Forged for the Frontlines: The Missionary and the Lord

Criteria #1: Relationship with the Lord

A missionary must have a personal relationship with the Lord, prioritizing time in the word and prayer, and growing in intimacy with and affection for the Lord.

The criteria for assessing missionary candidates, begins with what many might call low-hanging fruit. Like so many things in life, it is not the large, grandiose, or the flashy things that are most crucial to success in missions. It is often the small, mundane, and overlooked aspects – the things we take for granted – that, in the end, prove the most important.

When We Fall

In 2011 I accepted a call to the pastoral ministry of a church in Bakersfield, California. At that time, I was serving as a student pastor in North Carolina. Shortly after our move across the country, we were excited to hear that a fellow pastor from the same church in NC had accepted a call to assist with a church plant in Thailand. We were excited. We joined this pastor and his family in prayer and anticipated seeing the way the Lord would use them to spread His name in such a spiritually dark part of the world.

Many of us have similar stories. We know someone who has felt the Lord’s call on their lives, sold all of their earthly possessions, bought plane tickets for themselves and their family, and moved to live among the lost people of the world. We help them as they prepare, make commitments to be there for them when times get tough and we pray for them regularly. My guess is, if you are anything like me, some of you may have even been a bit envious of them. After all, how much faith and courage does it take to do something like that? Moving across the country seems so insignificant compared to moving across the world to Asia.

I wonder how many of us could also tell the second part of this story. Within a few short years of being in country, our friend was divorced, living with a local Thai woman, and had abandoned the Christian faith altogether.

While this was certainly an extreme case, unfortunately it is not an uncommon one. In situations like this, churches, agencies, family members and friends, all begin to ask the question, “what happened?” Suffice to say that by this point in the story it was too late to begin asking those questions. To be sure, God’s grace is sufficient to rescue and put families back together and restore fellowship with churches. But is there something that we as the church can do on the front end of someone’s journey to prevent this from happening? And if not, can we at least identify when someone is in danger of falling away? Can we learn something about a missionary candidate’s relationship with the Lord that will help us to equip them for their dark journey ahead, or maybe even keep them from that journey for the benefit of their own soul and others’?

Spiritual Warfare

As senders, we need to remember that the places we send our missionaries are spiritually dark and dangerous. In Ephesians 2, Paul describes the state of an unbeliever as being spiritually dead, hopeless, and in active defiance to the Lord, following Satan himself, “the prince of the power of the air.” This spirit is at work in all unbelievers, causing them to “live out the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind” (Ephesians 2:1-3). This is a danger that all Christians should be mindful of. If this is the state of all unbelievers, how much more can it be said of the state of regions inhabited by millions of people living in allegiance of the evil one, who have no knowledge at all of the light of Christ. It’s no wonder that Paul encouraged the Ephesians to be “strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Ephesians 6:10, my emphasis). Paul realized that life itself is a spiritual battle. Imagine taking the battle directly to the enemy’s camp. It is brutal!

For those of us that play a role in preparing or assessing missionary candidates, the realities of the war that is being waged in this life must be considered. Paul was very clear. If missionaries are to “withstand the schemes of the devil,” they must go in the power of the Spirit of God as they “wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:11-12). We must assess and seek to strengthen their relationship with the Lord. He is, after all, the only one that is able to keep them fit for battle.

The Weapons of War

Missionary candidates must prioritize the Word of God and prayer. It is not just for teaching but is for the care of their own soul. Of course, this is a standard set for all believers everywhere. However, the realities of missionary service beg us to take a closer, intentional look into their lives to see how they view this reality and whether they’re growing in it. Pick up any missionary biography or autobiography. It doesn’t take long to realize that these men and women were not superhuman people that never had issues, struggled with sin, or suffered amidst the darkness that surrounded them. Quite the opposite is true. What is true is that those heroes that we read of often spoke to the sweetness of their relationship with the Lord and how it was Him that got them through the darkness. John G. Paton is famously known for this sweetness of relationship as he lived among cannibals, suffering from constant sickness and the deaths of multiple family members. Yet he attributed the strength that he found to the Lord, saying of one such trial, "I felt calm and firm of soul, standing erect and with my whole weight on the promise, 'Lo, I am with you alway.' Precious promise! How often I adore Jesus for it and rejoice in it! Blessed be His name."

Ask the Right Questions

Of course there is nothing that we as a pastoral team, missions pastor, or even missionary trainer can do to peer in the heart of someone that is moving to the mission field. Yet there are good and wise questions that we can ask and areas that we can observe to help identify a relationship with the Lord that is underdeveloped, or in need of help. It can be difficult to know which questions to ask. May I suggest a few?

• What is the frequency of their time in the Word and prayer? Is this a person that spends lots of time growing in the knowledge of their Savior?
• What is the fruit of their time in the Word and prayer? Are they being transformed into people that look like their Savior? Are they growing in love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23)? Do they trust the Lord as a good Father to be their provider and protector (Matthew 7:9-11, Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalm 28:6)? Do they recognize the sovereignty and providence of the Lord in the events in their life? Do they turn inward to self-loathing, blaming others, or even boasting when life doesn’t go their way or is really good?
• Where do they prioritize their time? Do they spend all of their time on the busy tasks that make up a day and fail to carve out time with their Savior?
• How do they view and deal with sin? Both theirs and others.

 I wish that someone had spent time with my friend asking these questions before he took his family to the other side of the world. How telling would it have been to know what his time in the word was like – was he growing to cherish his Savior and Friend? – and to know if he was finding the Savior sufficient in putting sin to death in his life. The reality is, there are many reasons why a person would want to go to the mission field. We see it regularly in training. Candidates will often tell us of the pressure they felt from a missionary that spoke at their church, or the guilt placed on them for being young, healthy, and capable. While very few admit it, some feel as though they can earn God’s favor by leaving the American dream and serving overseas. How could the Lord not be pleased with that?

The Ultimate Goal

The missionary candidate’s affection for the Lord, His glory, and the intimacy he enjoys with Him proves to be a major factor in persevering through the inevitable struggles of missionary life. Not just the normal life struggles that we all face, intensified by living in such spiritually dark places, but also those affections that draw the missionary away from the glory of God as being the ultimate goal and measure of a missionary’s success. Misguided affections and motives abound on the mission field. Don’t get me wrong: affections and motives aren’t always bad, but the missionary’s number one priority has to be the glory of God and allowing Him to do His work. This must be held above all other missionary criteria, including the learning of language, planting a church, or even seeing souls saved. Remember it is the Lord “who works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11). The Lord will do what He wants, when He wants, and with whomever He wants. The first priority of the missionary is to be in love with and intimately tied to the Lord and His glory.

 When true intimacy is enjoyed with the Lord, the missionary will be able to withstand the temptation to quit when there are not yet converts, when he is treated poorly, or even reviled by those following the prince of darkness.

 As we look at the qualities that must be forged into the cross-cultural church planter, we cannot take for granted the seemingly low-hanging fruit of their relationship with the Lord. As pastors, missions leaders, and trainers, we must press into the spiritual life of our candidates. We cannot assume without investigation. We must equip them for a life of faithfulness and spiritual battles. I wish that someone had taken the time with my friend to see where he was and to press into the deep recesses of his affections. None of us would think to send a soldier to war without training and assessment. We must not send missionaries to live in enemy lands without the same.