We landed at a military base in West Africa in sweltering heat, deplaned, and walked a quarter mile to the terminal, escorted by men carrying AK-47 assault rifles. I vividly recall my wife, Karin, leaning over the shoulder of our young daughters and asking, “David, what have you brought us to?” At that moment, I wasn’t sure myself.
However, once inside an even hotter building, we were greeted by the smiling face of Terry, our missions organization’s travel coordinator, who guided us swiftly through customs and immigration, loaded us and our seventy-pound boxes into waiting taxis, and took us to the agency’s guest house in anticipation of the next day’s long drive to our destination city.
By flashlight that first night, Karin sprayed a protective bug-repellent barrier on the floor around the girls’ beds, and in the darkness, we entrusted ourselves to those invisible hands from which no one could snatch us (John 10:28–30). The coming year would test and prove that trust more than at any other time in our lives.
The lessons I’ve learned during my time in missions (on the field and then as a missions pastor) are too numerous to mention here, but three stand out: song, service, and support.
1. Sing the Gospel
Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth!
Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples! (Psalm 96:1–3)
These words are both an anthem and a pledge — a call for the church and for all the earth to sing worshipful praise to God, followed by a command for all who know him to pledge our oath of allegiance to him. The force of verse 3 hit home to me at the 1968 Urbana Missionary conference, where, along with fifteen thousand other students, I heard my seminary president, Edmund Clowney, zero in on that verse as “the church’s international pledge of allegiance.”
That was great for the pledging part of missions, but I don’t remember hearing about the singing mentioned in verses 1–2. Why does the psalmist start with singing and blessing God’s name before he calls God’s people to declare his glory? It wasn’t until much later that I understood, through the combined impact of verses 1–2 and verse 3, that affections underscore and motivate missions.
In other words, we can’t just say the message of salvation to the nations; we have to sing it as well. Why? Because that kind of heralding more authentically shows lost sinners both the glory of the gospel and the effect it has had on us. Conversely, without Holy Spirit–awakened and grace-enabled emotions (like the happiness of the psalmist’s new songs and high praises), I probably won’t go on mission for Jesus in the first place. And if I do, my half-hearted witness may blunt or even contradict the matchless worth of my Savior.
This is lesson number one in every Christian missionary’s calling: to so personally treasure God in Christ above all else that we cannot help but declare his glory among our neighbors and spread his fame among the nations. Proclaim the gospel with song.
2. Use Expert Services
Beginning in the mid-1980s, under the catalytic leadership of our preaching pastor and the church’s first missions pastor, scores of singles and couples in our church heard the call of our missionary God to fill the earth with his glory. They went out — primarily to what missiologists call “the 10/40 window” — to labor among the billions of our world’s least-reached people. A few years before us, two staff pastors and their families joined the outsurge. They were granted a year’s missionary leave of absence from their posts at the church. Then my family and I got to take a turn.
We sought and received the elders’ permission to seek a full-service missions sending agency. These agencies interview and evaluate candidates, put those who qualify through training, require that they submit a realistic annual budget, and ensure that they raise and maintain the funds required for the field. In addition, they match incoming missionaries with a place of service and a team for which they’re suited, assign them a field supervisor, see that they’re properly escorted to the field, take responsibility for their welfare while serving, and thoroughly debrief them when they return home.
Good agencies demand more, take more time, and cost more than other paths to the field, but they are worth it. As a sending church, we’ve learned the hard way about the consequences of settling for low-budget organizations that can offer missionaries a mailing address for legal tax-deductible status but not much else. As a result, we no longer partner as a sending church with such easy pass-through agencies.
In our own agency search, God quickly led us to one with a hundred years of missions history. On the very first phone call, our placement officer quickly assured me, “Oh yes, David, we have the perfect place for you, your wife, and your children. We can provide all four of your requests: an English-language teaching post, an in-town K-12 missionary school for your four daughters, a move-in-ready house, and a nearby Western dentist who will be thrilled for a hygienist like your wife.” And all he promised, the agency delivered over the next year.
The services of expert mission agencies have proved to be of inestimable value for us. Missionaries should not settle for anything less.
3. Raise Robust Home Support
On the field, we quickly learned the indispensable value of layered support and accountability. In country, we came to treasure George, my boss at the seminary; Immanuel and Lydia, our pastor and his wife; Sunday and Grace, our best African friends on our compound; Dwight and Miriam, a fellow seminary professor and his wife, who nursed two of us through all kinds of new illnesses (including malaria); and Yakubu, my faithful Hausa language helper.
Meanwhile, back home, our church’s elders had exercised their authority by granting us permission to go in the first place and authorizing some of the initial funding to do so. Further, they also mandated that we partner with the sending agency described above, which provided a team to welcome us on the field. But nearest and dearest to us were the nine people on our Barnabas Team, a group dedicated to supporting us from afar. Their nonstop, long-distance, active love made us the envy of any other missionary who heard about them. Few other missionaries enjoyed such a faithful home team that regularly prayed, wrote, phoned, and even visited us. I can hardly overestimate the impact this group of men and women had on us.
The highlight of their support came on December 31, when Patrick, our Barnabas Team leader, made the intercontinental trip and arrived at our door with Christmas presents. He became a hero to us, as well as the talk of the whole compound. Few things uplift frontline workers more than having Barnabas-type visitors from home. Likewise, few things will spread the vision of God’s global cause back home better than returning visitors’ reports of what they saw and tasted, what they laughed and wept over, and the blessing they received far beyond what they may have given up.
In sum, sing the gospel, use expert services, and raise home support. Ask God for exuberant hearts for him, use experienced agencies all along the way, and find home-church members who are eager to send and support “in a manner worthy of God” (3 John 6). His glory is worth declaring among the nations.