Step 6: Ministry Assignment Search
by Steve HokeThe next two steps - seeking out the place where God wants you to serve and getting hands-on training - overlap with the step of finding the right agency. Each one influences the others. So steps 5, 6, and 7 should all be tackled simultaneously, as a single unit.
It’s necessary to ask God specifically about the role you are to play in seeing Him plant a strong, vibrant church in a part of the world where Jesus is not known.
Although this workbook has been designed with varied roles in mind, the Cross-Cultural Church Planter Profile highlights one of the roles most essential to the decade ahead. Church planting remains a critical role. There are nearly two billion people in some 6,500 people groups who live beyond the reach of God’s tender mercies - with little or no culturally relevant Christian witness. Unless many Christians, from many places, go specifically to these unreached peoples with an understanding of their language, their culture, and their needs, no new church can be established among them.
But other roles are needed too. In the following matrix, we have listed several other missionary tasks which focus on and supplement church planting. We’ve also listed the types of preparation required for them. Maybe there’s a certain role that fits you, your training, your experience, and your gifts. If God has specifically equipped you to serve as a teacher to MKs, for example, then go ahead! There’s no need to feel guilty about filling a much-needed support role.
Regardless of what you now see as the task to which God is calling you, you’ll find it extremely helpful to think about and focus on a particular people group. Ask your church or agency to help you study a people group, or perhaps several people groups which occupy the same region - or the vast unreached cities of our globe.
Look for evidence of God’s leading: a match between your natural abilities, learned skills, and spiritual gifts and the characteristics and situation of the people. Avoid making quick judgments or being too easily attracted to (and distracted by) “easy” jobs or the prospect of some “exotic” adventure. Hawaii is no longer unreached. Neither are San Diego, Cancun, or Monte Carlo.
Patiently wait for God’s leading to be reinforced by other indicators or “wisdom signs.” Prayer, “divine appointments” (those uncanny times when God providentially leads across your path just the person you need to talk to), confirming spiritual counsel, an overriding sense of His peace, and even circumstances, to some extent, can serve as wisdom signs.
The Apostle Paul was “called” into full-time ministry at his conversion on the Damascus road (Acts 9), but he wasn’t “sent” out until he was commissioned by the Antioch church in Acts 13, a number of years later. If Paul could wait for confirmation, so can you. “Calling” and “timing” are two crucial but very different issues to keep balanced.
What if you don’t know where you’re supposed to go or have no geographic preference? What if you don’t know of any unreached people groups? The suggestions listed below were gathered from others who have faced the same predicament.
1. Tune into the clues around you. Learn about the particular people group or geographical focus your home church emphasizes. Pray regularly for specific unreached people(s), nations, and cities listed and described in Operation World, the best geographical prayer digest. Be aware of the people God leads into your life (divine encounters), friends who have a similar burden, international students you encounter who are all from a certain part of the world, or a growing concern about a special people to whom God clearly indicates He wants to lead you.
2. In your journal, keep track of insights or strong interests as they develop. Each week, review what you’ve written, reflect on it, and see if any patterns, divine encounters, or contacts with a particular people in a particular part of the world have emerged. Be attentive, as well, to what God may be teaching your church about their missions focus.
3. Be open to traveling and visiting regions within the vast unreached world.
4. Interview missionaries and international students who have come from similar regions or who are from a particular people group. Learn all you can. Keep track of your insights.
5. Be up-front about a call that conflicts. If you sense a growing call to a people group other than those emphasized by your home church, it’s time for intensive prayer and sensitive com-munication. Take the initiative to share clearly and honestly with your leaders how, where, and why you think the Lord is leading you. Ask them to pray with you about your direction. Seek their participation in your decision so they can have a shared sense of ownership in your plans as you move forward.
6. Be encouraged, but also be faithful. God wants to reveal Himself and His heart to you in a very personal way. As you seek to draw closer to Him through intentional study, prayer, and listening, you will probably find yourself drawn to a particular people group.
7. Step out in faith. If after extended prayer you still believe God is directing you to missions but you have no sense of leading to a particular people, the Lord may want you to step out in faith. He may be asking you to move in obedience like Abraham - not certain where you’re headed, but knowing that He will point the way.
Most sending agencies and sending churches are happy to walk with you during your process of searching for an assignment. They’re interested in matching your gifts with the task to be done. They want to see you placed on a team where your abilities and gifts will complement the mix of the rest of the group.
You will probably be asked to take personality inventories and tests on things like vocational and role preferences, psychological background, conflict resolution style, and linguistic ability. While these exercises may seem like a lot of paperwork, they’re not “busywork.” All the information you gather will help you, your church, and the agency determine whether you’re well suited to work with them. Research and experience have shown that for success in language learning, for example, motivation is as important as natural aptitude. Keep in mind, too, that these are tools for self-understanding and assessment, not final answers.
For further insights on choosing an agency, take a look at the following article and the Decision-Making Worksheet.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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