7:30AM wake-up on Monday Morning (snow).

7:30AM Wake-up on Tuesday morning (Pike’s Peak in the background).

We are here at the Re-entry program in Colorado surrounded by missionaries.  It’s a fascinating crew with missionaries that have served in China, Afghanistan, Swaziland, Dominican Republic, Peru, Turkey, Norway, UK, Uganda, Germany, and many other countries.  They are people coming off the field or transitioning to other fields.

Everyone is doing fascinating work.  And everyone has amazing stories to tell.  When missionaries get together, they tell hilarious stories and stories that no one can relate to other than missionaries.  That’s why these gatherings are important.

But most importantly, in a safe environment like this, missionaries are free to share openly about their experiences.  Most all of the missionaries have been absolutely ravaged by the mission-field.  Most bring in painful experiences that will not be healed in this lifetime.  The stories are very moving, very sad, and often leave you stunned–speechless—and cliche Bible answers will seem extremely hollow.  As I wrote in previous posts, it is a much harder and more traumatic job than people realize.

The leaders are former missionaries—all of whom have had to navigate very difficult things in their lives due to having been missionaries.  Even the leaders stories are harsh and sad.

This is not a place for pat answers, cliche Christianity, and hiding true feelings.  That’s what makes it a safe place where people can deal with their real feelings—the kinds of things that you could never talk about in front of churches.

I wish I could give you a taste of the kinds of things people wrestle with, but we all agree in this program not to share what we hear inside these walls.  It wouldn’t be a safe place otherwise.  So out of respect for my fellow comrades, I won’t be writing about any of that.  It’s enough to say that it is heavy. I mostly bawled through the entire morning session.

There are quite a few children here (Thank God!) so Marco is surrounded by fellow Third-Culture Kids/Missionary Kids.  That’s great!  We were really hoping that would be the case.

One of the kids is also a 7 year old who grew up in China.  Marco is in the group of kids 7 to 10 which include 3 other rambunctious boys just like him.  He’s thrilled.  His other fellow TCK’s are from families that have been serving in Afghanistan, China, and Swaziland.  They do special activities that help the children process the confusion and loss that they experience as Third Culture Kids.  It might be drawing pictures about the things they miss from their home (Hong Kong in Marco’s case) or they may take them on a mystery activity and deal with  the issue of “the unknown” (like us moving to Europe for instance).  Anyway, they work very hard at giving the parents a break (so we can process) and to monitor how our children are adjusting to the cultural/geographical changes.

One of the most interesting things is that we are by far the veterans.  I think the closest anyone comes is 5 years (we are just under 10).  The average is probably 4 years.  And actually this is statistically accurate.  As I wrote in a previous post, the average tenure is now about 5 to 6 years.  Amazing how much trauma can occur for people in just 2 years, or 3 or 4 years in this job.

Well, I write all this stuff in the diary because it’s time that people get educated about all of this stuff.  If churches are going to continue to recruit and send missionaries in the future then we need to be honest and realistic about what this job entails and what it will ultimately do to you.  You don’t leave this job unmarked.  As we are in the process of structuring the region and dealing with possible candidates for missionary positions, we have to factor in the realities and so do the people and churches that support our crew in Europe and the Middle East.

They have discovered a religious temple in Turkey that looks to be 11,500 years old.  It’s a startling find because it suggests that religion did not come AFTER agriculture, villages, urbanization and other development, but before it.  From an article in Newsweek:

[Lead archeologist Klaus] Schmidt’s thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a “Neolithic revolution” 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialized labor, kings, writing, art, and—somewhere on the way to the airplane—organized religion. As far back as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, thinkers have argued that the social compact of cities came first, and only then the “high” religions with their great temples, a paradigm still taught in American high schools.

Religion now appears so early in civilized life—earlier than civilized life, if Schmidt is correct—that some think it may be less a product of culture than a cause of it, less a revelation than a genetic inheritance.

Color me unsurprised.  Religion leads to civilization and not the other way around.

As you diary readers may remember, I was in Chile this past April.  I wrote about the wonderful pastors down there and for some reason—I have just felt a special burden for those Chilean pastors.  They have such a tough challenge down there.

In light of the earthquake that has hit the 3 areas that I visited, I am glad to have gotten an update today from the pastor whose home I visited–Pastor Martinez who lives in the Coastal town of Valparaiso.  Here’s the message.

“Thank you, my brother, for your concern. Just today we have been able to find a place to communicate via Internet. We are without electricity and water and have sustained some material damage, but glory to God, there have been no deaths or injuries among the leaders or members of the Church of God in Chile.

Now we are focusing on community aid because the damage caused by the earthquake was devastating. The cost of food has risen considerably. The price of bread reached as high as 3,000 pesos ($6 dollars). On the positive side, people in this very secularized country have become more sympathetic and we have a full church now. We really need to reach out.

So, we request your prayers for Chile. Blessings to my brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.”

Say some prayers for the people of Chile.

Great.  My diary entry was just erased.  That’s so annoying.

Well, we are in Colorado.  This morning the 3 of us got up early and flew to Denver.  From there we headed down to Colorado Springs.  It’s a beautiful area as you can imagine.

We are here to attend the Missionary Training Institute.  MTI is a place the specializes in preparing missionaries for the work overseas, helping them re-adjust and process after they finish, and help families of children assess their children and deal with transition issues.

Jamie and I have been here before.  We were here for 3 weeks in October of 2000.  It was a very interesting experience, meeting people from all over America getting ready to go all over the world.  We are particularly looking forward to Marco having some time to process his move away from Hong Kong.  They will spend a lot of time getting to know Marco and allowing him to share his feelings and helping us know how he is doing.  He’s been missing Hong Kong a lot lately.

Anyway, it should be a very interesting week.  I am sure we will meet lots of interesting people.  I think it’s very good that we are here.  And I hear they have a Bubba Gump’s seafood restaurant in Denver..hmm…..my favorite!

I traveled to Jamestown, New York this weekend.  That was my first time in Western New York.  Jamestown is near the Pennsylvania/Ohio border and about 1 hour south of Buffalo on Lake Erie.  It was a nice visit with the very friendly people there.

On the way back, I stopped off at this really nice cottage that always gives me free lodging.  It is located in Amish country Northeastern Ohio.  As you drive into this hilly area (the Germany of Ohio they call it….or the Switzerland…..something like that)….you pass Amish people on the road as they drive their horse and buggies.  You actually have to be careful as you drive lest you scare the horses or accidentally kill an Amish person.  No joke.

It is so fascinating to see a bit of the 19th Century in the 21st century.  A few years ago we were taken to an Amish farm and we ate some of their delicious food and looked at some of their theology books.  They come from a similar anabaptist tradition that the Church of God does.  There are actually sections of the CHOG that still dress and live as they did in the 19th Century.  Fortunately we don’t belong to that sect.  I would not make a very good Amish person.  It’s pretty hard to travel to Asia, Europe and Africa in a horse and buggy. Your backside would get sore and horses can’t swim good enough to cross the Pacific Ocean.

This week we have some key meetings in Anderson, I am speaking at East Side Church of God’s Missions Banquet on Friday (on a very interesting subject which will be a future book about America)–and then on Saturday, Jamie, Marco and I head off to Colorado for 8 days or so to the Missionary Training Institute.  More on that later.

It was fun watching the men’s skating final.  The USA upset the Russian champion Yulgeny something-a-kov…..and the Russian was really mad.  You know…people think male figure skating is totally effiminate and dare I say it—gay.  And you know something.  They are right!

But then someone like this Russian guy comes along and injects some testosterone.  This guy had a bad attitude.  He looked crooked.  He was condescending.  He was rude.  And he was everything the sport needs.  He looks like he skates for the Russian mafia.

Well, the mean Russian guy lost to the nice American who was trying to make the sport look less…um…gay.  (He even said so, mkay?).  Although the American skated better, this sport really needed the Russian.  There should have been a fist fight at the end.

The Russian walked off angrily when he lost and is complaining to everyone that he was robbed.  In fact, he even called Vladimir Putin to complain and old Pootster agrees that the fix was in.

On his website the Russian has put that he is the winner of “Platinum!”  It’s hillarious!

That’s really interesting that since he didn’t win gold, he put Platinum on his website.

It’s interesting because at the 2007 Winter Olympics in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, I won “Titanium” in the men’s dance skating competition. I skated to “Enter Sandman” by Metallica.

Here is a video of the Russian guy who could have saved male figure-skating forever.  Mr. Platinum himself.  Yugeny whats-his-face.

The Winter Olympics are cool–no pun intended.  I’ve always loved the Winter Olympics since I saw my first one (Lake Placid 1980).  That was the year the US hockey team went undefeated and Eric Heiden won 5 golds.  I remember creating my own hockey game in the garage using roller skates and then pretending I was Eric Heiden on skates outside too.  Dork.

Sarajevo in 1984 was cool too.  That was when Scotty Hamilton won men’s figure skating and Katerina Witt was the evil East German that looked like Brooke Shields.  Wolfgang Hoppe was the best bobsledder in the world.  I remember these things.  I care.

Anyway, it’s been fun watching the games of 2010.  And I love the fact that it is in Vancouver–one of my favorite places on Earth…a place I have raved about and visited many times on the diary.  Wish I was there now.  Wish I could afford to buy a house there.  That would be one of my first moves if I won 10 million dollars.

The winter olympics are cool.  Almost all the sports are very fast, very high risk, and very dangerous.  It’s hard to find a sport in the Olympics where it’s not dangerous.

I was skeptical about snowboarding–which was only added in the 1998 Nagano Olympics in Japan.  Any sport that has a move called “the McTwist” probably shouldn’t be an Olympic sport.  And any sport in which very few humans can do it should probably not be a sport (hello curling?).  And any sport where most of the people that do the sport are high on marijuana should probably not be a sport.

But I’m sold on snowboarding.  It’s been fun watching them.  Those guys could easily break their necks doing what they are doing.

I like figure skating too.  I don’t know why.  It’s totally effeminate.  But I saw football coach Tony Dungy in the audience so it can’t be that bad.

I really don’t like hockey, but I always like Olympic hockey.  People playing for their country is a lot more interesting than playing for Pittsburgh or Calgary in my opinion.

I think my favorite is watching the skiing events.  Especially the fast races.  They are traveling so fast and the scenery is so beautiful.  I was definitely cheering for Lindsey Vonn to get her gold which she did.

Watching all the athletes—their speed, their fearlessness, their skill on the ice and snow…..well….it reminds me of me. I’m one of the greatest athletes the world has ever known and I’m sure I have inspired many of these Olympians.  Since we are moving to Europe and I will be Regional Coordinator for Russia, I am seriously considering going to the 2014 Olympics in Russia and entering a few competitions.  I’m leaning toward women’s figure skating but I might do the men’s giant slalom also.  We’ll see.  And when I go, the diary will be there.

Check out the Olympics!  They’re great!

Go USA.  Go Hong Kong (they have one athlete), Go Costa Rica….well, they didn’t even make it to the soccer world cup so nevermind.

Continuing on this recent series, next I want to talk about how we can get young people more engaged in the work of mission-agencies.

As I mentioned previously, there are a number of reasons young people are not getting involved in long-term career missions anymore.  But young people ARE interested in doing service work overseas.  What they are really having a hard time with is working for institutions (like denominations), committing full-time, and doing pure evangelism without some element of social work.

In our region (Europe and the Middle East) we have a plan to reach out to young people.  In fact, we want to structure our entire region to primarily work on building up emerging leaders (those that currently exist, those that are emerging in churches in our region, and those that are interested from the USA).

Part of that strategy involves first of all, being very focused. We don’t just want to give young people opportunities to serve.  They can get that elsewhere from a million other agencies.  What we want to do is develop cross-cultural skills and managerial skills at a high level.  We want our young trainees to develop the ability to not only navigate very different cultures, but to navigate the traditional world, the post-Christendom world, and the non-Western Christian world.

We also want them to develop the ability to know how to run work-camps, how to give charity without giving too much, and to empower local leadership BUT within frameworks that call for mutual accountability.

We also will need to be selective. We won’t just train or give opportunities to anyone.  We will need to fine the top applicants and those most likely (and most committed) to full-time ministry.  If we are going to invest this heavily in young people, we want the ones that are really looking to develop their leadership skills for long-term cross cultural ministry either as a mission pastor or missionary.

We will also need to create an environment open to innovation.  This young generation is highly entrepreneurial.  More that 50% in a recent survey hope to start their own business one day.  Many of them have started their own non-profit endeavors as teenagers.  We want to harness that and learn from them.  We want to give them an opportunity to serve and use their innovative skills.  We want them to re-invent the mission enterprise for the 21st Century.

We will also need to create healthy teams. This young generation prefers teams, and they prefer multi-cultural teams.  Our region is highly multi-cultural and we hope to begin connecting our young people across borders:  Germans, Americans, Brits, Lebanese, Italians etc.  In the past, we have been naive about teams thinking that if people just love God and missions, they will get along fine on the mission-field.  This is rarely the case.  Creating healthy teams requires a lot of pro-active thought and selectivity as well as creating a team DNA that everyone understands and adheres too.  Too often we have been oblivious to that and people with different personality types and different missiological approaches get lumped together and chaos and conflict ensues.  We will need to avoid that and we can do that be beginning with the right assumptions from day one.

Another important piece will be spiritual and character development.  Longevity in missionaries often comes down to issues of spirituality and character according to the literature.  Maturity and an understanding of how to withstand adversity lead to longer tenures.

Last (for now), we will spend a lot of our time connecting leaders that are young, but already empowered and committed to the long-haul.  There are many young leaders around the world that are disconnected in the CHOG and do not know each other.  We want them to interact more and support each other.  The lack of empowerment and connectivity of leaders between the ages of 35 and 50 in the CHOG is a big problem.  We hope to focus on that.

Well, these are just some of our thoughts, but in addressing this huge challenge, it’s clear that we must paradoxically raise expectations and selectivity but also configure ourselves to meet and understand the needs of today’s young people.  It’s a tension, it’s a balance, it’s a challenge.

In my last post, I wrote about some of the reasons why being a missionary is a very stressful job.  If anything, it is becoming a less appealing job every generation.  While it’s true that the old missionaries in the 19th century used to have it so tough that they took their own coffins with them onto the mission-field (like in Africa), in today’s world it is not that hard to go work overseas and do things for God.  In fact, there are many options available to people which means that being a missionary isn’t the only  option anymore—it’s probably the least attractive option out there.  Let me explain.

For the past 20 years, the number of missionaries has been declining.  This is especially true for people under the age of 50. It is getting harder and harder to find the younger generation present on the mission-field.  Missionary tenures are also shorter.  The average long-term missionary lasts between 6 and 7 years, but most people opt for short-term assignments.

Why the decline?

Short-term missions: The rise of short-term missions has been a big contributor.  For the past 20 years, there has been an increase in Christian organizations that give people opportunities to live and work overseas doing mission work for only a few weeks or a few years at a time.  People no longer need to find a mission-agency and sign up as a career missionary.

Work-camps: Another reason is that churches themselves have made sending “work-camps” or short-term teams a regular part of their church ministry.  It gives people the opportunity to immerse themselves in a different culture and serve, but also get back to their lives at home in the USA.  You don’t have to give everything up to do missionary work.

Non-Profit Organizations: Another reason has been the rise of non-profit organizations (Christian and otherwise) which enable people to help the world and be employed by an organization other than a mission-agency.  There might be an organization committed to orphans or that fights against sex trafficking.  You can be a part of that without having to become “a missionary” per se.

Colonialism: Behind all of this is a problem that has been brewing since the 1960’s, and that is people’s belief that missions are ultimately imperialistic.  Even the name “missionary” leaves a bad taste in people’s mouth.  At least 2 generations, if not 3, have had a negative connotation associated with the word “missionary.”  The assumption is that a missionary is someone who robs people of their culture and tries to shove their religion down foreign people’s throat.  Of course this is a caricature (but one rooted in some truth from previous eras).  Regardless, people would rather not be “a missionary.”  The term itself–extremely vague–is increasingly unhelpful and in the post 9/11 world perhaps needs to be gotten rid of altogether.

It’s too hard. And then another reason why there are few missionaries is because of the things articulated in my last job:  Being a missionary is extremely stressful.  If there are other options (and there are), people will take them.

“What’s Wrong with the Young Generation Not Signing Up for Mission-Service?”

Now many older missionaries complain and say, “What’s wrong with this generation of young people that are not signing up to be missionaries?  They are lazy, have no faith, and just want everything done for them.”

Is this criticism of young people not joining mission-agencies valid?

I don’t think so.  The older generation didn’t graduate $20,000 US in debt and then expected to make $400 payments on a missionary salary or face defaulting on loans.

The older generation (in my parents case) made a full salary without having to raise support.  When they visited churches it was just to inform, not to raise all the money for their projects and salary.

The older generation lived in a time when missionaries were deeply valued and almost viewed as the heroes of the church.  This generation grows up in a time when there is a great deal of skepticism about the missionary enterprise and its motives.

The older generation grew up in an age when travel was not easy or cheap and there were few options for international Christian service.  This generation has probably spent their senior year in another country and has a myriad of options to do Christian service.

Another difference is that the old generation of missionaries came from in-tact Christian homes which offered them a lot of support.  This generation of youth comes from broken families (with perhaps a couple of different step-parents) and do not relish permanently moving away from their families in the USA.

Another difference is the older generation served mission-agencies that advanced the agenda of a particular denomination.  But for more than 20 years, we have lived in a post-denominational age.  For the younger generation, they are not going to necessarily look at their denomination’s mission offerings first.  They will look for the kind of Christian work they want to do and go there instead.

These are just some of the reasons why young people are not choosing missionary service with mission-agencies, and frankly, all the reasons make sense.  Mission-agencies have been very slow to adapt to these new realities and the result has been a steep decline in missionary numbers.

As happens so often in the church, people spend a lot of time complaining that things have changed, but then don’t adapt to any of the changes so the world (in this case the youth) pass them by.

So what can be done to reach out to this new generation of youth?

That will be the subject of the next post.

Sorry 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 stressed-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! That is double!  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.  You and your job are one always.  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 a constant job with no checking out. 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.  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 as it might in an insurance company between boss and employee—but it also 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.  It is much more complicated emotionally dealing with people than dealing with numbers or boxes.  You have to be present emotionally 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, but you are also 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.  Being perpetually an outsider takes a toll on your subconscious.  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 loans for those of us under 50), 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 added 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-offerings 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 financially.  It’s always a recession in the missionary life and as we all know, recessions are stressful.  That is exhausting.

6.  Fundraising pressure. If your job is to be the fundraiser for a major university–say Iowa State–everyone would know 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!  And that you have to do that every single 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, in a new bed, 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 missionary has 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.

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 a 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. The reality is that regardless of the travel perks, very few people would want to put up with everything else that comes with the job, and many would probably not handle it well.

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.  We didn’t take vacations for the first 3 or 4 years.  Finally we realized that was a huge mistake and we started taking them.  But then we ran into another problem.  There really is not time to take vacations because each week spent on vacation is a week NOT spent fundraising.

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 at a resort?  But the retreats themselves are often times when the missionaries do a lot of crying, sharing, grieving, and processing.  Few people can relate to the missionaries bizarre and stressful life, so when missionaries get together, it’s often a cry-fest.  It’s too bad that they also have to worry about bed bugs and communal toilets. 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.  If you do, you get flack.   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.