A Response: What Makes a Good Missionary?

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When I read this article, I drank it down like cold water on a parched day. I wanted to know the answer the same as this author to the question, “What makes a good missionary?” 
 
The article goes into the differences of persecution between Islam and other countries and governments. As I read this, I, too, felt kicked in the gut. The missionary needed the people he served. I would never have thought of that as love, but the persecuted believers saw the western man as loving because he borrowed from them instead of his western friends. Re-translate this to evangelism in your local communities: “What makes a good evangelist?” 
 
“Rarely did the apostle Paul create dependency upon himself. Often in his letters, Paul expressed how desperately he needed his brothers and sisters in Christ. He called those friends by name years later. He never forgot them. When possible, he returned to be with them. When he could not go, he sent them someone else. And he faithfully wrote to them, expressing his love, encouragement, and correction. In a word, he needed them,” the author says. 
 
Social media is about creating community, expressing that need, being the church online, and challenging us to need and be needed. The people you speak to on the field also have a purpose and are not lesser people as sometimes we may come off as looking. As a missionary wet-behind-the-ears, I want to, 
 
“…bury my pride and unpack some humility…become a brother (sister), a friend, and a peer. I would care more about the names of my brothers and sisters on the “mission field” and less about the numbers of baptisms, people discipled, churches planted, and orphanages built. I would take to heart the lesson of John the Baptist, saying about a local believer what John said about Jesus: I must decrease so that he can increase (John 3:30). I would invite local believers to lead in the light while I served in the shadows. I would have pressed into what it meant to really need them.” 
 
I am too independent. Raising support is teaching me to depend on people, to love better, to put God first above my politics, and daily it stretches and humbles me. I am learning to disciple people and wish for their success over mine. In the past two years, I have learned more, been stretched often, and know that God is taking the “ugly” out of me. His Word (the Bible) is challenging me. I am also learning that I don’t know as much as I think I know, and this attitude is important to maintain all of my life no matter how old I grow. 
 

Committing to One Thing

If you are having trouble connecting with your church family, are you trying to connect with them?

What I am finding is how often people say they can’t seem to connect with others, but are uncommitted to opportunities that come up.

Maybe is easier than yes or no.

Risk is better avoided. Uncertainty can be dealt with, but knowing someone doesn’t want to hang out with you is hurtful.

Or we’re just over-committed. 

A friend was relieved when I stopped creating more websites. He doesn’t understand how I work, but the websites each have their own brand and purpose which satisfies my creative nature. I can work contentedly within these sites. That’s the key. Knowing when to stop and be able to work within the dimensions you have created to make meaningful connections and serve your community.

Being slightly under over-committed might make room for those connections that you desire. Do you know what you could do with that free time? 

  • Risk saying yes or no, and be known as someone people can depend on to show up for things.
  • Build a thick skin for rejections that will come.
  • Don’t take a no personally.
  • Be available.

That last is one of my rules.

Be available means being slightly under over-committed so I can serve others through listening and loving by spending time with others either online or in person. My to-do list is not more important than the people I come to know in person or online. And that means, I show up to serve every day, and I encourage you to do the same. More than this, I encourage you to risk that emotional connection with others.

 

When I Handed Her My Resume

When I handed my resume to the woman in the power suit, she took it from me, and bent her head to read it. The marble floors, glass partitions, and rich woods made me more conscious of the black permanent marker I used on my Kmart special black heels to hide a worn spot near the toe or the clear nail polish I used in the parking garage on a run on my panty hose.

A few minutes passed, and she looked up from the paper at me and said: “It sounds like you are applying to be a writer, not a receptionist?”

This was several years ago as a young woman applying to work at a magazine located in downtown Phoenix. There’s value in starting from the bottom. Whether you are a receptionist answering phone calls or a brand new missionary appointee learning cross-cultural communication and the complex issues regarding the peoples on the move, nothing is ever wasted. In fact, coming from a position of a learner and working your way up is better.

  • You get to know the organization.
  • People mentor you and you learn from this.
  • God grows you through the experiences, mistakes, and successes.
  • And no action is “beneath you” to do no matter where you go in life.

Today, I thought about that moment in the magazine office, and when I did, I felt a twinge of worry.

“Lord, how do I do this ministry? There is so much information to absorb and learn!”

Matthew 4:19 in the CEB returned to me:

“Come, follow me,” he said, “and I’ll show you how to fish for people.”

This time it held new meaning for me. Everyone begins somewhere in a new career. They learn new things, new habits, disciplines, and it can be challenging. God will show me how, not just in technology, but in cross-cultural communication, too. Already, I feel like I am changing as I wrestle with my own prejudices and political beliefs against what the Bible says. That wrestling though didn’t start with my appointment with WorldVenture.

A certain Latino pastor came into my life who started changing my worldview. WorldVenture simply clarified my direction.

Now my daunting task isn’t riding an elevator up a skyscraper and crossing marble floors as quietly as possible in uncomfortable black heels; instead, it is learning about the Peoples on the Move and reaching them through technology. I am not alone. Many wonderful people with WorldVenture and others around the world are taking up that call. I am praying for 100% funding by March, 2017.

When I see that deadline, I feel like that girl again in black heels reaching my resume across the desk to a woman in a power suit.

God says, “and I’ll show you how to fish for people.” He calls the unqualified.

Incidentally, I did not get the job at the magazine as a receptionist or a writer. As you can see, God had other plans for me.

Book Review: Intercultural Communication for Christian Ministry

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Difficulties of Online Communication

While talking on Periscope to a man in Saudi Arabia, his children were peeking over his shoulders and around the face of his screen. I wasn’t sure what he was saying as this was one instance where English wasn’t something he understood.  I kept calling his children, “Adorable.” In America, this is a compliment. Within minutes, he blocked me.  This is an example of why it’s important to understand foreign cultures, even when your ministry is serving online.

In order to understand how to develop relationships here and abroad, I need to understand the culture. Intercultural Communication for Christian Ministry by Frank Tucker is an excellent and exhaustive resource. In this article, I will go over how and why this book applies to online ministry. While I am lucky enough to not go through culture shock, I am guilty of having a Western mindset, speaking only one language (English), and balance implementing my ministry focus and communicating spiritual truths in new and creative ways while raising support as a missionary. More importantly, living out my own creed of balancing online with face-to-face to never lose the human element in communication.

 Communication Minefields

Chapter one stated, “…reject the use of persuasive techniques to influence people that depersonalize them or deprive them of the freedom to know and choose; – seek to actively listen sensitively in order to understand people with different views and beliefs; – affirm the right of all people to their beliefs and the right to make their own decisions.” A writer seeks the perfect editor; someone who won’t edit out her unique voice, but help her write better. In teaching social media to a non-technical person, it is imperative to keep that person’s personality and voice, and to teach them how to listen to another person’s online chatter.  But Intercultural Communication takes it one step further. It talks about how what you write or how you say things are interpreted from the other culture’s point of view.

You must know how to use appropriate symbols, icons, and signs to convey your message so people understand the truths you are trying to share with them. In the online world, we use graphics and video to send our messages. To use writer’s language, we show rather than tell the story, and this can be rather interpretive. Double check your Western thinking before hitting publish or sharing online.

When I sent out a recent newsletter, I hadn’t understood how people can interpret some of the common things Western thinkers take for granted. Having to think cross-culturally as an online worker is not easy while living in a Western culture. Every day I am thinking and talking Western, but when my social media arm reaches across the ocean to another country, I must learn to think like them to understand their histories, cultures, and symbols. When interviewing a Chinese international student in 2015, it was amazing how God had prepared this international student to receive the Gospel. She had a loose grasp on her religion which meant more receptivity to the Gospel. She knew some English, but was fluent in Chinese. Some of my words were confusing. In communicating with people overseas on Periscope, some knew English, but if I used long words, it caused confusion with their limited English. Other minefields in communication include the obvious: Using your influence to, “deprive them of the freedom to know and choose.”

Some claimed the church was dying. Later, others denied this saying, God is changing the church. He is remaking it. Because social media is about public perception, we must be careful when we use social media for more personal venting. Venting the right way allows people to connect with you, but the wrong way can say something else. It’s back to how others reinterpret your words from the filter of their worldview and culture. Over the years, one voice joined another online creating a loud voice saying, “I hate church.” Some of them reported saying this so other people can feel like they have something in common. Others just didn’t like church. It became one voice shouting, “I don’t like church.” Like anything negative, it’s almost like a drug. The more we talk negatively, the more negativity others share with you. How do we give them the freedom to know and choose?

Let’s make things we have in common, like what we enjoy doing on our free time, the basis for our strategy. Establish good things in common with people of other cultures. Go as a learner and ask open-ended questions. Let them share their culture, and you can share yours when appropriate. Politics is another minefield, and in America, it’s the biggest barrier we have in cybermissions.

Go on any news site and people are shouting down people with whom they disagree (Christians and unbelievers alike). Candace Cameron Bure said in one of her books how people assumed they had permission to be an authority in her life while she performed on, Dancing For The Stars. Because of this, bringing social media up as a tool for missions is a difficult task. People who are not on Social Media carry away an impression that it divides friends and families instead of being a creative place for community to develop; for churches to reach into someone’s livingroom in a less intrusive way than going door to door with a brochure; and to get to know their communities through groups online. Neighbors are suddenly no longer strangers with social media. Part of the barrier in cybermissions comes from how news stories frame their stories; even our favorite sources have a bias or an agenda. These days you must interpret what you read through a Biblical lens, but we are a people of extremes.

And one thing struck me in the most negative way, “To our shame, evangelicals have befriended people for the sole purpose of evangelism, and Western Christians have developed cross-cultural relationships, not for the value of the relationships, but to ‘strike a deal.’” I’m still friends with the person who came to know Christ.

 

Online Communication is Becoming a Personal Witness

Intercultural Communication said something that struck me as incorrect. It said, until the advent of smart phones, the phone has not been a useful tool for ministry or evangelism. Mobile Ministry Forum and Bible TransMission might disagree. For instance, a Nokia feature phone with its long battery life and small screen was the tool they used to bring material to other cultures. A slot on the side of the phone allows for an SDcard where audio Bibles and other files are stored rather than on the memory of the phone itself. Smart Phones have a shorter battery life, but better apps. In Mexico, smart phone usage is rising.

Mobile Ministry Forum recently had a webinar where they shared a tip for short term mission trips or even local evangelism in a neighborhood that speaks another language. You can download videos in the language of the people you are trying to reach and share that video as a way of witnessing to them. With the rise of live video (Facebook Live, Skype, Periscope, Vsee), that personal witness needed for discipleship and evangelism is available from anywhere in the world provided you have WiFi or data.

My goal to reach across cultural and language boundaries is to learn new languages. I would like to start with Spanish, and when I think I have handled writing and speaking it, I will move on to another language. Social Media allows me to communicate freely anywhere in the world. Language is a barrier, even with Google translate. Like missionaries who move overseas, I will immerse myself in the cultures when I am fully funded.

How am I Preparing Now?

While raising financial partnerships, I am thinking ahead in planning how to implement spiritual truths in the context that I am serving. A list of short term and long term goals have been made, edited, and re-made. Social Media is so huge. My problem: How do I learn so many different cultures and religions and speak the Gospel into them using the bridges of communication already built into their culture by God? Education will help and immersing myself in different cultures regularly can build online relationships while I raise funding.

Raising funding, keeping my websites active and my social media going, and keeping abreast of new developments in technology is a fun and creative task that is time consuming. Days come when I sit at my desk at my day job and dream of when I can begin immersing myself in culture and develop new friendships online. My biggest dream is being able to connect that person online with a fellowship of faith somewhere in the world through my ministry contacts and the organization of WorldVenture. My other dream is getting the pulpit to be aware of the breadth of missions; that it doesn’t only exist in the traditional ways, but in the creative, too; and finally, knowing I can give all of me to this calling and not just 80% because of my day job.

Even in this waiting, God is preparing my heart. If you are serious about social media and using your one or more accounts to reach out to unbelievers online, Intercultural Communication is a book you need to read. It’s exhaustive, text book-like, and needed as you navigate the online world from your own cultural point of view.

Links From The Webinar @EthneCity #missions #SocialMedia

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Thank you for attending the webinar today. I will post a link to the video for review or to see it for the first time as soon as it posts. Meanwhile, here are the links where I get all my information. I encourage you to explore and learn more. Think outside the box in how you can use these resources to reach others. God is inviting you to serve in His kingdom.

 

Ministry Websites:

TRC Magazine

Cataclysm Missions Intl LLC

Note on side projects: The Wilderness Trekking Video Series will be coming late May. Due to illness and training, things had to be reshuffled. 

 

History of Cybermissions:

Global Media Outreach

Mobile Ministry Forum

 

The Stats

Internet Stats

More Internet Stats

Facebook Newsroom 

Youtube Newsroom 

Moving Works Copyright Free Videos

Tumblr “Pizza” article

 

Who is Doing it Right?

Mormon Missionaries (2014)

LDS Addiction Video Featured on Fox 

Mormons Hand Out Book of Mormon at Musical 

 

Bringing The Social Into Social Media

Ann Voskamp

Joey and Rory Blog

Filipino Cooking

Four Ways to Deeper Friendships by Intellectual Take Out

 

Stories From The Field

Brian and Kimberly

Nancy Keel (Bible TransMission)

Code for The Kingdom

WorldVenture

J.D. Payne “Saudi Women”

 

Opportunities?

***cannot locate the Business Insider Article***

Nikole Hahn on Personalized Ministry

 

If you would like to join our Technology and Missions Facebook Group, please email me. 

Devotions: When I Was Single… @Biblegateway

“The book of Leviticus begins with one of the Bibles basic assumptions: we must worship and serve God with the resources and possessions he entrusts to us.” – Page 123, NIV Stewardship Study Bible

Day 3: Living Generously Study

Read Leviticus 1-4

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When I was single, I had no money. My tithing was service. In reality, if I had been a good steward of my finances, not spending foolishly, I would have discovered what I know now–there is contentment in living on faith. 

So while I was partially correct that an offering to the Lord can be service, I missed the point on those stewardship sermons. I missed the blessings of giving beyond what I thought I was capable. God gives us what we need and asks us to give from His generosity.