“I’m trying to be patient while I wait,” she told me.
She smiled, and yet I could see the disappointment. My friend was ready to be moving overseas. And instead, she seemed to be stuck stateside.
Category: arts
How to Say, “Hey, Kids. We’re Moving Overseas”
Making a difference = a good reason to go overseas?
Rebecca & David’s Story: “We’re Ordinary People”
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Editor’s note: David and Rebecca, regular readers of Go. Serve. Love and self-proclaimed ordinary people, recently contacted us with some crazy-cool news. Together-ready, waiting for God’s direction–they recently became global workers in North Africa, one of the least-reached regions of the world.
And all in a span of about six weeks.
Trends in Missions to Help You Work Smarter: Part 3
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Grab Part 1 and Part 2 Here on trends in missions.
Confession: I’ve never been that trendy of a person. (Maybe you could have guessed that from my regrettable personal trends in the last post?) I have never actually been cool. I have just been a person cool people liked.
But missions trends, see, aren’t on par with whether you listen to Maroon 5 or wear maroon skinny jeans.
Global Missions Trends to Help You Work Smarter: Part 2
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Missed the first post on Global Missions Trends? GRAB IT here.
I don’t know about you, but I do have regrets over some trends in which I was a willing participant.
They include teased bangs. Polka dots. Crispy, overgelled, permed hair. Tight-rolled jeans. White eyeliner.
Missions Trends to Help You Work Smarter: Part 1
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Do you remember your first exposure to global work? At the risk of dating myself, mine involved slideshows, prayer cards for your fridge, and talk about jungles, huts, canoes, and a Peace Child. In third grade, I told Mom I wanted to go to Japan as a missionary.
The great news? Along with our speed-of-light world, missions has changed, too. Missions trends reflect that as a Church, we’re learning from our mistakes (like missions that whiffs of colonialism or cultural appropriation; check out Does Christianity destroy culture?).
How to Build Community as a Missionary Overseas
Reading Time: 7 minutes
Editor’s note: Tucked away in my family room sits a box made of exotic African wood, lugged back using precious luggage weight when my family returned from Uganda. It is one of our most beautiful possessions–not physically, but in its emotional cargo. It was fashioned by hand in the workshop of our organization as one-of-a-kind. Tucked within are loads of letters and laminated photographs of lives we loved and shared in our efforts to build community overseas.
You likely share the goal of my family: to dig in deeply enough to love well, intimately enough to change each other. To work toward the brand of enduring, life-on-life love that models God’s Body.
Emotionally-Healthy Missions: Could It Save Your Ministry?
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Would you believe me if I said emotionally-healthy missions could determine how long you stay overseas? If I said it was a predictable gauge of the longevity and success of your ministry?
You will meet them. I promise: Emotionally-unhealthy missionaries. I wish I could tell you this is a category of people, offering you a litmus test. But in reality, our level of emotional health links closely to our sin.
Sometimes their emotional lack of health pulls them off the field. Other times, it simply creates a toxic environment for disciple-making.
What Racial Discrimination Reminds Us about Overseas Missions
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Perhaps, like me, your gut sinks like a stone over the events of the last few weeks–precipitated by issues centuries old, accentuated by the deaths of people named Ahmaud. Breonna. George. In lieu of online services, my husband and I have led “home church” with our kids about racial discrimination. I’ve talked with beleagured police families, with brown friends.
As a person looking overseas, how have you personally responded to a nation exploding in anger and riots? (Here’s a helpful perspective from The Gospel Coalition: “Oh, God, Make Us Angry.”)