This is not so much a stage, as an imperative the longer you are away from home. While you have hopefully built a PACTeam or equivalent back home and have good communication with them, you also need onsite relationships to be strong as well. Your eco-system will hopefully include good local friends as well as others in your team, your family – and of course a strong walk with God Himself. Compromise will be required, but mutual care and support will be the mainstay.

Many testify to the depth of friendships that are built on the field. But we need to be aware of how easily tensions can arise across cultural boundaries – we usually are alert to these in the host culture but can be blindsided by misunderstandings with others in an intercultural team!

We talk frequently about the ‘Bathtub Syndrome’, which depicts a common experience for missionaries on the field. The times when, statistically, interest from back home is at its highest are when the mission partner has just gone to the field and when, sometime later, they are just about to come back. In between, there can be a long period when they are likely to feel that they are ‘out of sight and out of mind’. Sad but true. Please don’t let that happen to anyone you have been responsible for sending. Please make sure you stay in touch.

Congregations and leadership teams will inevitably change over time. Consider how you can ensure that mission partners do not fall by the wayside during these handovers. Again, good communication with your field worker will help them to remain engaged with the church.

The sending church needs to find all sorts of ways to ‘come alongside’ their mission partners, even though they are far away, see the Waverley Abbey course on Paraclesis below.

Congregations and leadership teams will inevitably change over time. Consider how you can ensure that mission partners do not fall by the wayside during these handovers. Again, good communication with your field worker will help them to remain engaged with the church.

The sending church needs to find all sorts of ways to ‘come alongside’ their mission partners, even though they are far away, see the Waverley Abbey course on Paraclesis below.

This is not so much a stage, as an imperative the longer you are away from home. While you have hopefully built a PACTeam or equivalent back home and have good communication with them, you also need onsite relationships to be strong as well. Your eco-system will hopefully include good local friends as well as others in your team, your family – and of course a strong walk with God Himself. Compromise will be required, but mutual care and support will be the mainstay.

Many testify to the depth of friendships that are built on the field. But we need to be aware of how easily tensions can arise across cultural boundaries – we usually are alert to these in the host culture but can be blindsided by misunderstandings with others in an intercultural team!

We talk frequently about the ‘Bathtub Syndrome’, which depicts a common experience for missionaries on the field. The times when, statistically, interest from back home is at its highest are when the mission partner has just gone to the field and when, sometime later, they are just about to come back. In between, there can be a long period when they are likely to feel that they are ‘out of sight and out of mind’. Sad but true. Please don’t let that happen to anyone you have been responsible for sending. Please make sure you stay in touch.

Congregations and leadership teams will inevitably change over time. Consider how you can ensure that mission partners do not fall by the wayside during these handovers. Again, good communication with your field worker will help them to remain engaged with the church.

The sending church needs to find all sorts of ways to ‘come alongside’ their mission partners, even though they are far away, see the Waverley Abbey course on Paraclesis below.

Congregations and leadership teams will inevitably change over time. Consider how you can ensure that mission partners do not fall by the wayside during these handovers. Again, good communication with your field worker will help them to remain engaged with the church.

The sending church needs to find all sorts of ways to ‘come alongside’ their mission partners, even though they are far away, see the Waverley Abbey course on Paraclesis below.