Why Wait 'Til You Get There?
by Mala Malmstead
Mission service today offers incredible opportunities to experience the world while sharing Christ. Sometimes our desire for adventure can blind us to the fact that being a missionary for any length of time is hard work. It demands many skills and an uncompromising clarity of purpose.
Just living cross-culturally is often tougher and far more stressful than living at home. Communication barriers, the complications of obtaining basic necessities like food and clean water, and the difficulties of getting along with coworkers and adapting to a new culture may be daily challenges.
On top of all this, your purpose isn’t just to survive - it’s to point others to Christ. So the more ministry experience you have at home, the more effective you’ll be in a foreign context.
Minister at Home
Preparing for your mission experience is the key to adapting well and being a useful instrument, available for what God wants to do through you. If you aren’t sure you want to go through the preparation process, maybe you need to reconsider your mission plans. Consider traveling instead - experiencing the world without the express purpose of sharing the gospel.
You can test your missions motivation by examining the activities you’re involved in now. The most important way to prepare yourself for the rigors of missions is to live a life of service at home first. Whether you have a year before your proposed mission trip or just a couple of weeks, you can get involved in ministry. Any opportunity that takes you out of your comfort zone is good preparation for the foreign field.
Here are a few ways you can begin to get actively involved in ministry right now, so you’ll be better prepared for your future as a missionary.
Find Cross-Cultural Environments
While in college, I was involved in various inner-city outreaches. As I worked at shelters for the homeless, I learned to listen to people from backgrounds and situations vastly different from my own. By volunteering with a kids’ mentoring program, I met children from another ethnic group. They spoke an English lingo that I didn’t know. Even their jokes and concepts of morality were foreign to me.
Learn to laugh at your mistakes, and don’t underestimate the power of gestures and pantomime. The most important thing is not how you communicate - it’s that you do communicate.
As a result of these experiences, I was better prepared later to do child evangelism in Spain and to work in orphanages in India and Uzbekistan.
Opportunities for ministry abound! Finding one that suits your personality and interests should not be too difficult. Literacy programs, Sunday schools, church youth groups, crisis pregnancy centers, drama, music, and prison ministries are just a few of the hundreds of options that will help prepare you for overseas ministry.
Practice Telling the Story
Witnessing to friends and strangers in your own country is difficult for most Christians. Knowing your culture and caring what others think can be hard barriers to overcome. But the more you learn to share your faith at home, the more effectively you’ll share your faith overseas. It’s important to know some basic evangelistic tools and methods, to know how to verbalize your testimony and to be familiar with some Scripture that may speak to non-Christians.
Suzy Schultz is one example of how this works. Before Schultz went to Poland, she spent time witnessing in a local park. She talked with total strangers and shared with them how they could receive Christ.
Later, when two artists she was witnessing to in Poland wanted to receive Christ, Schultz was prepared to explain salvation to them.
Make International Friends
Spending time with international students or with foreigners at your workplace is excellent training for developing friendships abroad.
Scott DeVries spent two years in Czechoslovakia. He says some of his closest friends were international students whom he met while in college and seminary. “They helped me see the world from their eyes,” DeVries explains.
Broadening your perspective on the world is crucial to understanding a foreign culture. If you talk to a person from your country of interest, you can learn a great deal about that person’s culture long before you enter it.
Knowing as much as you can about the culture you are planning to enter will not only minimize your culture shock, it will also help you avoid some painful blunders. The country you enter may be nothing like your own. You cannot expect it to be.
You can follow these guidelines to prepare for missions right now. You can also take specific steps toward making your transition to the mission field smoother. Below are some suggestions I have found helpful.
Study the Language
I recently returned from a year in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where two languages are spoken: Russian and Uzbek. I struggled through that year, at times feeling isolated and helpless due to my lack of language training.
Making friends was tough, too. I felt inhibited by the difficulty of communicating. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of spending time learning your target language. While you’re still at home, listen to language tapes regularly. Teach yourself from a book or the Internet. Or hire a tutor to help you with the language. Find a national of that country to practice with you and give you pronunciation tips. At the very least, learn a few important phrases as you travel. Not only will you be able to communicate (even if it’s only a little bit), but the people you meet will be touched by your efforts with their language.
Study the Country
A very useful book that can give you an overview of the continent and of the specific country you’re heading for is Operation World by Patrick Johnstone (Zondervan, 1997). Filled with information about the various religions in each region, the state of the church, and the country’s key prayer needs, it is an excellent way to learn about “your” country and to begin praying faithfully. Find a world map or atlas so you can visualize the country and familiarize yourself with its geography, cities, and so forth.
While you’re at it, get on the Internet. Take a trip to the local library and research the history, traditions, philosophers, famous writers, and scientists of the country. People are extremely proud of their cultural heritage. They may expect you to know their countrymen’s accomplishments. Ignorance about their country can strongly offend them.
Involve Your Family and Church
If you’re seriously considering a mission trip, you may have approached your family and church already for counsel, service, prayer, and finances. In order for others to be involved in and contributing to your trip, you have to do a lot of networking and sharing your vision. Mission service is not the place for showing off your independence or proving your own capabilities. As David Hicks of Operation Mobilization puts it, “Your mission trip should not only impact you, but should impact lots of people who can’t go.”
Be a Servant
No matter how much you prepare for cross-cultural work, there will still be things that surprise, challenge, disgust, and disturb you. And though you may try to be the most culturally sensitive person in the world, you probably will end up offending people more than once. These experiences are normal. Maybe the best thing to remember is that the key to effective ministry is servanthood.
One mission leader says that when he looks for mission recruits, he looks for people who are teachable, flexible, and humble in spirit. “Character is more desirable than competence,” he says. “If your attitude is [one of] seeking after God, then your life will reflect that in service.”
Heading overseas with a warm, caring attitude and finding practical ways to serve the people you want to reach will go a long way toward making your mission experience successful. Cultivate these skills and attitudes now, and you’ll be better prepared for cross-cultural service - whenever and wherever God leads you.
Mala Malmstead is a free-lance writer who was raised on the mission field. She and her husband Greg recently spent a year teaching English in Uzbekistan. They currently live in Fairburn, Georgia.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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