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Stephen: Last week, we talked about the need for missionaries to go where Christ has not been named, to bring the good news of Christ to the darkest places in the world. Every mission field, whether there is a flourishing church there or not, has its own specific challenges. And for every missionary success story, there are stories that end tragically.
Wherever a missionary is sent, they are sure to encounter the challenges of a new language and culture, physical challenges, and painful separation from family and friends. And there are the challenges every Christian faces: of sin and temptation, and remaining faithful to God’s Word.
Brooks, our question today comes from Sandy on Instagram. Sandy asks, “How do I become an effective missionary? You served as a missionary for 14 years. How were you prepared for that? And how would you encourage a prospective missionary to prepare?”
Brooks: Sandy, that’s a really good question. How to be an effective missionary? The West, unfortunately, in particular, has sent out many ineffective missionaries, and I believe it’s for three main reasons.
Number one, they weren’t faithful church members. They didn’t know the church before they went overseas. I think that answer in itself forces us to back up and little bit and define what it means to be effective. What does an effective missionary look like? What do they do? What do they participate in overseas?
Uppermost in the effective missionary’s mind is: What am I doing that is connected to church planting or church strengthening? That’s the goal of missions.
And the reason we know that, is because when the Great Commission was given to the apostles—when it was handed out to Jesus’ followers—the ones who heard it from His lips, what did they do? The entire book of Acts points to they evangelized the people they came into contact with, they taught them everything Jesus had given to them, then they also baptized them and then they gathered them into local churches. The whole book of Acts is the advance of the church. The church is the great metric of the Great Commission.
This is why Paul, in Romans 15:18–23, could say there was no more work for him to do from Jerusalem all the way to Illyricum—because there were churches, these little outposts of light. Paul saw it as those churches’ responsibility to evangelize the people he never got to. The church is the Great Commission.
Everything missionaries do—whether they’re accountants, airplane pilots, whether they're doctors—it has to tie to church planting or church strengthening. The best way to learn that is to be a faithful church member first before you become a missionary.
That’s really the downfall, I think in many ways, of missions. We’ve gotten this idea that we really need excitable people, people who are adventurous, people who are willing to—and we do. We need our missionaries to be able to go to far places, but we need them more importantly rooted in their local church. So that would be first and foremost for an effective missionary: to be a faithful church member. That means showing up on every Sunday, obviously not when you’re sick or when you have other things that are going to prohibit you from being there on Sunday, but to be faithful, to be someone who’s a servant to the church.
A lot of young missionaries sometimes weren’t servants to the church first before they became missionaries. They didn’t help clean up the grounds. They didn’t help park cars. They didn’t carry sound equipment. They didn’t do the things that they should be doing to show the church, “I love this institution.” Yes, it has warts. Every church does because they’re human churches. But were they a part of that institution? Were they part of the bride? Were they enmeshed in the details first before they became missionaries?
And then the second issue, if you’re going to be an effective missionary, is do you know your Bible? Do you know it well? And sometimes being a faithful church member, that’s all you need. But for many, they’re going to need further training. They should go on to Bible school. Some should go on to seminary. They should know their Bibles well. They should know how to defend the faith. They should know how to speak about the Holy Spirit, particularly if they’re going to Muslim environments. They should be able to talk about the Trinity. They should be able to defend why Jesus died, rose from the dead, and now is seated at the right hand of God and intercedes on behalf of Christians all over the world. They should be able to defend those orthodox or those historic doctrines of the church. And Bible schools and seminaries particularly help missionaries do that well.
And then for those missionaries that are going to the ends of the earth, to those places where they’re going to have to learn many times one, sometimes two languages to get to these people, they need to have some specialized training. Everybody knows—I’m from San Diego, California—but everybody knows in San Diego that if you’re going to join the Navy SEALs, you’re going to have to go through some particular extra training. We have a lot of the trainers and trainees that attend our church, Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church, every Sunday. And we get to see these young guys who are going through the grind, who are learning really hard things because we’re going to put them in the most extreme circumstances out there. They’re going to have to do extraordinary jobs on behalf of our country. And so because of that, they’re getting extraordinary training.
And the same is true of missionaries. Missionaries who don’t know how to learn another language, missionaries who don’t know how to break down a culture—the 14 major areas of culture—missionaries who don’t know how to raise children overseas. What are the major hiccups? What are the key stages of an MK’s development? This is the school that I lead pretty much in a nutshell—Radius International. We train missionaries that go to those last language groups of the world and learn their languages, often translate the Scriptures into their languages. Sometimes we have to break down the languages that they speak into written form. Some of them have never been written before in the history of the world. Those are all specialized skills. To be able to do that, that’s an incredible thing.
But to me, the character component of specialized training is actually more important than the actual academic training. To be able to get up in the morning regularly at an early hour—there’s a reason why at the school that I lead we have early morning workouts. Sometimes missionaries have quite good academic skills. They have a good head for learning languages. They have a good head for exegesis, for breaking down a translation and making sure it’s communicating effectively, but their bodies won’t be able to handle the rigor of overseas. It’s good to be on time sheets. This is something that we teach down at Radius. Only disciplined missionaries are going to see the finish line.
And so, what do disciplined missionaries look like? Well, they look after their day. They make sure that they are using, stewarding their time as best they possibly can. And so those three major areas—being a faithful church member first and foremost, that to me is the quintessential missionary training, to be involved in a local church—but then to know your Bible, to have good Bible training somewhere along the way. And again, much of that happens at a good church under the good preaching of a pastor that regularly exposits the Word. He teaches what the Word means. But that extra Bible training that can come through guys who know certain things—there’s a reason why we send our young people off to seminary training. Most churches don’t have seminary-level or seminary-capable teachers within them.
And then that specialized training for going to hard places, most of the time beyond the English-speaking world, to get to those places to be effective—that’s Radius-type training, or that’s specialized training to get to the ends of the earth. So those three key components—Paul would speak, and I just want to read this—Paul would speak in 1 Timothy 4:7 about the need for training. He says this: “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way as it holds forth promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”
To make sure that you’re living a godly life, that you’re growing in godliness—and to me, that happens primarily in the church, to have people around you that can speak to you about your life, that can call you out on occasion, that can hold you accountable—and then these added levels of training as you walk with that good base, that good solid foundation of being a faithful church member, to grow in your knowledge of your Bible and how to defend it and how to speak of the gospel clearly, and then finally, training that will take you to the ends of the earth, that will give you the tools, the techniques, the way to measure success, the way to know, “Okay, this is how I should be using this day,” or “This is how I should raise my children,” or “This is how we set up a solar system in the middle of the jungle.” This is some of the stuff that we had to do in our training when we went through quite a few years ago. But those three levels of training, to me, make the most effective missionaries.
If you want to be effective in missions, be a faithful church member, know your Bible, and get appropriate training if you’re going to those hardest-to-reach places, those languages of the earth that still have yet to hear of Jesus Christ.
Stephen: Thank you, Brooks. If you are interested in learning more about missionary training and education, you can find resources on our website at missionary.com. You can also find links to Radius International and Greenville Seminary, two organizations that are dedicated to helping missionaries prepare for long-term service on the field. If you have a question you would like to hear answered on Ask Missionary, get in touch with us on X, Instagram, or you can contact us through missionary.com, and your question may be featured here on the show. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show to get notified when our next episode, "Evangelism and Missions: What’s the Difference," airs next week. Thanks for listening.