Transition to Going
Until the late eighteenth century, most people interpreted the “great commission” in the final chapters of Matthew and Mark as being given to the apostles who heard it and carried it out. That command was for them alone and did not apply to anyone since then.
It was William Carey and other English Baptists who began to reinterpret these passages in the 1780s. On May 12, 1792, his radical book, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, was advertised in the Leicester Herald. In that book he asked whether or not the Great Commission was still binding, surveyed the book of Acts, presented detailed data on the state of the world relative to the gospel, and countered objections to the missionary enterprise. That book and William Carey’s life brought about major changes in the way Christians viewed people in other countries who were not likeminded.
I’m called
During the last 200 years people around the globe have come to talk about having a missionary call in which individuals feel they must go into another culture and tell the Good News. This chapter deals with several states in which a person can be relative to a call to missionary service.
Who is called?
This question has had a broad spectrum of answers during the last two centuries.
· No one. The Great Commission was given to the people who were there when Jesus spoke, and it applied only to them.
· Everyone. The Great Commission applies to everyone, even people today. Thus, everyone is responsible to spread the Good News to every people group.
· Only people who receive some kind of “call” from God. People who receive this special summons from God are to leave their culture and to spread the Good News as God has directed. Other people remain in their passport cultures as supporters.
What does the Bible say about a call?
The Bible does not mention a specific “missionary call” as such, but it is helpful to consider how the first people to serve cross-culturally in the book of Acts came to do so.
· An angel told Philip to go to a particular road (Acts 8:26).
· While Philip was on his way, the Spirit directed him to the chariot (Acts 8:29).
· As Saul (Paul) was traveling along a road, a light flashed around him, and Jesus told him to go into the city (Acts 9:3-6).
· In a vision the Lord told Ananias that he had chosen Saul (Paul) to go to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15).
· While they were worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit told the church in Antioch to set Saul (Paul) and Barnabas apart for the work to which God had called them (Acts 13:2).
· During the night Paul had a vision of a man who begged him to come and help (Acts 16:9).
Note the variety of times of day, settings, people involved, spiritual beings involved, senses involved, and so forth. God does not “call” people in any one way. He does so through many different means.
How are people called today?
Since there is disagreement about who is called and God calls in such a variety of ways, there is no generally accepted definition of how people are called. However, the following are often found in descriptions of one’s call.
· Following some crisis experience some people have an inner persuasion that God has chosen them for some particular purpose they feel compelled to fulfill.
· Church leaders, mentors, mission leaders, and peers who know persons well verify that these individuals are people God is likely to call into service, often considering the attributes listed in 1Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
· Often individuals can point to particular passages of Scripture that support their calls into cross-cultural ministry. God uses Scripture to affirm the call and guide them in decisions made after the call.
· Called people have ongoing ministries in the local church in evangelism, discipleship, education, counseling, or other such areas. People who do not do these things within their own culture are not likely to do them in another culture. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
· Preachers preach, teachers teach, and the called person has some idea of how he or she as a missionary will “mish.” They will know what they are to do.
· Called people are eager to prepare in terms of education and experience to fulfill their call. Paul went to Arabia for three years of preparation after his call and before his active ministry.
· Called people have a great concern over others being lost in sin. Though humanitarian service is good, the essence of missions is the salvation of the lost.
· Called people usually are called to some particular task, people group, place, and so forth rather than just seeing great needs in other places.
Of course, no one is perfect in all of these respects, but research has shown that people who have definite calls are much more likely to serve for a longer time than those who go for other reasons.
Are there false “calls”?
People have a variety of reasons for thinking they should become missionaries, and some mistake these for a “call.” Here are some of those reasons.
· Earning God’s love. People who believe that they are not loved may think that sacrificing to become a missionary will win God’s approval.
· Penance. People feel guilty and try to pay for their sin by serving in difficult or dangerous places.
· Family pressure. Parents who feel guilty for not obeying their call may encourage their children to become missionaries.
· Travel. People who want to see the world or have adventures may seek these through missionary work.
· Going home. People who grew up overseas may be looking for a way to get “home” and find it through missions.
· Quotas. Some churches or mission agencies set goals to send a certain number of missionaries in the next year, and people may go to meet that “quota.”
· Meeting needs. Some people are concerned about meeting needs of poor people overseas and go on the basis of a purely humanitarian motive.
The list can go on and on, but people who go for these reasons often do not last long on the field. Many return home, but others remain and become “high maintenance,” taking up the time of those really called.
I’m not called, but I’m willing
May the “call” become a marriage issue?
It is not an issue if neither spouse is called or if both spouses are called because everyone is the same. However, if or when one spouse feels called to leave the passport country to spread the Good News and the other sees no reason to leave home, this becomes an issue. If they stay at home, the first spouse is frustrated because he or she may feel guilty for not obeying God. If they go to another culture, the second spouse may resent it when he or she gets beyond “vacation mode” to the time when culture shock and the stress of living in another culture set in.
What can a couple do?
Making sure that both husband and wife have genuine calls before beginning missionary service is a good way to avoid this conflict and stress in their marriage. It may also prevent their causing problems in the missionary community in which they work.
Two misunderstandings are possible. First, the one who feels called may have a “false” call, and after a brief period of time may become a casualty. Second, the one who does not feel called may have a genuine call and become an effective missionary. Thus, couples need to consider both of these.
The couple should examine carefully the “call” of the person who claims to have it. People who have the false calls such as those mentioned above are not evil people trying to sabotage the missionary enterprise. Many of them are sincere in their desire to serve. They really do want to please God, to atone for their sins, to please their parents, and so forth down the list. However, when difficult times occur, their lack of a genuine call makes it impossible for them to weather the storm. Then they have problems themselves and/or become problems to others.
Likewise, people who do not believe they have a call may really have one and not recognize it. These people may have heard missionaries tell of their dramatic call to service or have read in Scripture about the calls of Philip or Paul. Though they may have prayed for missionaries and given to missions, they have never seen a vision, heard from an angel, or been blinded by a light and heard from Jesus as they traveled down the road. Their burden for the lost and compassion for those who have never heard may be part of God’s call.
Since people may not be conscious of some of their motives, talking with a counselor who knows about God’s call on people’s lives may be helpful. Talking with an understanding missionary who can help sort things out may be even more helpful. In no case should they go until both have the same call or one has a specific call to service and the other is called to serve wherever his or her spouse is called.
A person may become a trailing spouse.
The year did not turn out like Tom expected. He had thought that taking time off and living in a developing country while his wife taught in an international school would be a welcome relief from the stress of working as a senior pastor. However, he soon got bored with mowing the school lawn, sweeping floors, painting walls, doing laundry, and trying to find fresh meat at the market.
He felt little satisfaction with what he was doing after just a couple of weeks and was looking forward to getting home and back to work using his talents. However, Mary felt fulfilled and loved what she was doing, and now she wanted to stay at least another year, maybe permanently.
At first these differences led to tension in their home, and they avoided discussing them. However, as tension increased and they talked more about the differences, their discussions began to become disagreements that were never really settled.
Tom was what many people call a “trailing spouse,” a husband or wife following a marriage partner who takes a job in another place. Being a trailing spouse may mean leaving behind a deeply satisfying place of work and service to begin again, somewhere else in the world. The challenge of finding such a place in foreign locations without support networks and knowledge of the local situation may be difficult, frustrating, and time consuming. Consider how this has happened in history, what makes it an issue, and what can be done about it.
Did this happen in Bible times?
This has happened since the Book of Genesis. God told Abram (later Abraham) to leave his country and his extended family. If he did this, Abram’s descendents would be a great nation. Abram took his wife Sarai (later Sarah) and his nephew Lot and followed God’s direction to Canaan, to Egypt, and back to Canaan (Genesis 12-13).
The agreement was between God and Abram, and when it was renewed, it was again between the two of them (Genesis 15). Both Abram and Sarai came up with “schemes” for the other to do, schemes indicating that they did see her as a part the agreement.
· Abram was afraid that the Egyptians would harm him, so he asked her to tell them she was his sister rather than his wife. She did it, and Abram raised no objection even when Pharaoh took Sarai to live in his palace (Genesis 12).
· Sarai apparently saw her role as a trailing spouse whose major part in this was to bear Abraham’s child. Still without children a decade later Sarai had reached the point where she did not even think she had to be the one to bear the child—She offered Abram her Egyptian maid as the one to bear the child (Genesis 16). After all, the agreement was with Abraham, not with her; perhaps her part was to be rearing the child.
Finally, more than another decade later, when He again confirmed his agreement with Abraham, God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah and included her in the agreement, saying that “she will become the mother of nations; kings of people will come from her” (Genesis 17:16).
This issue affected the marriage relationship even after God said Sarah had an important role in his plan. Here is how it unfolded chronologically after God made the agreement with Abram in Genesis 12.
· 10 years after the agreement: Sarai told Abram that it was his fault that she was suffering (Genesis 16:5).
· 25 years after the agreement: Sarah told Abraham to get rid of the maid when Ishmael teased Isaac (Genesis 21:9-10).
This issue was a quarter of a century old. Both times they tried to resolve the issue by sending the maid out into the desert.
Has this happened in modern missions?
It has been a part of modern missions from the beginning. Dorothy Carey, wife of the “father of modern missions,” was a trailing spouse. When she married William, he was a young shoemaker who inherited the business a couple years after their wedding. The two of them served Christ in their village, and William even began preaching in local churches.
However, over the next decade William became increasingly concerned about the lost in other cultures. He volunteered to go to India as a missionary, intending to take Dorothy and their children. Though Dorothy did not want to go, under great pressure she reluctantly agreed.
Dorothy never really joined William in ministering to others. The first few years she cared for their children, but within a couple of years she was totally incapacitated by her mental illness and incapable of even caring for them.
In contrast, William’s second wife, Charlotte, was not a trailing spouse. She had come to India on her own, learned Bengali so she could minister to nationals, and joined William in ministry. Her particular interest was the education of Hindu girls.
Of course, most trailing spouses do not become mentally ill, but many of them are very unhappy and may become at least a contributing cause of the family leaving the field.
What is the issue?
The basic problem is that, like Tom, spouses who have been involved in fulfilling occupations of service to others suddenly find themselves doing “trivial” tasks that anyone could do. Lack of meaningful work, culture shock, and loneliness may leave the spouse miserable. Marital problems and even premature departure may finally result.
Trailing spouses experience the following:
· Frustration & resentment
· Loss of identity & self-esteem
· Loss of self-confidence
· Feeling empty & lost
· Sleep problems & unhappiness
· Anxiety & Depression
· Physical illness
The list could go on and on, but with about 80% of the spouses having a college degree and about 65% having left careers at home, it is not surprising that about 40% of overseas assignments are cut short because of failure of spousal or family adjustment. The overwhelming majority of the trailing spouses are women, but men have the same symptoms, perhaps even more pronounced since they so often find their identity in their work.
What can agencies do?
Agencies concerned about their personnel and the problem of attrition can take some steps to help:
· Involve spouses in the selection process. Remember you are moving a family, not just a person.
· Involve spouses in decisions about the move from the beginning. The more they feel a part of the move, the less they feel like they are just “trailing.”
· Continue communication about the move with spouses throughout. Remember that the spouse may be really the backbone of the moving process, and if they do not receive the messages, they may get unhappy surprises.
· Send both husband and wife on a familiarization trip so that they can make decisions together about housing, schools, and so forth.
· Allow for some flexibility in policies when something concerns the spouse. The spouse’s attitude may be far more important than a policy.
· If spouses are interested in either full- or part-time employment, find a place in your agency if possible, or use resources there to help find work locally.
· Do whatever you can to encourage spouses to take “ownership” of the move too.
What can trailing spouses do?
Here are things spouses can do:
· Realize that contentment is a choice, a choice they can make. If they choose to be content, it will color their whole experience. Paul, an early missionary, said that he had learned to be content in any and every situation, whatever his circumstances (Philippians 4:11-13).
· Learn about their new home through books, the Internet, or people who have lived there. Of course, people who had a bad experience need to be taken with a grain of salt because they may view things through rust colored glasses.
· Take this experience as an opportunity to evaluate themselves and their lives. This may be the time to rethink and regroup.
· With email, skype, and the Internet they may be able to continue their work in another country—or develop a new line of work that they can do back “home” or anywhere else for that matter.
· The spouses need to talk with each other often and throughout their move and settling time realizing that being expats means repeated compromise.
· Take this as a time to develop a new “hobby” that is both enjoyable and meaningful.
· Continue their education in the context of a new culture to get a different viewpoint.
· Find a new ministry with children in the neighborhood.
Finally, rather than remaining a trailing spouse, become a prevailing spouse. Eleanor Roosevelt could have faded into the background as a trailing spouse, but she chose to make an effective and satisfying life for herself. Even after the death of her husband she continued to be an internationally prominent author, speaker, politician, and activist. She is remembered today for what she did, not just that she was a “first lady.”
Taking these steps may result in a trailing spouse becoming a prevailing spouse, one that gets a whole new lease on life.
I don’t want to go!
Dorothy Carey is a prime example of a spouse who did not want to go as a missionary. She told her husband she did not want to go. She told the agency she did not want to go. She told a prospective teammate she did not want to go. She refused to go repeatedly over a four-month period—even when William and their oldest son left for the field without her and the younger children. She finally consented to go after repeated meetings and essentially being threatened by another member of the team.
What happened?
As one might expect, Dorothy did not have a good experience as a missionary and tried to sabotage the work William was doing. She and William obviously did not have a happy marriage and a nurturing home for their children while they served on the mission field.
Another missionary couple was present during some of their disagreements, and the visiting husband wrote, “She has uttered the most blasphemous and bitter imprecations against him,…seizing him by the hair of his head, and one time at the breakfast table held up a knife and said, ‘Curse you. I could cut your throat…you rascal…God almighty damn you.’” Before she was confined, she followed William through the streets raving and railing against him.
Of course, Dorothy was an extreme case in that she became mentally ill and had to be confined most of the later years of her life. She even tried to kill William a couple of times while serving in India.
Could such a situation happen today?
Of course, it could (Never say “never.”), but it is much less likely today than it was 200 years ago. Several factors are in place to prevent such a scenario today.
· Many agencies have developed criteria for screening people with mental problems.
· Such agencies also would refuse to send someone who did not want to go.
· Member care departments provide counsel and medication to those who are mentally ill. They also provide marital counseling to couples who have conflict.
· Many cultures have a very different view of mental illness and people in them would take a dim view of such lengthy confinement.
However, even with these safeguards, similar problems do occur, and some are unnecessary tragedies.
How could it happen?
Though it is unlikely that a spouse would be told that her family would be “dispersed and divided forever” if he or she did not go, more subtle pressures often exist. Knowing that their families and supporting churches have invested time and money in them, spouses who do not want to go may still feel great pressure to do so anyway. Although this can happen in any situation, it is more likely in the following ones.
· New agencies. As was the case with Dorothy, many new agencies do not have policy manuals that would prohibit such overt pressure on a spouse to go.
· Agencies emphasizing goals. Although most agencies set some target goals, some take the position that such goals must be met. If their goal is 50 new missionaries during the next year, they may accept people who they probably would not take under other circumstances and exert pressure on prospective missionaries to go.
· Churches. Although some mega-churches may support many missionaries and have member care for their missionaries, other smaller churches sponsor two or three couples overseas without any of the “infrastructure” needed to care for them.
· Independent missionaries. Some people are so determined to go that they just go on their own, pressuring their spouse to go with them. Though they may have several “supporting churches” who give to their own personal tax-exempt organization, they may have no one to turn to when things go bad.
Could it happen later in life?
Dorothy had never served as a missionary, and she did not want to become one. We do not know exactly why, but we can surely make some educated guesses when we realize that she had three children, was pregnant, and was about to begin a five-month sea voyage. People today also may not want to go for similar reasons. However, even people who have served as missionaries may not want to return.
· Those who have served as a married couple may not want to go back after they have children because of living conditions, educational systems, and so forth.
· Those who have older children may not want to return and leave their children in college in their passport country.
· Those who have grandchildren may not want to return and leave their grandchildren.
· Those who have aging parents may want to remain where they can spend time with or care for those parents before the parents die.
Could it happen to other family members?
Such differences between husbands and wives obviously have an impact on their marriage. However, even when both of them want to go, their offspring may say, “I don’t want to go!”
· Elementary children. Thinking about leaving their friends, changing schools, leaving their pets, leaving their rooms, and so forth, many children do not want to go. If parents handle this right, most children (even those who do not want to go) readily adjust to the new situation—and then do not want to return to their passport countries.
· Teenagers. Adolescents give similar reasons for not wanting to go, but they are more likely than children to fail to adjust to the new situation. Adolescents have different cognitive capacities and do not hesitate to argue with their parents—more likely to continue agitating after they go. They tend to do something that will strike at their parents’ ministry. For example, boys tend to break the law and get in trouble with the police while girls tend to act out sexually and may become pregnant.
What if the person doesn’t say so?
Sometimes people do not say they do not want to go, but they use all kinds of passive resistance to hinder going, behaviors commonly called being passive-aggressive. Rather than openly refusing to do something, they just hinder getting the job done. Here are a few of their traits.
· Resistant to suggestions
· Critical of authority
· Repeated failure of simple tasks
· Forgetting obligations
· Resentfully stubborn
· Sullen sarcasm
· Sulking sabotage
· Complaining procrastination
· Willful incompetence
· Intentional inefficiency
These people may be aware of what they are doing and do it purposely. However, they may not realize what they are doing or why. Any of us are less excited about participating in something we really do not want to do.
What can we do about it?
The best solution to a difference between husband and wife is for them to talk and pray together, alone and perhaps with a counselor, until they can come to some agreement. However, they may not be able to reach an agreement that is acceptable to both. Then they are left with four options.
· Both stay. One option is that they serve a mission agency in some capacity in their passport country, with neither of them going to serve in another culture. This enables them to be involved in missions without the stress of cross-cultural living. The problem may be that the one wanting to go may resent having to stay at home and the one not wanting to go may feel guilty for keeping the other home.
· One goes and the other stays. This was the option that Dorothy and William first chose to do, but they could not do so because of the war prohibiting travel. This allows both of them to live where they wish, but it results in separation of the couple for long periods of time. For a relationship to flourish, people must spend time together.
· Both go. This is what Dorothy and William did with Dorothy feeling forced to go. The problem with this solution is that the one forced to go may continue to balk at every step and may greatly resent the pressure.
· Both stay and then go. If the problem with going is related to something that will change over time, perhaps a delay in leaving will resolve the problem. For example, if the problem is that one feels responsible for dying parents, the couple may be able to take care of the parents for a few years, then go to another culture.
· Promote the positive. When children do not want to go, emphasize getting things they (not you) want. For example, talk about the new friends, good food, etc. (not another visa in their passport, learning the geography of a country, etc.)
· Leave one behind. Sometimes teenagers prefer to remain in their passport country with the family of a friend. For example, they may not want to leave close friends or may want to graduate from their hometown high school.
Whatever you do, keep talking, negotiating, and compromising until everyone involved can live with your solution. God does not require you to sacrifice your marriage or your family to serve him in another culture.