Specially Stressed
by Andy Johnson
MRN Missionary Care Director
Stress is a part of life – yours, mine, ours. Living a truly stress-free life is not only impossible but would be – let’s be honest – probably more than a little boring. Stress drives us to improve ourselves, drives us to create new solutions to old problems, and drives every good plot line to every good book.
Stress, inappropriately managed and too intense for too long, also cripples. The American Institute of Stress (sounds ike a fun place to work...) reports that up to 75-90% of all visits to family doctors are related to stress. i Stress is in no way a mental problem only; it is empirically proven to affect virtually every system in your body. Additionally. I believe it is one of the ways our enemy can drive a wedge between us and our God or His mission, significantly impacting our souls as well.
Cross-cultural workers are an inordinately stressed-out bunch of people. Illustrations, explanations, and reasons for this abound. I’ve created a three-minute video explanation of some of them here (“Cross Cultural Stress”). Hamilton Burke explains in The Intense Stress of International Service (a very useful read for workers and churches alike!) that if a typical new worker were to consider their life on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), they would score 463 ii .
In case you’re wondering, a score of anything over 300 indicates an 80% chance of developing a significant illness in the next two years.
Here’s the thing – the SRRS isn’t even designed for cross-cultural workers. That score, which puts them more than 50% over the very highest line, does not include any of the stresses unique to the missionary life. Those unique stressors, and a few thoughts on how to support through them, are the focus of the rest of this article.
Specially Stressed
Before diving into this list, let me begin with a caveat – I am aware that many of the things about which I’m writing below affect people everywhere and not just on the field. They are on the list, though, because they either affect international workers in a unique way or in ways that are especially difficult to address from the field.
Feeling inadequate or incompetent: First-day-on-the-job jitters are a real thing. When your job description is ‘all things to all people to win a few,’ that adds a special level of panic to the experience! What makes this stressor such a challenge is that it is true. If a team is tackling Kingdom work in the right way, they are inadequate. Most of the worthwhile things in life are those that are bound to fail if God doesn’t show up in a special way. That truth, though, is hard to embrace in daily life.
Language barriers: Language learning is not humbling; it’s humiliating. Educated, functional leaders in their communities and churches (people worthy of your support!) show up on the field and are immediately unable to find a bathroom or buy bread. Additionally, there’s the extra challenge of learning culture that must accompany language learning. Never forget that dealing with bad days in your second (or third) language is always going to be that much harder.
Culture stress: Culture shock is about a moment, a specific interaction that catches you off-guard and causes you to retreat either from the situation or from good manners (yes, I’ve done both). Long-term culture stress builds over time as things like differences in values, conceptions of time, importance of task and relationship, individualistic and communal demands, etc., reveal themselves. Unless cross-cultural workers adapt (and adopt!), culture stress will ultimately prove more difficult to deal with than surprising foods and are much harder to put into words for their senders to understand.
Financial pressure: As workers raise their funds in answer to their calling, they battle all kinds of stereotypes. One of the most harmful of these is the idea that they ought to be poor, that they should live check-to-check while on support. Not only do we not expect this to be the aim of any other career choice, it actually winds up impeding their ability to serve because precious resources are spent in constant worry or fund raising or both.
Family concerns: Global workers are ultimately regular people following an extraordinary calling. They experience struggles in being single/newly-weds/young parents/parents of teenagers, too. The difference is that discerning the best school option for your third grader or launching your high school senior or discovering how to care for your aging parents is only made more difficult when done across time zones and language or culture barriers.iii
Role or identity change: In a peculiar (though not entirely unique) way, being a cross-cultural worker is both a job and an identity. You are one to a much greater extent than you do it, something that people who leave their work behind at 5:00 have difficulty understanding. This challenge affects people on both ends of their career on the field, both as they transition in and as they transition out…which brings me to my next point!
Constant transition: Transition is the name of the game in cross-cultural work. While I often coach people in what it takes to progress across the transition bridge, the reality is that the people moving between worlds rarely are able to settle; they always know on some level that they are impermanent.
Transportation difficulties: International workers are more likely to be injured or killed in a traffic accident than from disease, persecution, terrorism, and crime put together! iv Combine that fact with the challenges of finding reliable transportation while living abroad, and suddenly your commute to work seems less daunting. Governmental inefficiency: Imagine your absolute worst experience with getting your driver’s license renewed. Get rid of the air conditioning. Multiply the number of people in line ahead of you by five (and, while you’re at it, get rid of the idea of ‘lines’). Consider the fact that the officer who gives you a form does not have the required stamps for it. Do it in your third language. Now bind all of it together with an understanding of spiritual opposition to your success. At this point you have a small taste of what getting a visa renewed is like.
Governmental inefficiency: Imagine your absolute worst experience with getting your driver’s license renewed. Get rid of the air conditioning. Multiply the number of people in line ahead of you by five (and, while you’re at it, get rid of the idea of ‘lines’). Consider the fact that the officer who gives you a form does not have the required stamps for it. Do it in your third language. Now bind all of it together with an understanding of spiritual opposition to your success. At this point you have a small taste of what getting a visa renewed is like.
Life/Ministry balance: Not many of us excel at maintaining healthy boundaries; people in ministry fail even more often. Those with a sense of urgency for the lost and for the expansion of the Kingdom struggle even more. In some sense, many global workers live with the (self-imposed) pressure that any rest or vacation they take is a sign of weakness and damages the expansion of the Kingdom. It’s a lie, and it’s unhealthy, but it’s pretty widespread.
Living with risk: International living is complicated. Those who take it on for Kingdom reasons do so with an enemy who hates them and the God they serve and who works tirelessly to hurt or expel them. Being constantly situationally and spiritually aware takes a toll.
Some things to do about Stress as Senders
Listen deeply. Pay attention to and honor your workers when they reach out to you. Don’t dismiss or downplay their concerns and certainly don’t try to show how hard you’ve got it.
Listen often. Make regular connection with your worker a priority in your life. Keep showing up. Keep asking good questions.
Pray. Pray with them. Pray for them. Point them toward the Father when appropriate.
Ask about their kids. Ask about their coworkers. Ask about national partners. Show interest in the people around them.
Free them from unrealistic expectations you discern they’ve placed on themselves, often in the name of satisfying supporters.
Ask about serving them. Having listened well, honor them by digging deeper to find how you or others can serve them. It’s kind to offer before they have to ask.
Follow through! Once they trust you with a need or a desire, follow through on whatever commitments you make to them.
Some things to do about Stress as Workers
Breathe. Take a step back. Turn stressful interactions into opportunities for learning and relationship building.
Remember that He is God and you are not. Strive for perspective on your role in (and importance to) the work.
Trust trustworthy people. Particularly try to assume the best behind the actions of those who are trying to provide care for you. Be honest with them.
Talk. Bottling up your stress never leads anywhere helpful. Whether a pastoral or clinical care provider, find someone to talk to. If you don’t know anyone, reply to this email, and I’ll talk to you!
Be curious. Work to discover why your new friends do things the way they do.
Pursue God. Never forget that the first and most important layer of care is your relationship with your Father.
May the God of all grace, the One who declared His Son Jesus to be the Prince of Peace, surround you and all in your house with the peace of the Christ and fill you with the power that comes from the Spirit to bring Him glory in all circumstances – especially when specially stressed!
i https://www.stress.org/americas-1-health-problem
ii Burke, Hamilton. The Intense Stress of International Service. Page 47.
iii Thankfully there is ongoing research into the special stressors missionaries feel. For instance, here is a link to a survey you or your worker could participate in to help researchers understand the challenges of serving aging parents from the field.
iv Burke, 78.