Prayer: Test video shoot — At the end of this month Peter will be at Operation Mobilisation’s headquarters in Atlanta to shoot some video for the upcoming long-term missions website. Pray that equipment will work well and the footage he gets will be helpful.

Prayer: Summer Mission Team — In July a small team comprised of a cameraman, video editor and M-DAT staff member will take what Peter learns in Atlanta and put it to use. Pray for a few qualified volunteers to help out this project.

Praise and prayer: Volunteer video editors — We’ve begun recruiting volunteer video editors to help out with the long-term missions website. So far we have six willing volunteers, but we need at least six more. If you or someone you know possesses video editing skills and equipment, let them know we need their help!

The website called Generous Giving is aptly self-described. I’ve referred to it numerous times over the last five years, since my wife and I began a support-based lifestyle. It contains an incredible wealth of information from stories to statistics. One of my favorite anecdotes on the site is a story about two doctors living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The first time the IRS audited the couple it did so thinking that no one could give as much of their income away as the Finchers. Read their story via this link.

Prayer: Radio Spot - We wrapped up production of a 30 second radio spot for ShortTermMissions.com. Building on a landscape of sounds from around the world, the spot informs believers of how they can find a mission trip on which to serve. Pray that God would open the door for five to ten Christian radio stations to play the spot late Fall or early Spring as a public service announcement for their listners.

News: Mission Trip Search Widgets Available - Do you have a website or blog? Consider adding a ShortTermMissions.com search widget in the side bar. Now available in tall or wide.

Prayer: Volunteers and Staff - As we grow into offering a new web resource for aspiring missionaries, our biggest prayer need is for God to expand M-DAT’s capacity for ministry by providing additional volunteers and staff. We are especially praying for a volunteer coordinator, volunteer video editors and a website project manager.

News: Report Published - In September we released a search summary report to the missions community. It examines the roughly 80,000 “basic” searches made on ShortTermMissions.com from January through April of 2007 and shows the top search criteria people use when looking for short-term mission trips. Nothing like this has ever been available before now, and this information has been well-received.

Praise: God’s Provision - We were surprised this month with a very large donation that will enable one our staff members to continue working full-time with the ministry! It was a huge answer to prayer and blessing to the ministry. Praise the Lord for His goodness.

I’ve known David Armstrong for five years now. We’ve shared office space for more than three years.

David served with OC International for 20 years, most of that time overseas in Latin America. After three or so years back in OC’s home office he co-founded Mission Data International (proprietor of this publication) with his son and eventually moved to Arkansas to work in the M-DAT office full-time. In this interview I tried to draw on his lifetime of knowledge on mission involvement.

Propel: What events or interests led up to your decision to pursue missions?

David: Mary and I have always been interested in missions, and supported missionaries since we were age 12, but I never thought about being a missionary. It wasn’t until after two years of college, four years of electronics in the Air Force, and I was in Seattle working that I wrestled with what I what going to do with my life. I’m not the kind of person who can work eight to five and then sit and watch TV or spend my weekends fishing. I needed something worth putting my life into. After a couple years of thinking during which we had our first child and bought our first house, I thought “anything I do in electronics or home remodeling (both interests for me) is going to be gone in 50 to 100 years. The only things that are going to stay around forever are people and God and His Word. If I want to be involved in something that is going to last, that where it needs to be.

That was in essence a decision to be involved full time in ministry. The decision to be involved in missions was almost simultaneous as we asked “where is the greatest need?” Having grown up in a good Bible teaching church, that answer was obvious – overseas. And since we had always been interested in missions, it was a fit. With that we sold our home after only a year and headed to Multnomah Bible College in Portland.

Propel: What did you and your wife do to prepare for long-term, cross-cultural mission service?

David: Looking back, the best preparation for missions was being involved in a good church as we grew up. We learned the Word, we worked with people, we taught kids and worked with youth, we experienced church life and we learned to walk with God.

Bible School was a good review of what I believed and rounded me out well. Seminary exposed me to the breadth of “Christian” thought, and prepared me for the many heresies that abound.

The life experience of having and raising three kids while working my way though Bible School and Seminary while also being involved in a church kept my feet on the ground, rooted in reality.

David is on the left — the one without the nametag.

Propel: How important are college level Bible classes to a cross-cultural missionary? Can certain kinds of mission-workers get away with little or no formal training?

David: The type of missionary activity largely determines the amount of formal Bible training one needs. If you are going to do evangelism and church planting, you need to be a life long learner of the Word. Bible School and/or Seminary will give you an overview and organize your thinking. But they are only a beginning. If you are flying a plane or doing relief work, a consistent growing walk with the Lord is essential, so that you are ready to respond to questions and situations. You will still be walking by faith – so your relationship with God has to be growing.

Propel: What would you have done differently in hindsight?

David: Spend more time hanging out and talking about life as I grew up. I am more task oriented – but ministry is about people.

Propel: How did you decide on a sending organization to serve with?

David: We heard dozens of missionaries speak in our church as we grew up so we had a couple organizations in mind due to the kinds of ministries and types of people they were. In Bible School and Seminary we met many more at the annual missions conferences.

We came up with a short list of three or four that we kept tabs with and checked out. We had decided on one before we finished school.

Propel: What obstacles did you have to overcome as you planned and prepared to go overseas?

David: Getting through school with a family. God was very faithful in providing as needed. We learned live with a lot of stress.

Propel: What were the biggest struggles for you and your family in the first year of living overseas? What were the greatest joys of the first year?

David: The first year was great! It was language school and we had no other responsibilities. We got up at the same time, had three meals a day together and watched Dukes of Hazard in Spanish in the evening. We memorized verses in English and Spanish and enjoyed life. And we all learned Spanish. It was a wonderful relaxing year after all the stress of school!

We were over 30 with kids aged 8 to 13 by the time we moved to Latin America.

Propel: How has preparing to be a missionary changed in the last twenty years? What’s more difficult than it used to be? What’s easier?

David: If you are going to do church planting, Bible translation or evangelism, it hasn’t. If you are going to a part of the world where you can’t get a missionary visa, you have to think creative! You still need a solid Bible base and a growing relationship with the Lord, without an “I’m a missionary stamp” on your transcripts. You will need a legitimate reason for living in the country to which you are going, i.e. a reason understandable to the common person there. A reason which you intend to live out.

Propel: What can people do to prepare for career missions even if they are four or five years from actually being in ministry?

David: Talk and talk and talk. And read and read and read. The more stories of Godly lives you hear and see the better prepared you will be for life in whatever setting you end up. My varied experiences in jobs and education, and my varied interests have all helped me connect with people everywhere I go.

Get to know God! That is what it is all about. It is his show that you are getting involved in. The better you know him and the more clearly you hear his “voice and leading”, the better.

And learn to appreciate people and the differing ways they see life. Learn about different styles of personalities, hear their values and view of life. You will have to live and work with every kind in the ministry. Learn to communicate; to hear others, to resolve conflicts, to encourage others, to live with differences, yet live with boundaries. Most everyone loves the culture and nationals they go to. It is their fellow missionaries they will have trouble getting along with.

by Paul Nielsen

For those of us who’ve heard the Great Commission’s call and are being led into full-time mission work, the ease of getting plugged in varies. For some, the perfect opportunity presents itself in such a way that to say “no” would be like Jonah not going to Nineveh when he was so clearly instructed
to do so.

Other people possess clarity of calling but can’t seem to get plugged in. Reasons for these circumstances vary, from the right opportunity not being out there to, I believe, God keeping some back — who truly desire to go — in order to mobilize.

My wife and I have experienced both of the above scenarios. We were clearly led to be a part of Mission Data International, and we acted on that. Before this, however, I agonized (and still do) over the lack of opportunities created and offered by mission agencies for visual artists, opportunities other than graphic design, illustration and photography.

It seems as though I just don’t fit into the whole missions thing. My own interest lies with the tactile arts of painting, sculpture and ceramics. Very few openings with established sending organizations exist for people who feel led to serve in long-term missions while using their talent as a potter or printmaker.

Existing opportunities
Organizations like PIONEERS give teams and individuals the flexibility to create their own strategies, employing a variety of skillsets in order to create dynamic church planting efforts. Last year I exchanged emails with a PIONEERS team eager to have an artist serving with them in Southeast Asia. This is encouraging and gives me hope things are moving in the right direction. However, job descriptions are often lacking in these circumstances. Someone trying to find their place in such instances must possess an entrepreneurial bent to get involved this way. Not all people led to be missionaries are such self-starters.

Arts Link, a three year old division of Operation Mobilization, is devoted to getting visual artists into missions. In this way artists who want to use their gifts overseas aren’t the ones coming up with the opportunities. Within the current American mission structure, efforts such as Arts Link are a must.

Going for going’s sake
I can imagine some people saying that if you are led to serve overseas, every effort should be made to participate in any way possible. There are needs, all kinds of needs all of the time, among mission projects all over the world. Pious work is pious work, right?

I met a missionary family some years back who arrived in Spain expecting to oversee a camp. When they got to the camp the current director decided he wasn’t ready to retire just yet. The family was reassigned to a nearby church plant, where they felt entirely out of place. After seven years of service at this awkward post, the family learned the camp director would now retire, and they finally took their post at the camp.

Some will argue this was part of God’s bigger plan. Perhaps the family wasn’t ready for certain challenges presented by the camp administration; maybe God was testing their faithfulness as he did with Abraham and Isaac. While time may give us a better idea of the reasons behind certain trials,
we can’t always know the meaning of things like these in the moment. And regardless, such arguments don’t allow us to forgo making appropriate plans before we build our tower — or go to an unreached people group with the Gospel.

Serving for the sake of serving is commendable and sacrificial, but it’s also poor strategy and a waste of God-given resources. Scripture tells us that different members of the Body are given different talents. An eye can’t do what the hand is able to; the Body must work together.

Solutions
So how much patience is required on the part of the missionary candidate? How long should a person planning to go into full-time missions work search and wait for the perfect opportunity? Or is not finding the perfect and most strategic opportunity the same as a closed door?

I’ve been reminded a few times in the last month of how one person cannot rightly judge the circumstances of another. Seeking counsel is Biblical and important, but wise counsel will understand that they aren’t the ones walking in your shoes. No one else can tell you how the Spirit of God might be leading you.

Instead of closing with a true yet cliched proverb, I want to encourage readers who find themselves on the outside (per se) to press on. Oops, I guess that’s a bit of a platitude as well. Still, press on! Press on by supporting existing programs that focus on your calling, even if they aren’t exactly what you’d like to be a part of. Brainstorm new ideas with people of similar passion and research what it would take to get them going. Stay in touch with people who share your ideas. Your work will not be vain.