One of the questions that churches often ask us is, “What are best practices in missions?” While we have a list we can give, I often reply first by asking, “To do what?”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this! I must be dreaming! I never thought I would hear an American say such things! For years we have been treated like slaves by Americans.

This changes everything.”  

Because I spent many of the formative years of my childhood living in Muleshoe, Texas, I have a fondness for the mule. After all, that was our school mascot. I've cheered for mules at pep rallies and rooted for mules at many ballgames. "Kick-em, Mules, Kick-em." But mules have one major weakness…

“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.”

Why are some places open to the gospel and other places closed? Why does freedom of religion and prosperity seem to erode the power of the church, and persecution seems to purify and empower the church?

I’m not big on household chores, but at the top of my “hate to do” list is cleaning my instruments of cleaning.

What does this have to do with global missions? Read on to find out!

Ken Shumard graduated to glory last week. If you don’t have connections with Churches of Christ in Atlanta, you likely don’t know who he was, but Ken was a powerful man of God who liked to work in the background. If you didn’t know his name, he would be pleased about that, but he did want you to know Jesus’ name and follow him.

“Well, that didn’t turn out like I expected.” – every Christian worker ever, everywhere 

Ministry in any country rarely goes as planned. We had a picture in our head of what God wanted to do, and we moved in concert with that vision only to find out that our expectations were off. Frequently they were way off. Maybe that is because we didn’t have the right vision. Perhaps we were projecting our ideas on God’s call. Or maybe we just don’t understand how God works with limited creatures like ourselves.

“You really need to go visit the Holy Land! Nothing will make God come to life like walking where Jesus and all the other biblical characters walked. God is present there like nowhere else.”

I’ve heard countless statements like this for nearly 40 years of my ministry life. They come from people who have experienced massive life changes at some place/event and are so grateful that they become evangelists for the particular ministry that blessed them.

God’s dreams are bigger than ours, and his work is not bounded by our imagination. His time frame is not ours, either, and when he delivers on his promises, we often find it looks very different from what we imagined.

“I’ll be home for Christmas” is rarely the favorite song of global kingdom workers. Even if they can get home for Christmas, they probably aren’t sure where that is. And they are not the only ones.

I’ve made a case for changing our language for global workers because of issues surrounding the title “missionary.” However, even if I’ve made a compelling case and you’ve bought into the need to make this change, that doesn’t mean you have a clear path forward for implementing such a change.

There are more thoughts to consider as we examine the issues associated with the word “missionary.”

How can an organization named Mission Resource Network even consider stopping their use of the word "missionary"? And why would we want to do so? That's a big subject that will take several blog articles to explain. But I think the time has come for us to wrestle with the complex and troubling history that is inescapably bound up with the word "missionary."

The last blog article from one of my MRN co-workers prompted a lot of great questions and comments. I've really appreciated the feedback and will write future blogs to address some of the things I heard. However, one response seems very common among Americans, even those who are deeply immersed in cross-cultural relationships

In my last blog, I shared about differences and confusions between cultures that communicate directly versus indirectly. Many of us have recognized these differences but have not understood them.

Few things in life are more challenging to manage than conflict. But even fewer things are more common. We don't always agree. We want our way, and we want to preserve our relationships with others who disagree. That's a recipe for trouble. It doesn't matter how close we are, how much we love each other, or how similar our thinking is; we still won't always agree. Conflict is part of life and is never easy, especially with people who are important to us.

It is unusual for every Christian to have a personal copy of the Bible, from a historical perspective. We take it for granted that everyone can read their copy of the Bible by themselves so much that we make it an indispensable practice for spiritual health. While I’m all for every follower of Jesus reading their Bibles regularly, and I do so as part of my daily routine, there are some downsides to private Bible reading.

It is a given that all followers of Jesus should seek to be people of integrity. However, because ethical practices are partly determined by cultural values and expectations, being honorable people can be complicated when we engage in cross-cultural partnerships. Without realizing it, Americans can cause their international partners to lose credibility as good people in their local settings.

The pandemic has been hard for everyone everywhere. We could unpack all the struggles for many pages. At MRN, it was hard for us not to be able to travel internationally for well over a year. It isn't just that it was impossible to complete some of our work from the States or that Zoom is less effective than in-person meetings. Even more challenging was the emotional hit our staff took in our motivation when we could not see the impact of our work in person.

While this can be good because we can share stories of what God is doing around the world and get more people excited and involved, it has some significant downsides we need to think through and train for before we send people, or go, on STMs.

“Indeed, it is as though Christianity, wherever it went in the modern colonies, inverted its sense of hospitality. It claimed to be the host, the owner of the spaces it entered, and demanded native peoples enter its cultural logics, its ways of being in the world, and its conceptualities.” – Willie James Jennings

“I can’t get many people in my world interested in global missions. It seems to many of them that missions is a black hole that consumes vast resources and produces little impact.”

“When the Missionaries came, they brough us the Bread of Life in the plastic bag of western culture. We ate it in the bag, never really tasted it, and now we are constipated.”

“Brother Bouchelle, how do we defeat the Pentecostals?” This was one of the more surprising questions anyone ever asked me.

There is much we can learn from businesspeople. There is a place to talk about efficiency and impact. We are called to be good stewards. That said, there are times when God calls us to do things that don't make sense to the business mind. Not everything God is up to can be justified on a balance sheet.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” - Eph. 6:12

Missions is fraught with challenges because it is based on partnerships between people who are separated across vast distances of space, culture, training, experience, expertise, and roles. What is not as well understood is the gap in understanding between field workers and many of their donors.

The COVID-19 pandemic created endless problems and shut many things down. But it also gave us a chance to step back and evaluate what we were so busy doing that we may have lost an objective perspective on it. In at least that respect, the pandemic was a gift hidden in a tragedy. This is certainly true when it comes to short term missions (STM).

It was a perplexing time for me. While things looked good on the surface at the church where I served, I could see massive obstacles ahead and didn’t know how to move through them without losing the critical mass of the congregation in the process. The demographic trends were going to overwhelm us in the next decade. I did not know what to do. We were working too hard for the results we were seeing.