What's the Plan?
Are we done with missionaries who have no measurable plan?
I spent eight years on the mission field as a traditional missionary, teaching national believers in the Mission Agency’s Bible College. My primary purpose was to prepare young men for ministry and see some of them take the pastorate in place of our church planters. However, to accomplish my purpose, I would need the cooperation of the established churches on the mission field and the churches that were being planted by our missionaries.
About two years into the first term, one of the national pastors looked at me and asked a very significant question, “What’s the Plan?” I understood that to mean, what was the strategy of my mission and my fellow missionaries. Frankly, I cannot recall my answer but I do recall my response. For the next six years, I sought to provoke a discussion at every bi-annual meeting of our missionary team – What’s the Plan? I finally quit the field when I realized there was no real strategy and I was wasting (not providing the greatest value for) the money of those who sent me. It did not help that there were eight pastoral changes in those eight years and five positions were filled by Americans entering the country to take the position. Two other positions were filled by men from Bible schools in other parts of the country and only one of our Bible College students was given an opportunity in a church where the missionary church planter had already moved on.
Written philosophies of ministry are wonderful but rarely measurable. Missionary, What’s the plan? If there are multiple missionary families on the field; Missions Team, What’s the plan? What is your measurable plan to be more than a warm body or bodies doing the work that local people should be doing (hang on to that thought for another segment)?
Before any missionary leaves for the field, the sending church and the missionary should be able to explicitly delineate what the missionary will do with guidelines to determine whether it was done. This does not deny alterations to the original plan or improvements along the way. However, it does demand a plan.
Another problem on the field I served could be described with these words, “Each missionary had achieved an independence that they tenaciously held”. Sending churches and Missions Agencies must work together with the missionaries to promote planning, implementing, coordination and resolution of any issues arising on the field.
What is our strategy? How do we know if what we are doing is achieving our goals? Does everything we do move the mission forward? Does our mission multiply.
