Have you ever wondered how to prepare for a short-term missions trip or long-term missions overseas? You know you are called, but now what?
Gone are the days of Elisabeth Elliot and the white savior complex. Missionaries, churches, and millennials today want a new paradigm for how to do missions sustainably and without abuse, or burning out.
I lived in Uganda for 7 years running a non-profit for girl child soldiers, without any sending church or org behind me, and I learned a lot of lessons I wish I had known beforehand about how to do long-term missions in a healthy way. I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming need, poverty, illness, conflict, abuse, and stress of the mission field. I drowned in it, berating myself for not being stronger. Since then, I’ve learned that good intentions mixed with our desire to save the world (or white savior complex) aren’t enough to build something lasting while remaining emotionally and physically well.
Burnout, compassion fatigue, cumulative grief, and secondary trauma are all byproducts of the hazardous occupation of being helpers. So how can we be trained to avoid these pitfalls in our Christian missions? There is an erroneous and harmful belief in missions that “God qualifies the called.” While a nice sentiment, it is every missionary’s responsibility to ensure you are prepared and have the skill set to meet the demands.
Steps to Prepare for Christian Missions:
- Be a Humble Learner: The most important quality for a missionary is to be teachable. I’ve seen too many missionaries go out with a colonial mindset, thinking they know better than locals what is needed, only to damage the very people they’ve gone to serve. You are not going to “save” Africa, you will probably receive more than you give, and your heart attitude must be one of loving people and seeing their assets, instead of their brokenness. Assume you know nothing and research the cultural context before you go, become a student of culture, language, history, political briefings, and where the holes are that need to be filled. Do not jump in and start something right away–be patient and value the input of the nationals.
- Develop Relationships: The ability to sustain mutual, deep, connecting relationships with peers is the most powerful factor in cross-cultural effectiveness (TEAM.) Know what your strengths and weaknesses are in relationships and develop community both back home and overseas through listening, empathy, communication, and time. Have a prayer team, missionary care team, or mentors and coaches set up before your departure to support you and when on the field, take time to develop long-lasting meaningful connections not based in paternalism, but rather shared respect. Prioritize your marriage and family instead of putting the ministry first. And pour into your team members to build a thriving ministry culture.
- Maintain a Strong Identity: Your connection to yourself, and your mind, body, and spirit is of the utmost importance. If you don’t love who you are you won’t be able to fully love others. Healing your past trauma through counseling, and knowing yourself well, is the greatest gift you can give to the world. The mission field is a pressure cooker where all your impurities will rise to the surface. If you know where to shore up, then you won’t be blindsided when pain comes. Having self-compassion and the knowledge that you can do hard things, without criticizing yourself, produces resiliency. Learn your true self and learn to be in integrity with yourself. Ways you can become more self-aware are to do personality tests like the Enneagram, Strengths Finder, or the Myers Briggs. You can also ask friends and family to communicate your areas of strength and weakness. If you know yourself, you’ll be more likely to protect your boundaries and prevent burnout.
- Nourish Intimacy with Jesus: One of the quickest practices to go by the wayside when we enter ministry, is our time alone with Jesus. Yet this is so vital to our long-term success, to our ability to listen for direction and hear God’s voice speaking to our hearts. We need this connection to be maintained so we can discern when a season of grace and anointing is on us, and when it has lifted. You can nourish this through early morning quiet times, soaking music, meditation, journaling, reading Scripture, retreats, and prayer. Having a strong theology of suffering, risking your life for the gospel, and a belief in God’s goodness is critical to your long-term sustainability.
- Be Flexible: There will come a time when you will realize something isn’t working and you will need to pivot. If you are too rigid or grasping too tightly for control, you will miss the lessons that can be learned through failure. You must find a new lens through which to solve ancient problems. Every missionary has missed the mark, but what is important is to learn through these mistakes, not place blame or guilt, and be flexible enough to change directions.
- Debrief regularly: Working on the mission field is one of the most stressful experiences anyone can endure. Everything from vicarious trauma, to grief, witnessing suffering, sickness, to personal wounding, and betrayal all play a role in shutting down your vulnerability. Authentically sharing your emotions and experiences with a trained counselor, coach, or debriefing center, can help heal these hurts and keep your heart tender and safe from cynicism, resentment, and bitterness. This is crucial in protecting yourself from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (cptsd.) And especially when you’re going through re-entry. Download my new free ebook as a resource!
- Stay Focused on Your Mission: In start-up companies, they have a term called “feature creep,” which is when you can become distracted from the mission or goal, by a host of things that sound good, but are in fact just distractions from your ultimate calling. In the developing world, there are so many needs, it’s all too easy, to try and fill them all without realizing in the end you’re spread thin and doing nothing with excellence. The enemy loves to distract us with things that appear “good,” but are in fact not the best thing. I’ve fallen victim to this many times as a missionary. When you begin to lose focus, recenter yourself on your original goal and do not let anything stand in the way. One way to do this is to develop a personal and professional mission statement and target demographic.
If I was a newbie missionary just starting out on my journey, I would have loved to have these 7 steps to prepare for Christian missions. I hope you found this helpful.
Please comment below with any other things that have helped you prepare for Christian missions.
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