requires so much responsibility, is so taxing, and pays so little. You can see why love-offering are such an important thing, but more and more, churches don’t even bother to do that for missionaries. You are guaranteed to never get ahead. It’s always a recession in the missionary life. That is exhausting.
6. Fundraising pressure. If your job is to be the fundraiser for a major university–say Iowa State–everyone knows that you have a very difficult job. You have to perpetually find money for your university so you are constantly courting donors and needing to convince them that Iowa State is worth their financial investment. Anybody hired for the fundraising job at Iowa State would know, “I am taking on a stressful job and financial pressure will follow me even out of the office.” Now imagine that not only do you have to raise money for Iowa State, but you have to raise your own salary just to get paid–every year! That’s what a missionary does.
Now imagine that the missionary must do special projects or some kind of mission work to make sure they stay financially supported? But where do they get that money from? That’s right! They have to raise that too! So not only do you have the pressure of your salary, but everything you might need to do in your job must be raised too. And if you don’t make it, you are out of a job AND you feel like you spiritually let everyone down including God. That is exhausting.
7. It’s a travel job. Everybody knows that a traveling salesman has a stressful job. He’s on the road for days at a time, in the car, in hotels, and in transit every moment. There’s lots of time away from the family. There’s sitting around in airports, flight delays, lost luggage, bad hotel rooms, and a constant sense of homelessness. The missionaries have to do all of that too, but they do that when they are “back at home” in their country “resting!” So when you are not living your exhausting job in some other worldview, you come home and live out of a suitcase. It’s tough for the traveling salesman, but for the missionary, the whole family is expected to come. I hope your 3 kids like long car drives and long airplane flights, because if not, you are in for a very long nightmare. What if one of your kids has a personality that doesn’t travel well? And as you travel, you don’t get to see your family in the USA much, it at all. And when you do, you have to make the visit short because there are 100 other people you have to see. Keep in mind if you don’t see the people financially supporting you, you may be in trouble. The kids may not only have to have to be pulled out of school, but they will have to move to a different culture now!
What people see are the exotic pictures of your children next to giraffes in Africa, or by the Pyramids, or at the Eiffel Tower. It all looks so exciting and exotic. It is, at times. But along with that nice trip to the African Game park come about 50 other trips to the Motel 6 in Ogallala, Nebraska. That is exhausting.
8. Vacation guilt. So if the missionary doesn’t get to rest on the job and doesn’t get to rest back in the USA, when does the missionary go on vacation? Well, going on vacation means having to find some neutral sight (not in the USA, not in your country) to really get away. But it will probably be in some other country and look exotic (like a beach in Thailand, or a game park in Zambia, or country getaway in Hungry). But this still requires being in a foreign country and having the stress of figuring everything out (that’s why I liked vacations in Australia and New Zealand. At least you had the language that you didn’t have to deal with). But if the missionary does take a trip to one of these places, it can look ostentatious. “The missionary is on a beach in Acapulco? I wish I had that life!” No, you probably don’t. Then there is the unspoken things that come with the job–such as the sense that as missionaries you must be the lowest of the low and you must suffer like the poor of this world. So who are you to enjoy Acapulco? Vacations often equal guilt.
And missionary retreats (when missionaries get together) are often held in pretty modest places. Some cheap retreat center with bunk beds, for instance, because how would it look for the missionary retreat to be in Acapulco? But the retreats themselves are often times when the missionaries do a lot of crying, sharing, grieving, and processing. It’s too bad that they also have to worry about bed bugs and communal toilets. But there’s guilt and you really can’t take a vacation. That is exhausting.
9. You must give until you can give no more ethos. Along with that last one is that underlying assumption that you must be Mother Teresa constantly. That it is a betrayal to your job if you ever feel like you need to do something selfish, like take a nice vacation or buy a nice TV. Certainly living in a nice home to make your 20 year stay in the country inviting is out of the question. A missionary recently told me that when he went to a retreat for burnt-out missionaries, the facilitator said, “We don’t care about the work you’ve done for God, what we care about is what working for God has done to you.” Wow! I instantly got tears in my eyes. That is a question nobody asks. Being in a job where you are expected to be the epitome of the constant giver is draining and ultimately defeating. That is exhausting.
10. Things That Don’t Make the Newsletters. Then there’s the fact that many things do go wrong on the mission-field. But people don’t really want to hear about that. They want to hear about the souls saved, the buildings set up, and the exciting ministries developed. If those things are absent, you aren’t doing your job well. So the missionary amasses a bunch of pains and disappointments. They become “things that don’t make it in the newsletters.” This is one of the reasons why I believe missionary retreats are very important. Few can relate to those things that don’t make the newsletters. That is exhausting.
11. “Jesus will take care of it.” And of course, when problems do arise, there is a quick answer for the missionary. “Jesus will take care of it.” After all, we are the missionaries and should be super-close to God. Whatever problem comes along, Jesus will solve it. Of course things are often not solved and many things go wrong. The missionary doesn’t feel free to verbalize that they are disappointed or that things may not work out. That shows a lack of faith and who should have the most faith? The missionary. But in actuality, the missionary often sees, more than most people, the things that don’t work out. That is exhausting.
12. The children live in transition. Through it all, the missionary may be needing to raise their kids. They have to raise their kids in a foreign culture, and yet their kids start taking on many of the characteristics of that new culture (they become Third Culture kids). But your kids will never be truly at home in either your culture or your new adopted culture. In many cases, you are not just changing schools (which many American kids go through), but once again, it’s changing cultures and worldviews.
Your children are often having to say goodbye and they are often the odd man out. They may not understand certain cultural things as well as the kids in your new country because they are not natives. Yet, they are also probably highly intelligent and articulate which means they have few peers. And their experiences traveling the world make them even less likely to be able to relate to their peers.
They often have to say goodbye to grandparents, cousins, friends, and life is one big transition. Meanwhile the parents look on with guilt wondering if the benefits outweigh the costs.
SO WHAT CAN BE DONE
So now it doesn’t seem so hard to believe that a missionary scores 600 on the stress test (double what a very stressed out person would score). I often say about the missionary life that “the highs are super high and the lows are super low.” If you are a person that can’t handle those kind of extremes, then this is not a job for you. Neither is it for people that can’t handle constant upheaval in their life. Take the Goldman’s in Russia. Every 3 months the whole family has to leave Russia for weeks at a time because of visa issues. The two parents and the 3 kids. Constant upheaval.
I also often say that “you are on the front-lines of what God is doing in the world.” Yes, that’s true and exciting. But it is still “the front-lines” as in a war.
As Regional Coordinators we want to make sure that our missionaries in Europe and the Middle East are very well-cared for. And we want your help. Over the coming months, we will be educating all of you about how you can help in our Member Care. There are many things you can do. We will give you tons of ideas. It could be anything from e-cards on birthdays, to gift coupons, to making sure that your missionaries are staying in a decent place when they come visit you.
We hope to see you, and your church groups, and your youth groups help us with this. One of the reasons we have to do this is because the number of missionaries has been decreasing for a long time. If we want to keep the ones we have and have more in the future, we will need to make sure our missionaries are cared for. It will be fun.



