Propempo International

Just how important it is a missionary’s relationship to his/her/their home church? Here are ten reasons why the missionary’s relationship to his home (sending) church is, perhaps, the highest priority relationship besides marriage and family for long-term ministry effectiveness.

(I realize that some of these are overlapping)

1. As a missionary, you are an extension of your local church’s ministry.
2. Your ministry on the home side has its biggest impact in and influence on your home sending church body.
3. Because of your status as a member of the family of your home church, your church leaders have a stronger commitment to your life and ministry that even your mission board. They love and care for you because you’re part of the family and they have a stake in your personal holiness, the solidarity of your marriage and family, and your faithfulness to your church’s doctrine, vision, and purpose.
4. Your church will stick with you through thick and thin, in spite of your flaws, and help pick up the pieces in any sort of crisis. Typically your mission agency will stick with you as long as you meet their goals, do things their way, and stay within the guidelines of their IRS requirements as a nonprofit with you as their employee. Your church will stick with you when your ministry changes, when your mission board changes, when your missionary status changes.
5. You need to have somewhere to call “home”.
6. Your family, especially your children, need to have somewhere to call “home”.
7. Eventually you’re going to come off the mission field, even though you start with the idea (in theory) to serve your entire life in some cross-cultural ministry and be buried there. Investing in relationships with people in your own church will pay off big time in your transition.
8. You need people who love you to challenge you to higher goals and effectiveness. Even though it seems counterintuitive, a lot of mission boards simply do not give adequate routine evaluations including observations of your life and walk which have an impact on your long-term effectiveness in ministry. You need people who love you enough to admonish, rebuke, correct, and hold you accountable. You need people to challenge your ideas and vision to be more practical and realistic, you need people who don’t understand all that you know but are willing to listen well to help you discern how you can explain your vision and ministry more clearly to others who don’t know.
9. Ministry goals may change and or be fulfilled; your type of ministry or location may change; your team on the field will change; your mission agency or affiliation may change; but, more than likely, your home church and the dearest and best relationships with fellow Christians you have on earth will be there for you.
10. Although missionaries are expected to be able to “feed themselves” spiritually on the field., Most of us need a lot of input and stimulation from outside sources. Nothing meets that need better than spiritual input and ministry and news from your home church. You can picture the building, the people, the classes, the worship, the inside jokes, and empathize with the joys and sorrows of folks with whom you share membership in the same mutually committed body of believers. You need your home church because you need that spiritual input to survive on mission field fraught with spiritual resistance, conflict, and warfare.