How to Survive on the Mission Field, Part 5: Going with the Culture

You must embrace the cul­ture to which you are called. Embracing the cul­ture will allow you to con­tex­tu­al­ize the gospel.Paul did this with the Greeks he met on Mars Hill when he made men­tion of the statue to an unknown god. He said, “For as I passed along and observed the objects of your wor­ship, I […]

How to Survive on the Mission Field, Part 4: Rewards and Challenges

“We’ve given up every­thing to fol­low you. What will we get?” This was Peter’s ques­tion to Jesus in Matthew 19:27–29 NLT. From scrip­ture we know that the orig­i­nal apos­tles will sit with Jesus judg­ing the twelve tribes of Israel, but what about us? Jesus said that every­one who has left houses or broth­ers or sis­ters […]

How to Survive on the Mission Field, Part 3: A Sustainable Lifestyle

In my last blog, I dis­cussed the “camping-out” men­tal­ity that has caused many good mis­sion­ar­ies to fail in the plans God had for them. Camping out is not a sus­tain­able lifestyle. From WIM’s per­spec­tive, it is true that mis­sion­ar­ies could be con­sid­ered “tem­po­rary” because the end goal is to be replaced by local lead­ers who can lead […]

How to Survive on the Mission Field, Part 2: Camping Out

After you have prayed and found the will of God on where you are to serve, we want you to suc­ceed. So the next ques­tion is how are you going to suc­ceed? I believe it is impor­tant that you learn about camp­ing out. Have you ever gone on camp­ing trip? It’s a fun get away […]

How to Survive on the Mission Field, Part 1b: Answering God’s Call with Certainty

In my last post about sur­viv­ing on the mis­sion field, we addressed the need to first make your “call­ing and elec­tion sure.” Why is this so impor­tant? In order to sur­vive and thrive on the mis­sion field, you must over­come adver­sity. This is the first thing I teach new recruits. We have an enemy, the […]

How to Survive on the Mission Field, Part 1a: Is God Calling?

The number-one rea­son mis­sion­ar­ies leave the field is that they are not exactly sure what God has called them to or they do not have clear instruc­tions once they get there. In this post, we will look at what the Bible says about being called of God to a cer­tain task.  Making your call­ing and […]

Let’s Reverse the Statistics

A sta­tis­tic that is very trou­bling to me is that 80% of all mis­sion­ar­ies will never fin­ish one term on the mis­sion field, or if they do, they will not return for a sec­ond term (a term is con­sid­ered a three-and-a-half year period). I heard this while I was in mis­sion­ary school and the first […]