|
MentorNet # 12 — Missionary
Team Building Things that
a © 2003
George Patterson and Galen Currah Missionaries
often ask for advice to build teams. Five questions about missionary team
building have kept arising over the last thirty years. We try to answer them
here. None of these answers is infallible or true
everywhere. Use these
observations as a checklist when seeking to build teams or solve team
problems, especially with North Americans. 1.
Why bother forming missionary teams? v
Jesus and His apostles always worked as task groups, except when held in detention by authorities. To work alone often
leads to discouragement and burnout, to crippling decisions and to moral
failures. v
Younger American adults — like most non-Westerners — seek to work in
a closely-knit community. Let them find it on their team. Caution: Include national workers
on your team when on the field. Reorganize and form several teams or task
groups at the same time, so that expatriates do not outnumber the nationals.
Let nationals lead the teams as soon as possible, while expatriates coach
them from behind the scenes. v
The work requires a variety of coordinated gifts and skill sets. Seek
variety and balance. The spiritual DNA that the team carries to reproduce the
life of the mother church body on
the field, in daughter church bodies,
is best carried by a body—the team.
Loners usually start weak churches, deficient from birth, which lack certain
vital ministries or spiritual virtues. This is because their genetic code is
incomplete. v
The team can model Christian character and unity for new national
workers and churches. v
Sometimes mission agencies throw us together and we must survive
together. This requires renewed efforts to follow these guidelines. v
North American individualism requires special training, especially
for doing incarnational evangelism and giving birth
to a church. Caution 1: Do not use the word
“personal” to describe faith in the sense of being private. That would destroy your ability to work through families
and networks of friends. God does not see seekers as isolated individuals.
The apostles always went at once to the families of seekers. Christ let
Zacheus and Levi gather their friends at once, in order to let the gospel
flow. Caution 2: When starting a new church
or cell in the home of a seeker or new believer, do not let Satan make you
flee at the first bit of opposition, into a rented building or the home of a
missionary. James 4:7 tells us to resist the devil and he will flee from us.
Stick with it. Deal with paganism’s counterattacks within the homes and
within the culture, or you risk starting a culturally irrelevant work that
fails to attract the entire family. v
Sending churches want to know that their personnel are cared for. Keep them informed of both progress and problems.
Name an “advocate” inside sending churches for each team, who will pass on
brief reports to pastors to give during worship time and to keep people
praying for the new work. 2. What do the more effective
expatriate teams do? They... v
See themselves as a temporary scaffold, not
the edifice—the national church—that Christ is building. (He did not say,
“Upon this rock I will build my missionary team.”) v
Are small, having fewer then six workers. v
Have the skills to do all the things that Jesus sent them to do. v
Can change their intermediate goals and methods as
they adapt to the culture. If they do not make at least one radical change
during a year, then they are probably stuck in a harmful rut. v
Keep on learning the local language and culture. v
Plant and reproduce cell groups (small churches) before going to
another culture. v
Are of similar ages—less than ten years’
difference. v
Have a gift balance that allows a wide variety of ministry efforts. Caution: Some agencies require so
much education that only academic types with the gift of teaching end up on
the team—a devastating mistake! v
Serve together before going cross-cultural. v
Agree together on their vision, goals and general methods. v
Restructure as short-lived, task groups at least annually. v
Maintain their Western style team worship separate from the emerging
churches’ style. v
Allow specialization, mistakes and some budgetary freedom. 3.
What do effective mixed expatriate
and national teams do? They... v
Maintain a balance of one expatriate to five or so nationals. v
Ensure that expatriates have needed skills to transfer. If they lack
them, then they should call in someone temporarily to model the skills. v
Require that expatriates serve mainly in the background as coaches. v
Choose expatriates who have experience with living in community. v
Have a working agreement between the sending agency and the national
church or organization that receives them. v
Have training in cross-cultural understanding. (Contact [email protected])
v
Adopt local cultural expressions, especially in new churches. v
Have found a “common culture” or forum in which to discuss and assess
ideas safely without risk to their teamwork or to local cultures. 4. What common pitfalls must we
avoid? v
Danger: Spending more time
maintaining the “scaffold” (missionary team) than building the edifice (the
national church). v
Danger: Creating and maintaining
a national scaffold (church planting team) after their own likeness—nationals
can repeat the mistakes and culturally irrelevant practices of their
missionaries. v
Danger: Making the expatriate
team the model for the emerging church. v
Danger: Seeking to increase the
numbers of expatriates on the team more than nationals. v
Danger: Expatriates with pastoral
gifts ignoring their teammates, wanting to pastor the national church as it
emerges. v
Danger: Seeking to recruit more new expatriates without regard for a healthy balance of
spiritual gifts. v
Danger: Agencies recruiting and
assigning personnel without regard for field realities and needs. v
Danger: Settling in for the long
term to accomplish short-term ministries. 5. Why not simply send Western
dollars to national workers who will serve for only a few dollars a day and
already know the language and culture? v
This has worked well in some circumstances and failed miserably in
others, among the cases that we have seen or investigated. v
Partnering works best. Missionaries
from the West often provide training and resources to “jump start” national
mission endeavors. Partnering has yielded better
results in the cases we have observed, than the results either obtains by
working alone—provided that the partnership is genuine, with mutual love,
respect and unselfish sharing of authority. v
To send money without proper accounting and accountability along the
whole span of the operation inevitably leads to the following errors: Greed. The dollars attract money-hungry workers and national
organizations whose main motive is wealth—not church reproduction. Fear. National workers, fearing that the “pie” (the funds from the
West) will be cut into smaller portions if they
start new churches, fail to sustain their church planting movement. Dependency. National workers,
especially pastors, soon come to rely on Western aid and to neglect Christian
stewardship within their churches. Independent spirit. National agencies with
expatriate resources operate without regard for the national churches that
trained and supplied their personnel. Disobedience. Jesus’ Great Commission,
to “go” and disciple the neglected people groups, applies to churches of both
East and West—not just to those that are geographically near to them. Disorder. When
new, spiritually immature churches send untrained missionaries, they commit
the errors mentioned under the questions listed above. New workers from a
newly developed field need to partner with
experienced workers who mentor them, so they can follow the positive
guidelines listed above. Division. If some workers receive
pay from the outside and others don't, serious
resentment and division almost always occur. To find mentoring tools
and sites, visit <http://www.MentorAndMultiply.com>. We invite those who use
Train & Multiply™ to write to George Patterson at <[email protected]>. For information on T&M™, visit <http://www.TrainAndMultiply.com>. For information on Paul
& Timothy Training, visit <http://www.Paul-Timothy.net>. For
information on "Come, Let Us Disciple the Nations" (CD-ROM) <http://www.AcquireWisdom.com>. Order the Church Multiplication Guide from http://www.acquirewisdom.com/products.html. |