A church we love dearly is excited. In a few weeks a missionary couple in Turkey is returning to this church to report what God has done. The church sent out that couple to the field after the man had served as an elder in the congregation for many years. The church loves and cares for them but wants to find ways to improve. Healthy churches always want to be healthier.

Below is the best way I know how to give them counsel.

#1. Spend Lots of Time with Them

Acts 14:27-28 speaks about the lengthy time the church of Acts spend with Paul the missionary after he returned from his first missionary journey. It is rare to find churches that are concerned about the nations. One way the church can show they are interested is by spending “not a little time” with the missionaries. What kind of time should they spend with missionaries?

Home Visit Time

There’s a different vibe when missionaries are in a person’s home. You notice a side of them you normally don’t see. Christians encourage missionaries when they show interest in them across the dinner table over a plate of lasagne.

Prayer Time

RA Torrey gave several ways to pray for missionaries. Follow these categories when you pray with visiting missionaries. (1) Use the words of Matt. 9:36-38, (2) Pray for missionaries that have already gone out, (3) Pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on different fields, (4) Pray for native converts, (5) Pray for native churches. Torrey wrote:

“The neglect of prayer on the part of the people at home has much to do with the comparative failure of many missionaries on the field.”

Gender Exclusive Time

Yes, meet with the couple together. Then separate. Just the ladies gathering will reveal a side of the missionary wife you’ve never known before. The same is true for the man. Then compare notes. Sometimes the wife will say A and the husband will say B. This may be different perspectives only. Or, it could reveal fault lines that the church could address before it becomes a problem.

Cultural Acclimation Time

Give the missionaries a time to talk about the cultural differences in their field. Here are some examples. “How we counsel a polygamist that comes to Christ.” “How we share the gospel.” “How we greet in the language.” “How we sing in the language.” “How we cook in the culture.” Most congregations have no clue about these things.

Limited Time

Spend much time with the missionaries, but not too much time. Missionaries that travel are with people constantly. They are weary. They often have heavy schedules of preaching, home-schooling, travel and paperwork. Give them time to be alone and rest. Some wives have virtually no time to unwind. They’ve sometimes go years with little help with schooling, no family to relieve them, and no mature church people to help carry the load. So give them respite and make it easy for them to say “yes” to your invitation.

#2. Ask Deliberate Questions

This could be in a Q & A at church. Or it may be in more informal settings like a cookout or a game of hoops.

Here are a dozen sample questions. (1) How are you taking care of your soul? (2) What has been the greatest blessing or two from your last term? (3) What has been the greatest discouragement from your last term? (4) Are you being faithful in Family Worship? (5) Are you taking a day off each week? (6) What are your reading habits like? (7) Who are you accountable to? (8) What are your friendships like? (9) What is your relationship like with your teammates? (10) Are you holding fast to sound doctrine? (11) What are the strains on your marriage? (12) How can we pray for your kids?

Notice there aren’t any “results” questions. There is certainly a time for that. But “heart” questions are superior.

#3. Provide Speaking Engagements

Get the missionaries involved in your church. This may be through music, cooking, visits, or a particular skill they have. Ask them: “Are there some ways you would like to use your spiritual gifts to bless our church during your stay?”

Usually, the male missionary’s gift is preaching. Nine times out of ten, if the prospective missionary can’t preach well at home, you shouldn’t send him abroad. If you don’t want him as your own elder, don’t force him upon someone else. Preaching in a foreign culture is twice as hard. If preaching is his gift, the host church should give him two kinds of speaking engagements.

Place him in your own pulpit

This will give insight into the spiritual growth of the missionary. If the sermon is insightful, you’ll see he has been growing. If it comes with passion, there’s a good chance he’s walking in the Spirit. The opposite will reveal concerns.

His preaching will also help the congregation. Visiting missionaries have ethos. Their experience yields more authority to their sermon. A four-year veteran missionary has more authority than a zero-year missionary that preaches on the same text.

Consider this real life bad example. While the missionary is on the field, a supporting church gains a different senior pastor. He doesn’t know the missionary that his new church has partnered with for a dozen years. He’s the Pharaoh that knew not Joseph. The new pastor doesn’t want this missionary to speak. He doesn’t know him. He gives him a few minutes on a Sunday night.

Churches ought not do this. If the church doesn’t know the missionary or believes he is not gifted for his task, they should not partner with him.

Place the missionary in other pulpits

Pastors and churches should consider helping the missionary get in other churches. The missionaries have been on the field for years. They do not have contacts like the church back home. For example, Pastor x loves missionaries y in Asia. The family and ministry of the missionaries has grown three-fold since the last term. They need more support. Pastor x should use his relationships in the area as a bridge to help missionary y partner with new churches. Members could set up other churches in appropriate ways as well.

#4. Get the Kids Involved

There’s a term “Third-Culture Kids”. It refers to children that are raised in a place other than their passport. They develop a cultural identity that is neither multi-cultural or bi-cultural. There’s a book by David Polluck called Third Culture Kids addressing the difficulties and challenges military/missionary kids face. Examples in cultural differences include pointing, eye contact, diet, clothing, and hand shaking.

Churches should take special care with the missionary children. MKs often feel left out. They’re not simply “weird MKs.” They’re just in a new place surrounded by new customs.

Plan outlets for the children to learn and see and experience their home culture. Let them be kids. Some children may know very little English depending on their field. Love them and show them grace.

#5. Consider Practical and Business Matters

Some missionaries are so dedicated, they’re not thinking about important business matters back home. They may even feel guilty about saving money. After all, churches are giving money to see schools built and souls saved, not college tuition.

Most churches have financial and investment experts that can help missionaries think through these things. For example, are the missionaries saving up for retirement? There are many former missionaries that are still being supported by churches even though they’ve long since returned to the US because they have no retirement savings. Ask the missionaries about this, along with their financial situation and their long term plans.

Then there are practical matters for their furlough like vehicles and housing. Vehicles can be difficult to procure depending on the mission board, home roots and the size of their family. There are some organizations dedicated to this very thing, but the churches would be wise to ask their missionaries about this.

If you are the sending church, are your missionaries settled with long-term housing for their furlough? Will they have a comfortable place to land? Don’t assume each term is the same. Parents die. Congregations change. Loved ones move.

Short-term housing (like a few day visit) is also important. Plan far in advance. While it’s often better to have the missionaries stay with families than in a hotel, remember that when missionaries are in another person’s home, they’re on the clock. Joy is high, rest is low.

#6. Don’t Forget to Counsel

Should churches listen to the missionary’s stories and give them time to unwind and be honest? Yes. But churches should also speak truth to them. They should counsel wisely about what they see. This may be affirmation or rebuke. With the former, it may look like this: “Jim, I know the fruit may be small out there in Japan, but I can see your hard work and gifting in language translation. Keep it up!” With the latter, it may look like this: “Tom, I have a couple concerns about the books you’ve been reading. Moreover, I’ve noticed your children are fearful and often rebellious toward your authority. Could we please talk about this?”

In the book of Acts, the brothers often directed Paul in his missionary journeys. “Go down the wall”, they’d say, or, “go to this next city”. Paul wasn’t a Maverick. He leaned on the counsel of friends and church authority.

#7. Labor to Improve Future Communication

Some of the problems on the mission field could be fixed simply by better communication with their churches back home. This is easier now than it has ever been. You’ve heard of Netflix binges. Missionaries of old used to Letter Binge. They’d not hear from back home for a year. Then they’d get reams of letters off the ship and read them for two days straight.

Now we have technology that changes all of that, even in the poorest of countries. Back in 2009 I was on the Comorian Islands. It was extremely poor but they knew the moment Michael Jackson died because they all had cell phones.

Here are three practical ways churches can improve their communication with their missionaries.

(1) Assign a deacon to each missionary family. This will take a big load off the pastor.

(2) Press Control + R. This is the shortcut key for “reply” on most computers. Surprisingly, few people reply to missionary prayer letters. If a missionary has a mailing list of 700 people, maybe seven reply. It’s sad. It’s common. You don’t need to reply with a sermon, just a couple lines of encouragement and perhaps a Bible verse. “Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country” (Pr. 25:25).

(3) Get on Whatsapp. It’s free. Outside of the US, Australia, China and a few outliers, Whatsapp is the most common messaging app around the world. Talk. Video. Text. Form a group with the missionary and the flock back home.

Conclusion

There are many ways the missionary should serve the church. That’s a post for another time. Here, we learned seven practical ways the church can care for visiting missionaries. This is a great way they can help carry out the Great Commission.