I am not going into sharing about Jesus: that is all of our mission and bottom line. I am talking about sharing how God has called you to do your specific, practical part of missions. In a way, you are a salesman: you have a message explaining who you are and why you and your ministry is worth investing in. I have heard it said that you should have three ways to present your message: the movie poster, the movie trailer, and the actual movie. Over the years, these are the tools that have helped me to do that:
A.The prayer card: personally, I use a business card because it is smaller and cheaper. It works great these days, because mostly, you just want to connect them with a website/giving site that has the rest of the information. I have a quick “elevator pitch” (condensed message that I could share on an elevator ride) that works like a movie poster.
B.YouTube Channel: we have a quite literal movie trailer that is our introduction video on our YouTube channel. We upload weekly 5 minute of less videos, so that people can check us out and get to know us in little, digestible bits. In the past, this was newsletters—and we still do a Christmas letter and monthly e-newsletters, but the videos have been much more accessible to this generation. I also have a blog, but that is more of personal thoughts, rather than missions updates.
C.Website/personal meetings: The whole story can be shared on the website, or in a personal meeting, when you have time to really connect (hopefully). This would be like the actual “movie.”
My mission, 15 years ago, was to love people, especially children, and especially at-risk children. I’d figured that out during my teens, and it seemed pretty simple. Then I went to Brazil and it practically looked like teaching English. So my mission was to teach English. And while I love doing that, it wasn’t my core—my lifeblood: it was simply one of the ways that I do my core mission. Then I became the coordinator of Living Stones, working with at-risk children. This was in complete alignment with my core mission, and I have found so much satisfaction in doing this. I am blessed to have found this: a vocation that lines up perfectly with my core mission.
And then I got married. Part of my core shifted. Now, an integral part of my core mission was to serve and love my husband. And then I had children: another part of my core mission is now to be a mother. I am still me, but I have been stretched. It is a wonderful thing, and as any mother will tell you, it isn’t addition, it is multiplication. You aren’t piling on one more thing you have to do in life: your life and love is multiplied and expanded to include more: and somehow, miraculously, to help you become even more YOU.
In 2016, Caid and I realized that the best way we could connect with others quickly, in this day and age, was through vlogging (video blogs). I was already making a lot of baby videos for our family, and making weekly vlogs about our life and mission just made sense. Missions is changing rapidly, along with culture and technology and the times. Gone are the days of missionary slide shows (I remember them from my childhood fondly), now your supporters want to really see and understand what is going on (as they should!) An annual newsletter isn’t enough anymore.
While we are the first missionary vloggers that I know of, I think in the next 5-10 years it will become more of the normal, as supporters want more involvement, and investors want more accountability. In three years of vlogging, we now have over 300 videos, with lots of baby pictures, laughing, learning, life and culture in Brazil, and whatnot. We hope to share practically what a missionary looks like in a world where for many, it isn’t very clear.
Our family is serving God in Brazil. But if God leads us somewhere else, or to do something else, then we will follow. I get asked a lot “But are you going to live in Brazil forever?” And the honest truth is, I don’t know. I believe that part of being a missionary is always being ready to go, if God says so. It is about following Him, whatever that looks like. It means putting down deep, deep roots in Jesus, because locational roots can, and will change.
1. Because I have found something good--the Way of Life--and I want everyone who comes into my world to know Jesus--whom they need. I am sold out to this idea.
2. Because I have been invested in and given the set of skills needed to the job--and a darn good job--in Brazil. The workers are few. I can go where many others cannot.
3. Because people who have need to give just as much as people who have not need to receive, and I have a gift in connecting those people.
4. Because it makes me happy. I want and desire to go to Brazil. I LOVE working with Living Stones. It lights me up, it is my passion. "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ― Howard Thurman. Is God big enough to match what He wants me to do with what makes me happy? YES!
5. Because I need to learn how to walk in grace, not control.
6. I am a missionary because this is what God knows will work in me to make me more like the image of Christ.
He looked into my eyes, and with all of his seven-year-old self he asked, “Can I be a Missionary too?” Of course you can, was my teary-eyed response. Here I am, trying to lump 15 years of my life and thoughts and learning into seven-year-old speech. They want to know two things: what is a missionary, and can they be one. Two HUGE questions for any of us.
I have heard that being a missionary is telling others about Jesus. That everyone is—and should be—a missionary. Yes, AND. And so much more. We all, as Christians, are called to tell others about Jesus. I have heard it amplified to say that being a missionary is GOING and telling others about Jesus. Yes, AND. Much of the current focus on being a missionary is going to a different CULTURE than your own. This could be your next door Muslim neighbor or to Muslims in Africa. Being a missionary definitely carries the idea of stepping out of your comfort zone and sharing Jesus.
Officially, in this time and age, I would say when most people think of the word “Missionary,” they mean someone who has moved (become a migrant) somewhere different (than their own culture) for the specific purpose of telling others about Jesus (direct spiritual ministry in some form), mostly being supported (at least partially) by Christians from their original culture/home.
This isn’t what missions looks like in the Bible (that is a another discussion), or what it has looked like over the years. Not everyone fits into this narrative, and that is good: each person has their own journey that God takes them on to become a missionary. This stereotype is what has come out of our culture and time period: who knows what it will be in the future?
I love being a missionary. It is my dream job. But like all jobs, it is hard, it has its downsides, and sometimes I just don’t want to get out of bed. One of my biggest struggles in being a missionary has been money issues. It is hard to receive money (no, really). It is humbling and requires grace—both giving and receiving. God is my boss, but there is a lot more to it than that. I hate to say it, but many of our plans revolve around if the money comes in or not. And how do you tell that to seven-year-olds?
I am all for telling our seven-year-olds that they can be missionaries. But let’s make sure it is true. Let us, as parents, as older siblings, as aunts and uncles, as mentors, make sure our children/the children in our lives have the opportunities to be those missionaries we told them they could be. Let’s choose to live in THAT part of town. Let’s choose to go to the church that doesn’t feel so comfortable. Let’s maybe even choose THAT school.
Let’s choose to actively have other cultures as a vital part of our lives. Let’s have friends who don’t agree with us. Let’s have people over to our house that don’t look like us. Let’s not encourage/support people (ahem, politics) who don’t love people who are different than they are (race, religion, sexuality)—but let’s still love and pray for them. And if we are not doing these things, then we need to stop telling our children they can be or are missionaries.
Stepping outside your comfort zone is scary. Not being “home,” not knowing if they will accept you, not knowing if they will be kind to you…these are all things involved with being a missionary. It is not safe. It is not being cautious. It is being so full of Jesus that you have to share or you will burst.
Personally, I refused to call myself a missionary until I was “on the field” for many years already. I had grown up reading biographies of great missionaries like George Muller and Amy Carmichael and Hudson Taylor—and I knew that wasn’t me. I was simply following the green lights God had on my path—and loving it—was I supposed to be enjoying myself so much?
They actually called me “The Intern who kept coming back.” I called myself an EFL teacher. I was in Brazil 6 months and the USA 6 months a year because of visa problems, but also because I was mostly self-supported and worked my butt off in the USA to spend it all in Brazil. I was living off of $350 a month—or less. It was a great life for a single person who wanted to travel and live and make a difference.
But then I had a dear friend sit me down and ask me about my long term plan. About sustainability. And most tenderly, why I was scared to call myself a missionary: did I not think that I was good enough? I also had a cousin who came and visited me in Brazil. She looked me in the eye and said “I have visited a lot of missionaries and seen a lot of ministries: you are doing a good job. What you are doing is important and valuable.”
I was easily putting in 60-70 hour work weeks. I ate and breathed missionary work. It was my life. And slowly, I began to realize that I was a workman “worth his hire.” I could call myself a missionary, even if I didn’t look like everything in my head that was a missionary. Even if I didn’t know the future, and how long I’d be serving abroad.
Language is crazy. We connect emotions, expectations, and experiences to words until they almost become their own entity (consider all that comes up when you hear the word “Mother” or “Father”). The word “Missionary” in my mind was someone who left and never came back. It was someone who had a prayer card on everyone’s refrigerator and spoke at missionary conferences and knew what they were talking about. They always had stories of miracles and “GREAT WORKS,” all in capital letters. And I didn’t fit into this missionary narrative.
"The word missionary comes from the Latin word mitto, which means "to send." It is the equivalent of the Greek word apostello, which also means "to send." The root meaning of the two words is identical (Herbert Kane, The Making of a Missionary, ISBN: 081053587, p. 13) Unfortunately, this word “mitto” was also used and historically rooted in the sending out of merchant ships to bring back slaves and colonize the developing world. Many other people have very sad and angry associations with the word “Missionary.”
After 15 years of (now I can say) being a missionary, missions to me means how I live my life. It involves washing dishes a lot more than I thought it would. It is a lot of paperwork and what seems like wasted time as I navigate a second language and a second culture. But I also have the opportunity to work with and serve people I never would have been able to meet otherwise. I get to be a part of incredible stories that God is writing in a different context than my “normal.”
(This was written and supposedly posted in December 2017. I was also 41 weeks pregnant and life was not okay, so I am posting this now).
Alongsiders (by Craig Greenfield) is not a normal book. And it really isn’t for a normal audience. But if you have a passion for discipleship, for building leadership, and for finding viable ways for changing the world (specifically focused on developing countries), then this is a book for you.
As I read it, I felt a deep pang in my heart and wished I would have had this book in my hands ten years ago when I was brainstorming, with a couple of other missionaries, about what Living Stones was and should look like on paper. Because in many ways, this is a manual for guiding principles and practical steps to starting a movement: raising up leaders to walk alongside chosen “little brothers and sisters,” and disciple them.
While there are many differences between Living Stones and Alongsiders (the ministry this book shares the story, vision, and how to of), the heart is the same, and the practicality is something I am learning from and hope to implement more in my own coordinating efforts.
While reading this book, I was either nodding my head in agreement, laughing softly as we’d (Living stones) lived or learned the same lesson, or jotting down notes of ideas of things to do for the future. A while ago I made a vlog of my favorite “missions” books, and this would go right with all of those as a must read.
This book, more than any other I have ever read on missions, is practical and step by step. Since it is telling the story of, and inviting you into, the Alongsiders movement, it is clear and concise in a way that all of my college mission’s books were not (and oh how they frustrated me!). As someone who kind of “fell into missions” and worked to get training as I went, I have not found many books to be practical in this sense.
Missions is such a big field with so many facets, that I do understand the generalization that most books and training have, but as someone longing for guidance and experience and stories, it is rather lonely. The Alongsiders Story is written with that intimacy and closeness that I haven’t found before.
It is also just darn exciting. The vision is clear and simple and you pick it up and say “Wow! I want me some of that!” Obviously, this book is most useful for someone who is looking to join in the Alongsiders movement actively and directly, but the book is also very important to those not as directly related to developing countries/discipleship of youth in understanding where missions in general is heading and some good guidelines in stepping back and letting God work, especially through local leadership.
I was in the "am having/had a second child" phase for awhile, but as she is getting closer to her first birthday, I feel like I am moving into the "you've been thinking about a lot of things for awhile, now write them down" phase (hence all the blog posts recently).
This year marked 15 years serving in Brazil. Ten years as a single missionary, and the past 5 with my husband and now two daughters. This year has also marked a change, as God has begun to bring into our lives some younger people who are asking questions about missions. This has made me want to put together, and organize, and re-write so many thoughts about missions and being a missionary...So to have them all in one place, here are 15 posts about missions from this blog (which is now 5 years old--my first blog was started in 2003, I believe)
