< PART 1So in Part 1 of my reflection on this past year in Taiwan, I compared this year with my previous year spent doing missions here, almost 7 years ago, and outlined some of the significant differences.
In Part 2, I want to look at whether a few of the lessons I learned over the past year could be profitable for other new missionaries going onto the field or thinking about doing so.
One could argue that, as a new missionary myself, I'm hardly qualified to give out advice. Perhaps, but I would argue instead that someone has recently been through the struggles you are undertaking or about to undertake can be more helpful than someone who experienced them long ago. One of my best language teachers in seminary was a (comparatively) young adjunct professor. She had written no famous books, and had zero name recognition even in some other departments of the same seminary, but she'd learned Greek recently enough that she remembered how to teach it to students who hadn't studied it before. My much more venerable and revered Hebrew professor, despite being a gentleman and a noteworthy scholar, and wonderful man of God, was nearly unable to teach Hebrew to us, because he simply couldn't reach back 5 decades to remember what it was like to not know Hebrew.
So I do this not from the prideful assumption that I have insights others don't, but from the perspective of wanting to share things I wish I had known a year or two ago. It's not comprehensive by any means; most major missions organizations these days will give you a lot of helpful information and training.
These are just a few things I've learned along the way.
I. Preparing for the Field
1. Long-term Network Building
A. If possible, start with a firm foundation
I am not with a denominational organization, some of which will simply cover most or all of your financial needs directly. (Though I'm given to understand this is becoming less common) That meant I have been responsible for building and maintaining my own support network. Though at times that was socially exhausting to the point of literal sickness (not illness) for an introvert like me, it was a crucially important experience as well, and a blessed one. God taught me a lot through developing those relationships with people and churches.
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A missions-minded sending church is a huge blessing...
From the missions conference last year |
I was very grateful to have a sending church that had a focus on global missions in its very DNA from the beginning, and to have spent many years there. So when I made the decision to become a full-time missionary, I began with a financial and spiritual support base which many new missionaries do not have. Also, and I don't mean this cynically, large churches simply tend to have more resources. Don't treat them like cash cows, but as collaborative ministry opportunities.
Asking whether your intended ministry fits within their mission vision never hurts, and they might even give you a few minutes to share so that individual people can hear your vision for ministry and decide if they want to find out more. Finding a big church who is excited about ministry in your particular target area is great: they want to send, and you want to go.
So if you feel a calling from God for international missions, and understand Him to be leading you towards Going, I advise you to get plugged into a church that prioritizes the Great Commission.
Don't bang your head against the wall of a church that doesn't think missions is important, unless you feel burdened to focus on changing the climate of that church instead of going on the field. It's very unlikely that you can do both of those things at the same time, and very likely that attempting to do so will leave you stressed and burnt out. I don't mean you have to leave your home church; I have (last I checked) three churches and another fellowship supporting me, and have enjoyed my interactions with all of them. Some are more missionally-focused than others, and some have more to do with Taiwan than others, and the combination has worked out fairly well.
B. Network inside the culture before you leave
That leads me to my second point, which is if you already know the culture you're going to,
if possible try to visit and make connections at some churches with fellow believers from that culture. And not just to say hi. Try to spend visit there a few times, explain your vision for ministry in their culture, and make some friends. That may be impossible if there are no churches of that culture in your area, but you'd be surprised. I certainly was- in 2012 I didn't know there were any Chinese churches in North Alabama at all, and by the time I left for Taiwan in 2013, I'd visited three and one was helping support me.
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| A Chinese church I didn't know was in Alabama |
One Chinese supporting church in Texas sends mission trips every year to Taiwan, so I'm able to keep in touch with them and keep serving together with them even on the other side of the world. It may not work out that way for you, but it's not unlikely that contacts you make in the US in a culture will eventually help you make contacts in that culture on the field as well. It's a small world after all.
Note: One must be cautious when visiting a new church. Having not (I assume) spent a great deal of time in your destination culture yet, there may be things going on you don't understand. Immigrant churches sometimes end up being composed of a certain subculture within a given culture, and if you come in excited about reaching people group A from country Z, you may be surprised to get a fairly hostile reception and discover that these people are indeed from country Z but are all from people group B, who were oppressed by A historically and are still quite upset about it.
In my own networking, for example the Chinese churches I visited in the US tended to be divided into Cantonese speaking, Chinese mainlanders, and Taiwanese, larger churches often having combinations of these groups, often with their own services and fellowships. So going into a Chinese church of Taiwanese people and explaining that I love Taiwan is an almost guaranteed enthusiastic welcome. Going into a Chinese mainlander church or fellowship and saying you love Taiwan and want to do missions there can get you a rather frosty reception, or people trying to convince you to go to China instead, both of which have happened to me. I also agreed to share at one church only to find that it had split from another church that was discussing whether to support me, due to disagreements, and there were still some bad feelings there. But I still shared in all of those situations, and most people were gracious and willing to listen even if they weren't interested in supporting me.
Just be aware of the possibility you're not communicating what you think you are.
C. Some net-working is appropriate for fishers of men
Bad pun, sorry, but perhaps an appropriate one.
Global Missions today is an increasingly complicated venture, which I personally think is good and appropriate. The world is a complicated place, and one can't keep approaching world missions with one or two traditional paradigms and expect them to work in every situation. But even if your situation is different from mine, if you plan on tent-making on the field or already receive your support from some other source, you still need a network.
Missions is not a one-way street; you can enrich and encourage the body of Christ in one place by communicating what God is doing in other places, and they can encourage and support you with prayer in your current ministry. They might even come and visit you, and get more interested in the needs of your field.
Missions is also impossible alone; missionaries are sent, and they are received. (that's true both cross-cultural missionary efforts both internationally and locally) Sending is a blessing, going is a blessing, and receiving is a blessing, and all three are necessary parts of the missionary task. Don't try to put all of it on yourself- Jesus didn't, and Paul didn't, both because
the work was designed to be accomplished by many people working together to the glory of God, and also because working solo means you miss out on the chances to bless, inspire, and teach other people, let alone learning from and being inspired by them.
My final advice regarding networking is: delegate.
Build a core team of people who trust you and are excited about what God is doing in your life, and ask them to help. Some people are really good at networking. They can access to other people and churches you don't, and might come up with ideas you wouldn't have thought of on your own. They'll also be informed about your plans, so if people have questions and you're not around, they can share your vision and also connect you with those people.
2. Visa Issues
And now for something completely different: the frustrating task of acquiring a travel visa.
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"Were notarization procedures properly followed on the authorization form we need to begin the process
of applying for permission to begin the application permission approval process?" |
I have had basically nothing but stress, trouble, and frustration in acquiring my visas for Taiwan. Others have related similar experiences, while others have expressed surprise, as their process went smoothly. And Taiwan is a very easy country to
visit, it's just living here that can be tough to get permission for, partially because the stated requirements ultimately aren't the important thing. If the visa office (or someone with influence) decides you're ok, then you're good to go, even if you don't meet the stated requirements somehow. If they are suspicious about something (or want to reject your application for other reasons they aren't required to tell you, quotas or religious discrimination by the one person looking at your form or any other reason), they can simply say no and not explain. That's pretty normal for visa offices around the world; America doesn't exactly make the process easy either, because so many people want to come in legally and then stay illegally. (Yes there's lots I could say regarding that topic, but no, I'm not going there)
However, some of my missionary friends were trying to get into countries where it was not at all clear whether they'd be issued any kind of permission to enter the country whatsoever.
Your target ministry area may be that kind of place, and your ability to remain there will be heavily dependent on political conditions and travel permissions for foreigners.
Some people understand this clearly. Having a paperwork disability, I confess I did not expect this portion of the process to be so troublesome or important. I was entirely focused on network building and getting ready to leave the country, when suddenly the entire process came to a crashing halt when the office decided that though I met every requirement for the visa for which I was applying, they weren't going to let me apply for it. I then spent two or three months in limbo while we figured out what to do. Well-meaning friends kept asking why I was still in America, people on the Taiwan side were confused why I hadn't arrived yet, etc. The psychological stress was considerable. I prayed a lot, and can only conclude that God had His own reasons for not allowing me to leave yet, because I missed several important events in Taiwan due to the delay.
All I want to say here is this: your visa/legal status is important and can't be taken for granted.
So my advice is simply to be aware of this, and start educating yourself early. Maybe the process will be handled by your organization, but it never hurts to understand it yourself anyway, you may find it necessary to do some things yourself, or your situation on the ground may change too abruptly for your organization to make those decisions for you. After running into all the problems, I did some googling and found other people were sharing their experience regarding visa acquisition problems (some of them because they'd been trying to do illegal things on purpose, making it more difficult for all of us...). You might find it helpful to do the same, though obviously you can't trust everything people randomly share online.
Also, make very sure the information you have is up to date. Forms can change or be updated without much notice, and using the wrong form can torpedo the whole process for these excessively bureaucratic procedures. Doing it right the first time is always safer, if possible. But our God is sovereign even over the mysterious inner workings of bureaucracies.
3. Expectations
I've written on this in previous posts, but I think it's important enough to mention here again.
Expectations are impossible to entirely avoid, but they can be the source of much frustration and heartache on the field.
"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."
All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare
My culture shock was a lot less severe my first time coming to Taiwan because I decided ahead of time I wasn't going to try to guess what things would be like, and would certainly not expect them to be like America and then complain when they weren't. I would just prepare a blank space in my mind and fill it in once I got to Taiwan. (So not "oh, that's weird," but "I see... noted.") It's impossible to prepare a totally blank space, of course; we're deeply and subtly influenced by our birth cultures and worldviews, but I believe it's a worthwhile effort.
But other expectations can be even more dangerous. Will you necessarily get along with your coworkers well? Will locals understand your unusual situation and take it into account? Will you have ways of spiritually nourishing yourself and your family without a church like you had back home?
And the most potentially upsetting expectations are the ones we don't know we have, the ones we're blind to. I wrote about "life shock" in Part 1, and that experience revealed to me some expectations I hadn't realized I'd been carrying with me this time.
In the end, I don't think it's possibly to track down and neutralize all our expectations.
But I believe what we can do as believers is set our expectations instead on God's promises and truth in scripture. He who began a good work in us
will be faithful to complete it. In this world we
will have trouble, but Christ
will give us His peace. God
will redeem for Himself some of every tribe, tongue, nation and people. He
will never leave us nor forsake us. Those are things we can expect, that are good and right to take as given and set up as a foundation from which to live and work.
II. Arriving on the Field
1. Riding out Culture Shock
Culture shock will happen, whether you try to get used to your new culture and surroundings by the 'dip your foot in the pool' method or the cannon ball method. (If the latter, be careful you don't accidentally mess things up with people you'll later be trying to minister to and/or share the gospel with)
I think most missionaries going onto the field are aware of culture shock these days, so I will just quickly suggest a few strategies for more successfully coping with it.
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| Culture shock? Shockingly delicious, I say. |
A. Set yourself up to profit from it - turn upsetting or off-putting experiences into learning opportunities. "Why" is always a good question, even when coming out of frustration, because you're recognizing something happened for a reason. Ask yourself what God was teaching you through that experience, how it will equip you to deal with future problems. Don't imagine you can avoid it like an obstacle, think of it as an annoying but necessary set of steps that you are climbing, so you can see a little more clearly from the top.
B. React into the culture - One thing I figured out last time I lived here was that, when tired, overwhelmed, or upset from cultural stress, I could choose to retreat
from the culture, doing something familiar that dispelled the cognitive weirdness, or I could react
into it, purposefully doing something I enjoyed about Taiwan to make myself feel better that I couldn't have done in America. It's like the difference between reacting to tiredness during a workout by taking a break vs. shifting to a different muscle group instead. Neither is wrong, and rest is crucially important too, but the latter will build your endurance and strength much more quickly the more often you can do it. It will also help the new place start feeling a little more like home.
C. Give yourself time and grace - This is tricky, because there really are missionaries who need a little pushing at first, a little motivation to put themselves out there more and try harder. Sometimes I'm like that too. (Other times I feel like quoting Shakespeare: "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.") But just in learning the language you are literally changing neuron connections in your brain, reprogramming it. That simply takes time. The longer it takes, the less you're able to do in the mean time, but at the same time burning yourself out at the onset puts you on shakier psychological ground for the duration. (That doesn't mean you're being a bad Christian. You can fully believe and take refuge in the truth that God is good and you must love your enemies while the dangerous, stress-induced idea is slowly growing in your mind that these people might sort of be your enemies. That's not sin, it probably just means you need rest and some encouraging experiences to offset the stressful ones)
You also need to give yourself grace, because God does, but sometimes other people won't. Local people are sometimes very understanding and helpful, but not always. Sometimes your inability to speak their language makes them think you're just dumb. ("Why can't you talk like we do? Even our little kids can")
Again, that's not a culture specific problem. A family friend of some of my cousins adopted a Korean girl years ago, and a cashier asked her how they would talk to the girl when she grew up. There's a huge difference between growing up aware of multiple languages and growing up totally monolingual.
And sometimes people will be impatient with you not knowing things there's no possible way you could know. America is a low-context culture, things are usually expressed explicitly and there are fewer 'hidden rules' that everyone knows without having to say, behaviorally speaking. Other places are high-context, and you're just going to have to spend a lot of time figuring things out. Sometimes other missionaries can help you with this, sometimes well-traveled locals can, sometimes neither option is available. Sometimes there's basically no way to know how to react to a situation until it happens and you see how other people react to it, or until you make a mistake and someone finally loses their temper and says "don't you know you're supposed to..." and you think "aha, now I do!" Compliments will come in their time as well.
2. Eating Weird Things...
Where You lead me, I will follow;
What You feed me, I will swallow.
(Commonly cited "missionary's prayer")
I have a slight advantage here in that our parents made us eat things we thought were weird growing up (canned sardines, carob, etc), so the idea was instilled at an early age that one -can- eat the strange thing, you just have to see how far away you can push that part of your brain that cares about what you're eating. I'm also pretty curious, so I typically want to know what the strange thing tastes like.
Taiwanese culture is a food culture. Everyone will encourage you to try their favorite things and local delicacies, and most locales really do have their own special delicacies. I've eaten things like pig intestine, goat stomach, snake, brains (can't remember of what, but I made sure it wasn't a cow or deer), wood fungus, the infamous 'stinky tofu', duck tongue, rooster comb, pig spinal cord, (cooked-)blood rice cakes, bird's nest soup, jellyfish, sea cucumber, squid on a stick, river shrimp, fish eyes, and a kind of little salt water snail. Probably lots of other things people would think are weird too, like buddha-head fruit or pitaya/dragon fruit, coffee jello, or bitter melon (tastes like an aspirin) but at this point my weird meter is kind of skewed. Basically if other people are happily eating it, I will too. (Of the above list, the least tasty were the rooster combs, which were too greasy, and the sea cucumbers, which were not cooked with enough seasoning according to another person at the dinner party)
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Some of our short-termers from a great group we had this Spring, trying Stinky Tofu,
an "aromatic" local snack. Not everyone hated it, just most everyone did. |
If you really have trouble with culinary curiosity, or came from a
background where even fish was suspect, you might try making a list of
local dishes or types of food, and crossing them off the list. Especially for families with children, you could have a reward system worked out for being willing to try to new things. Some might unexpectedly become new favorites, but of course probably not if you've already decided you're not going to like them.
Being willing to try local food is often a quick way to connect with people, especially if you'll try things that most outsiders don't want to eat. It's sort of a little rite of passage to see how serious you are about adapting to local ways. Just be aware that in poorer areas people may be giving you their best and keeping little for themselves. Sometimes there's not much you can do about that except pay it forward when it's your turn.
Finally, on a very practical level,
some of the weird food is also highly nutritious, and provides the local diet with nutrients it doesn't get from other foods. And you may need those nutrients too, living there.
3. Spiritual Warfare
If you are from certain church backgrounds, you may be quite familiar with this, or even wary of it due to people overdoing it. But at least in my experience, coming out of conservative evangelical churches, this wasn't really discussed.
The truth is, though, that making a decision to serve God full time is putting a target on your back for the enemy, and in many parts of the world, especially the 10/40 window and 'global south,' spiritual darkness doesn't bother to hide itself like it does in the US (though it's increasingly obvious there) and some other places.
The reason for this is, I believe, that inside cultures considered Christian, seeing weird or frightening stuff, glimpsing some kind of supernatural reality,
is more likely to drive people to church, to ask a pastor or priest what on earth is going on. That's counterproductive to the enemy's purposes, and so in those places he uses deception and distraction, seeking to steer people away from spiritual things into the bondage of the world instead. Out in the idolatrous and/or 'folk religious' areas of the world, there is no need to sneak around, and the darkness is much more obvious, from Mexico's Day of the Dead to Taiwan's Ghost Month.
For missionaries, your presence in an area considered enemy territory is noted and not welcomed. (I think of the chilling passage in Acts with the Sons of Sceva where the demons already knew who Paul was) In certain places, that may translate into oppression. Things go wrong more often than they should, you and your team feel stressed, anxious, or argumentative, temptation starts feeling less like a shoulder-devil whispering in your ear and more like he's calling for artillery strikes on your areas of weakness, etc. You may get sick more often than just a new environment or unfamiliar weather would suggest.
Local people in spiritual captivity may be very unfriendly to you, even hostile. And specific incidents can sometimes get more intense than all that, but I think that's unlikely to happen to most new missionaries. Although someone did ask me a several months ago whether I wanted to go upstairs and help the church we were visiting do an exorcism. (I prayed while remaining downstairs, since the pastor hadn't asked me to join them, but the guy ended up saying he didn't need them to do it. I'm not sure if he was actually possessed or just a little mentally addled, though we were taught that's often not an either-or but a both-and situation) More recently, a student asked me if I wanted to go his house to witness his father call spirits into himself and do miracles. The darkness here is real.
Now, I'm not saying you might be under a voodoo hex and need holy water. You don't need a crucifix over your door on idolatrous holidays;
we don't fight spiritual darkness with superstitious/folk religious ways of thinking, that would only enable it by playing into the fear the enemy seeks to instill in us. Scripture is clear, we have an enemy, that is not merely metaphysical or representative of our own internal struggle but a host of real entities, that desire to wreck God's plan to the furthest extent they are allowed. For reasons I do not entirely understand, but I suspect have to do with His greater glory and our own sanctification and reliance on Him and sharing in the victory of Christ, He has chosen to not restrain them entirely, but let us call on Him for help to overcome the enemy.
I think the two easiest mistakes here to make are a) to dismiss it all as make-believe (scripture is quite clear we live in a supernatural world) or b) to be unhealthily interested/attracted. (the deceiver is so-named for a reason; those who think they can intentionally interact with darkness and not take harm need a pride check)
In general, the solution to spiritual attacks/warfare is actually straightforward:
A. Pray, and confess any unconfessed sin.
B. Pray, and remember your identity in Christ.
C. Pray, and fill your mind with scriptural truth, not the enemy's lies.
D. Pray, and covered in Christ's protection and authority, rebuke the enemy in His name.
That's not a magical formula, it's just the basic points I was taught, based on scriptural principles, and it works. It's a testimony to our faith too. If Jesus is not who He claimed to be, why does darkness hate and flee from His name?
Let us never forget; the name of Christ has been exalted above every other name in heaven and on earth and under the earth. That name has authority over all evil. Let us neither misuse it, nor fear to use it appropriately.
On a more long-term level, we need to be continually praying for God's protection over ourselves, our ministry, our coworkers, our families back home and supporting churches (another way to get at us),
and for those people to whom we minister that the chains of darkness on them be broken and God deliver them from bondage to the enemy in which they have lived their lives. He can do it and He will; it's been happening for thousands of years, and continues today all around the world.
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| The Light of the world has already come. |
In Conclusion...
There are usually always things you can do to make your adjustment to the field easier, but often it's just a case of learning to live in a less comfortable environment than you're used to. Just keep finding joy in our God and the good work He has given us to do, love and pray for your coworkers, and you'll find a lot of shorter-term problems resolve themselves.
And I think that's enough for one post. Next up, a picture post, with some highlights from this past year and some of the interesting places I went and things we did.
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