When Jehovah wanted to demonstrate His glory to Moses, He took him to the top of Mount Sinai. When He wanted to give Moses a panorama of the Promised Land and all the blessings that lay head for the children of Israel, He took him to the top of Nebo. When God wanted to prove that He — not Baal — is the one true and living God, He — through Elijah — called the people together atop Mount Carmel. When Abraham was tested concerning his willingness to sacrifice his own son, God called to a mountaintop. When Jesus was ready to preach His most famous sermon and spell out so explicitly what the Christ-like life would be, He brought the multitude to the Mount of Beatitudes. When He desired to reveal His heavenly glory, He chose His three closest disciples and led them to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration. When, after forty days of infallible proofs establishing His resurrection, He chose the peak of the Mount of Olives for His ascension back to heaven.
With so many of the dramatic encounters in the Bible occurring on the tops of mountains, it is no wonder that we often speak of the highlights in our lives as mountain-top experiences. One thing is true about these high-altitude encounters: when these individuals came down from the mountain, they had left their comfort zones and had learned to follow and trust the Lord more fully. From Moses on Mount Sinai to the disciples on the Mount of Olives, each person came down from the top of the mountain changed.
When the Lord called me to do mission work in the Hindu nation of Nepal, He sent me to the mountains — not just any mountains, but the tallest mountains in the world: the Himalayas! Since that time, I have been organizing annual mission trips to this far-flung region for teams of students, laymen, and pastors who want to stretch their faith and move beyond their comfort zone. Each team member has to raise his own financing, plus raise part of the crusade budget. Once that hurdle is crossed, he must cope with the culture shock of a land where English is a foreign tongue, cows rule the road, garbage is dumped in the pathways, and the food is hostile to our American digestive systems. As one mountain climber immortalized his experience on Mount Everest, they step out “into thin air.” The soaring heights of the Himalayas challenge them, and every step becomes only another adventure along the way. For those who have heard the call of God’s commission to reach the nations, all the discomforts become only stepping stones to reach God’s highest calling.
What is your next mountain to climb: leaving behind a secular job to enter into full-time ministry? Accepting a call to the nations? Thrusting yourself out of a secure ministry position by taking a faith step “into thin air”? Whatever it may be, let me assure you that you — just as each of the men in the Bible who dared to go to the mountain top — will come down changed!
Remember the point in the story about the flies in the rice where I said that by now, you’ve “got the bug”? Well, if you come home from your initial mission first trip with the bug to go back, you may be “called.” At this point, you are spoiled to the ordinary because of what you’ve experienced on the mission field. One missionary friend of mine described his experience of all sorts of life-changing — and sometimes life-threatening — experiences on the field and then looked at those who didn’t share his enthusiasm and sadly noted, “…or you could just stay home and watch TV.”
If you are one of those who can’t settle for the TV, then you need to start making preparation for longer stays or even a permanent move. When thinking long term, there are obviously more bases to cover than for the short-term trip — and there certainly seemed to be enough on that list! The first thing that I would recommend would be a short trip to the country where you are feeling that you are going to later invest your life and ministry for a longer period of time. Possibly a ten-day exploratory visit will serve this purpose. This short visit will acquaint you with the country and what is happening there. If possible, plan to stay with an already established missionary who can help acquaint you with the challenges and opportunities in the country; however, be sure that you are able to do so without imposing upon him and his work. Make sure that there is a clear understanding that you are not there to assist in his mission work, but to find out what is necessary for making a move to his country. If such an arrangement is not possible, staying in a guest house or hotel during your visit will also work well. In fact, there are some advantages to being independent. Although you will miss having the assistance of someone who can “show you the ropes,” you will have the experience of going it on your own — something that you are certainly going to need to do sooner or later. You may need to plan to divide the time on this trip between the area where you feel that you are to minister and the capital city of the country. Since there will be a number of government offices that you will need to visit in order to find out about visas, permits for importing your car and other equipment and supplies you may be bringing, and what taxes you will be expected to pay in the country, you will need some time in the capital. Even though much of this sort of information may be obtained on the internet or through the embassy before you leave the States, there is nothing like actually working through the local officials on the ground. Especially if you are going to what we know of as a third-world country, you’ll soon discover that nothing works quite the same in real life as it may be presented on a website.
One of the first things that you will need to do will be to determine where you need to establish your base of operations. Remember that it is not necessary for you to live in a mud hut in a village. In fact, it would actually be counter productive to do so. Your first priority is to your own family; they should have a comfortable home. History books are filled with tragic tales about the wives and children of some of the well known names in missions. In many of their cases, such tragedies were unavoidable; however, most places in the world are quite different today — and missionaries need to take advantage of the good gifts that God has provided. Basically, the days of the pioneers are over. Of course, even the pioneers had many of what were the modern conveniences of their time. In addition, by cutting yourself off from the modern amenities which have actually been given by God to make your ministry more productive, you would be crippling the work that you are there to do Modern technology is not just a convenience; it is a must. God gave us technology for evangelism. If you look back throughout history, you will find that every advancement in technology was birthed for the purpose of furthering the kingdom of God. The Guttenberg press was invented so that Bibles could be mass produced. The first words ever spoken over a radio were, “Look what God hath wrought.”So it is with the current explosion of technology for doing translation work and communicating electronically. Some of the most advanced forms of electronic communications are being used today to reach people isolated in little mud huts in remote villages in the Himalayas and along the headwaters of the Amazon. An additional advantage of locating in a population center is the ability to network with other like-minded harvest workers.You may be able to chase a thousand, but when you combine forces with others for prayer, fellowship, and strategizing, you multiply your effectiveness to reach tens of thousands!
When we look at the biblical pattern, we see that the apostle Paul always focused on cities which had a sphere of influence. He always went to the principal city in an area where there were centers of influence in such arenas as education, commerce, military, or politics. He spoke of his hometown as “no mean city,” meaning that it was not just a run-of-the-mill town, but a place of influence — “a cut above” so to speak. If the Apostle Paul recognized the potential in strategically locating himself in a key city, we would do well to follow his example. The truth is that the major cities are the employment centers of the nation where the population from the nation’s regions will gather — especially those who become leaders. Even though they will migrate toward the cities of influence, they will always maintain their roots back in the villages. As long as “mamma” is in the village, they will go back periodically. When they do, the message that they learned from the missionary in the city will go back with them.
Oh, yes, I know we all have images of missionary life that make us seem to equate a good missionary with a Holocaust survivor or some comic book superhero to the point that we almost rebel at the ideas that I have just suggested — that a smart missionary should find a place where at least some of the modern conveniences and up-to-date technology are available. However, if we look carefully at the scriptural record we will see that the foremost of all missionaries actually did exactly this. In II Timothy 4:13, Paul requested that parchments be brought to him. No, it wasn’t an I-pod or an MP3 player, but a parchment was the latest form of communications technology of his day. He also encouraged his student Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach’s sake. (I Timothy 5:23) Again, this wasn’t a stay in the Mayo Clinic, but it was the latest medical advancement of their time. As I mentioned a little earlier, the day of the pioneer missionary is basically over. We no longer live in 1920 when nineteen out of twenty missionaries who were sent out died within two years on the field (the 19/20 principle). Nor do we live in 1793 when it took William Carey five months to reach his post in Calcutta. However, many missionaries unnecessarily invite some of the disastrous consequences that these pioneers unavoidably faced.
I remember being part of a team that was going to the nation of Nicaragua to bring a shipload of food and building supplies after the coastal nation had been devastated by a hurricane. Two of us had flown down because of other responsibilities which did not permit us the time to travel with the rest of the team on the boat. All the logistics had been planned so that the ship with the team and supplies was to arrive the same day that we were to land. We were to begin immediately with a series of evangelistic outreaches at which the relief supplies were to be distributed to the people. The only problem was that no one had calculated in the possibility of a storm at sea which might delay the voyage through the Caribbean — and, of course, this is exactly what happened. The one team member traveling with me and I arrived to find that we had back-to-back crusades scheduled and no relief supplies to distribute nor team members to assist with all the responsibilities. For the next four days, we carried out a schedule of responsibilities that had originally been planned to be distributed among a team of more than a dozen workers. When the team did eventually arrive, we faced even more unexpected difficulties in that the ship was too large to dock at the port and had to be anchored in the middle of the harbor while small dinghies were used to shuttle the people and supplies between the ship and the dock. Since the portal through which people had to exit was about two stories above the waterline, a rope ladder was dropped down for us to use when we climbed in and out of the ship. Such an arrangement would have been fine for a team of Boy Scouts; however, we faced a challenge that the average Boy Scout Jamboree never has to consider — all the ladies on our team were required to wear dresses any time they went ashore. Because of some of the modesty requirements imposed by the local culture, missionary women were not permitted to appear in public wearing pants. This meant that we had to come up with a graceful way for the ladies to climb the rope ladder while a couple guys stood on the dinghy below securing the ladder for them — not an easy task, to say the least! Of course the problem only compounded when a huge wave washed the dinghy away from the ship while one of the ladies dangled helplessly halfway through her descent. As annoying as these complications were, the difficulties were complicated by the fact that all this was taking place during the rainy season. This meant that our open-air crusades were often held in drenching rain and that we would have to scurry to get all of our electronic sound equipment under cover every time a shower would begin. In addition, we often spent whole days in clothes that were soaked all the way through to our skin. Seeing all these difficulties and realizing that most of them could have been avoided by simply rescheduling the mission for a couple months later when the weather would have been more agreeable, I asked the local missionary if the people’s situation was really that desperate that they had to have the relief aid right then. His response was that waiting the few weeks for the dry season would not have caused a problem at all. We certainly got a lot of “missionary stories” out of that trip — unfortunately, they were all self-induced!
On another occasion, I was part of a team that was to do a Christmas outreach in the Dominican Republic. As part of the mission, we had shipped in two containers of food which we were to distribute to the victims of recent flooding that had left thousands homeless. Everything worked like clockwork in terms of coordinating the arrival of the team, the arrival of the containers, and the scheduling of the outreaches — except for the fact that the customs officials who needed to clear the containers before they could enter the country were on Christmas holiday; therefore, they could not be released to us. The missionary had to spend two days going from agent to agent and office to office until he was able to convince someone to authorize the release of the food. When it was released and eventually delivered to the missions compound, our team had to stay up all night unloading the containers and repacking the supplies for the distributions which were to begin the next morning. Again, some great missionary stories came out of this adventure, but they could have been totally avoided had someone simply calculated a few extra days into the schedule so that the containers would not have arrived during the holidays. One last story — if you don’t mind. A team of three — one young man, one young lady, and myself — were in Haiti. The missionary quarters there had no running water so we had to shower using the “bucket technique” where you fill a five-gallon bucket to use for dipping out water to splash yourself as you wash. Well, the young lady decided to wash her hair and wanted to rinse it by simply sticking her head into the bucket. Somehow she lost her balance and wound up upside down with her head stuck in the bucket. The young man and I could hear her screams for help but were certainly not going to break into the bathroom to rescue a naked damsel in distress. I will never know how she ever got her head out of the bucket and how she escaped drowning in the process, but I do know that she could have totally avoided the whole fiasco by following the simple instructions she had been given.
Well, enough about missionary blunders; let’s get back to the topic of making our missions experience as blunder-free as possible. In the area that you plan to call home, you will need to investigate a good language school or private language instructor, check out what kind of housing is available, whether you should plan on hiring domestic help for security and so that you can focus entirely on your language training and establishing the ministry, what will be your options for schooling for your children, what kind of car seems to be the most serviceable for the location, how and where you can obtain food that you know will be safe for you to eat, and what utilities are available and how reliable they are. Be sure to investigate cell phone and internet service; you will soon find out that some conveniences we take for granted just are not available everywhere. In one African country, I spent all afternoon trying to send a couple emails because the service was just so slow. In that same country, the minister I was with carried three different cell phones because no single carrier serviced the whole region; when we got beyond the range of each cell tower, he had to change phones to pick up the service from another company. Take some time to visit the local stores noting what is available and what is not available. Keep your eyes open for the little things that make a difference in your life like spices, packaged food such as cake mixes and instant pudding, over-the counter medications, soaps and other personal hygiene items, books, magazines, DVDs, etc. Make a list of these items to leave with your friends so they can bless you occasionally with little “care packages” of these special treats. You cannot imaging how big of a smile it would bring to one missionary friend’s face when I would bring her maple syrup and Cheese Whiz or how much another missionary enjoyed reading my old issues of Readers Digest or how much it meant when I brought tapes and CDs of preaching in English to another young missionary who was still working through the adjustment of being the only English speaker in his area.
Particularly, spend time calculating how much it is going to cost you to live in this new country. It is a common mistake among missionary recruits to assume that the cost of living is going to be cheap just because they are moving to a third-world country. Actually, it may cost more to live there than back in the USA since all the things that you will need to maintain a suitable standard of living and to perform your ministry are specialty items in the eyes of the locals and are, therefore, more expensive. Another important activity for this trip is to take lots of pictures that will be used in your support raising materials once you get home. Especially focus on pictures which depict the kind of work you will be doing and action photos that show you interacting with the local people.
Such a visit will be a real eye-opener, but once your eyes are wide open, you can return home ready to get everything in order for the new life ahead of you. Once you are home, you need to prayerfully reflect on all that you have experienced and learned. Ask the Lord to help you see how you are to fit into His master scheme of bringing the gospel to the people of the area you have on your heart. Write down every thought and idea that you feel impressed might be His leading and then ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance on how all these various elements can fit together into a workable project. At this point in the game, you have to be careful not to get discouraged because the plan is so much bigger than you are. Someone once said that if a plan is something that you can achieve, then it isn’t God’s plan. Hudson Taylor expressed it this way, “I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God: first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.” At this point, you must determine if you are going to serve with an established mission organization or go to the field on your own. If you are to work with an existing operation, most of what I will share in the rest of this section will be organized for you. If you are going it on your own, you will need to carefully follow all the suggestions listed here — keeping in mind that they are only the bare minimum!
Write out a detailed game plan with your step-by-step approach to fulfilling your long-range goal with the ultimate plan of working yourself out of a job as you will eventually raise up others to carry on the vision. Habakkuk 2:2 tells us that such a detailed description of your mission vision is actually a divine mandate, “And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.” Make the description so plain that when others see what you have written out they can “run with it.” Calculate all the supplies, facilities, and personnel needed to make the vision come to pass. With a detailed game plan in hand, you are now ready to prepare a budget of your anticipated moving and living costs and begin to lay out a calendar to schedule all that needs to be done before D-Day (your targeted departure date). First on the list should be to get out of personal debt and to eliminate all unnecessary assets. If you have a good assistant who can help you maintain the property and keep dependable renters in your home, you may want to look into renting your home and keeping it for retirement or for future investment appreciation; otherwise, sell it. When working on the mission budget, remember that you will need to make at least one trip home each year for personal business, relaxation, and connecting with supporters. Be sure to plan extra funds to cover these trips away from your mission base.
The next thing you need is to organize a system for handling your finances while you are out of the country. Perhaps there is a very responsible and trustworthy person at home who can take care of receiving the funds, depositing the checks, writing receipts, and notifying you of all gifts that have come in; maybe your church will be willing to set up a special account in their bookkeeping system just for your mission fund; perhaps you will decide to work together with a mission organization or denominational structure that will handle all this business for you; but whatever system you set up, you will certainly need to appoint someone with official legal power of attorney to act on your behalf in various legal matters. It is almost certain that there will always be some loose ends to tie up after you leave the country — no matter how carefully you planned in advance.
Once you have your budget and proposed schedule, you can prepare a presentation packet for raising support for the work. The packet should include a clear presentation of what your mission will be, how much funding you are needing, when certain amounts are due, what will be the continuing operational budget, a target date for your move, contact information on how you can be reached both before and after the move, an address where donations can be sent, an indication if the gifts are tax deductible, a letter of reference from your pastor or someone in spiritual authority over you, and lots of colorful, attention-grabbing pictures. It is advisable that you also make a simple two-page letter presenting your mission since distributing large quantities of the information packets could be very costly. In the section on support raising, you will find some good pointers on how this letter should be organized. Use the letter to make initial contact with all your friends and any churches that you feel may be interested in supporting you. Once the people have had time to receive the letters, begin a telephone campaign to make personal contact with those who received the letters. Simply let your friends know that you have made the decision to serve on the mission field and ask them to consider becoming one of your regular prayer and financial supporters. Don’t be too bashful to ask if they might also know someone else who might be interested in knowing about your work. If so, offer one of your information packets that they could give to their friend. The personal contact between them will mean much more than if you contact the individual directly. When talking to pastors or church leaders, ask if there is a possibility of presenting your mission need to the church or even to a Sunday school class or prayer group. If you are given an opportunity to do so, be sure to take several packets to place with key leaders in the church and lots of letters to distribute to anyone who seems interested.
When making a visit to a church or other group, make sure that all the details are clearly arranged in advance so that any possible confusion will not ruin your chances of making a good presentation. Confirm the date, time, the location, what kind of service you will be speaking at (the main church service, a Sunday school class, the youth group, etc.), how long you are to speak, if you are permitted to distribute your literature, and if you should plan on having a display about your ministry where people can pick up literature and sign up to get your newsletter. If you are to have a display, make sure that a table is going to be available and that electricity is available if you need it. If you are going to have to travel out of town to visit the church, make sure that there is a clear understanding as to what responsibilities the host church will take in terms of providing housing and transportation. If they are going to provide a hotel room, do not assume that you can make room charges for meals or other items. If they are going to have you stay in the home of a church member, make sure that you bring a gift as a token of your appreciation for their hospitality. Make yourself as helpful as possible during your stay and be as friendly as possible but careful to stay out of the way of family activities that need to carry on as usual even though there is a guest in the home. Remember when establishing relationships with churches that the relationship must go much deeper than just an acquaintance with the pastor. That pastor will eventually move, retire, or die. But you want to have a continuing relationship with the people who are the ones who pray for you and give to you; therefore, when visiting the church it is vitally important to spend time with the people, not hidden away in the pastor’s study except when you are in the pulpit. While spending time with the pastor or church leaders, ask if there are other churches or ministries that they feel might be interested in knowing about what you are doing. If so, ask them if they will make a simple contact for you and offer your information packet to pass along.