How Do We Discern if Someone in Our Church Has a Genuine Call to Be a Missionary?

How do we discern if someone in our church has a genuine call to be a missionary?

I think if you're going to establish whether someone is called into missions, that's really done at the level of the local church. A candidate might come to the elders and express a desire to honor Christ in their life—and perhaps to do that on the foreign mission field. And I think it's good for the elders to then make sure they know that candidate well, that they understand their life and godliness, that they meet what you might say are something like the character qualifications of an elder.

We need to know whether that person knows the Word of God well, whether that person has a kind of ruggedness for the task to really be faithful and endure long term.

I think also we want to ask questions like: does this person evangelize people now? Do they go after people in our own community? Do they have a good work ethic in their present job? Do they pursue any kind of training? Do we see them serve well in the church?

These are all characteristics we'd want to see with someone. Then there are specific skills: do they have the facility for learning language and cultural analysis? And the only way to find that out is to put them in the midst of training to that end.