How an innovative internship changed a missionary’s trajectory—and a church’s heart for missions.
It was a shot in the dark, but that was all Angela had left.
In May 2022, Angela showed up at First Free in St. Louis, Missouri, on a Sunday morning straight from the airport, luggage in tow. She wasn’t expecting much to come from it. Visiting a church cold turkey usually doesn’t.
But desperation makes you willing to try anything.
In 2019, Angela had returned home to Ohio after spending two fruitful, energizing years with ReachGlobal in Athens, Greece. Less than half a percent of Greece’s population is evangelical Christian, and God gave Angela a deep love for Greek people and culture. She knew God was calling her to return for long-term ministry, helping to revitalize and strengthen the local church. So, she went through the long-term application process with ReachGlobal and made the transition to become a career missionary. With it, the budget she needed to raise nearly doubled.
Angela was just starting to raise additional support when the pandemic hit. Months of lockdowns, personal illness, and turmoil in her home church brought her support-raising process to a grinding halt. And she just couldn’t get it going again. After almost three years, she was defeated and demoralized and questioned whether she would ever get back to Greece.
During that time, Angela tried just about everything. She had contacted everyone she knew. She had offered to speak at any possible venue that would host her. Once, she even set up a table outside of a car show! She reached out to hundreds of EFCA churches. Yet she’d hardly received any response at all.
I had the joy of walking with Angela on this journey. Go here on the EFCA blog to read the rest of the story!
This piece assumes you are familiar with the story of Renee Bach, which was recently depicted in the documentary Savior Complex on HBO, but also in the 2020 podcast series called The Missionary.
I have a lot of sympathy for Renee Bach because I could have been her.
I remember questioning whether a college education was worth the price when so many in Africa urgently needed that money and my help. If I had gotten the notion in my idealistic head that it was possible to go to Africa at age 19 and start a charity, I might have jumped on the next plane.
Did Renee Bach have a Savior Complex? Absolutely. So did I. So do a lot of young people. It might not be about missions for all of them – it might be climate change or racial reconciliation or anti-sex trafficking or gender equality or whatever is the current hot-button topic – but young people are known for their passion and idealism. Renee’s intentions were noble, and she helped to save babies’ lives. Isn’t this a good thing? It sure is a lot more inspiring than playing video games in the basement.
But young people don’t know what they don’t know, and this is what the adults in their lives need to help them see. So when I consider Renee’s story, that’s the part that strikes me as the avoidable tragedy.
I’m not sure what was in the water in Jinja, Uganda, that caused dozens of young American women to zip over and start charities all by themselves. (We never saw this trend in Tanzania.) Renee moved to Uganda the same year that Katie Davis published her New York Times bestseller Kisses from Katie about doing the exact thing. Katie was the darling of the evangelical world that year, so why would Renee question if this was a wise move?
Living as a foreigner taught me how to live as a Christian
Imagine you read this in a newsletter from a cross-cultural missionary:
We didn’t expect Hindu beliefs to be so strange. We were expecting the people to think more like us, and their differences are making us very uncomfortable, even angry.
We are especially worried about how Hindu beliefs are influencing us and our children. We don’t want to expose ourselves to these lies. We only let a few safe people, usually other missionaries, into our home. We want our children to have only good Christian influences in their lives.
Would you question whether these missionaries understood what they signed up for? Would you wonder if they are having any impact at all? This is not a true story, but there’s something to notice here: all Christians have been given the same Great Commission, yet sometimes we hold missionaries to a different standard than we hold ourselves. Can the missionary life illustrate God’s intention for all believers?
When a foreign country felt like home
I was a missionary kid in Africa for half of my childhood, and then my husband and I lived in Tanzania, East Africa, for 16 years. We adapted to driving on the left side of the road. We figured out how to combat millipedes and centipedes. We learned to snorkel; we knew where to buy the best roadside barbequed chicken; we hailed three-wheeled rickshaw taxis in Swahili. We formed tight bonds in the community. Life in Tanzania was not always easy, but we felt we belonged there. Visiting the States felt stressful; Tanzania felt like home.
Yet, no matter how much I wanted Tanzania to be my home, it never really could be. Tangible reminders of my status as a foreigner followed me everywhere. Every two years, I had to reapply for a residence permit. I was not permitted to own a home. I could not vote. No matter how hard I tried, I would never look the same, sound the same, think the same as the people around me. I was always an outsider.
Scripture often refers to Christians as strangers (Heb 11:13), foreigners (1 Pet 1:17) and exiles (1 Pet 2:11). Making my home in a foreign land gave me this perspective. It granted me a picture of what my life as a Christian should look like in my own home country.
Now that I’m living back in America, I discovered that living as a foreigner taught me much about living as a Christian.
I recently gave a seminar to a group of EFCA church missions leaders on how to create a missions culture at their church. This is a summary of that seminar…..
The missionary wall at Hillside Church in San Jose, California had over 40 pictures on it.
But missions leader Kim Coutts wanted something more. He didn’t just want his church to financially support missions, but for members to experience true partnership in missions. He wanted to create a culture of missions at Hillside.
It was 1996. Kim searched among ReachGlobal missionaries for a partner location, and settled on Tanzania, East Africa, where missionaries labored to reach Muslim coastal tribes and the Indian diaspora community.
Kim targeted key Hillside leaders to join on trips to Tanzania. On the very first team, Kim recruited both the elder board chairman and the lead pastor. Over the next eight years, Hillside would send 20 teams to Tanzania. Around 65 members participated, and a bolt of missions lightning spread like wildfire through the church, transforming many hearts to partner with international missions. For some, Kim’s missional focus set them on a new life trajectory.
Perhaps the best example is someone whose name is easily recognized within the EFCA: Kevin Kompelien. Kevin was the lead pastor of Hillside in the 90s, and the church’s partnership with Tanzania opened doors for him to serve in other parts of Africa. In 2006, Kevin was invited to become the Africa Area Leader for ReachGlobal. That led to deeper connections in the EFCA, and in 2016, Kevin was voted in as president of our movement.
Kevin Kompelien (right) with Rwandan church leaders
Imagine what God could do by creating a missions culture at your church. Do you have a passion to see missionaries cultivated in your own congregation? I recently asked several missionaries what their churches did to contribute to their desire to serve overseas, and I hope you are inspired by what they shared.
How do we spark a culture of missions?
1. Kindle a fire for missions in the next generation. Barna tells us that only 10% of Millennial churchgoers can define the Great Commission, so that’s a good place to start. But among young people, perhaps even more important is challenging underlying attitudes. Mobilizing Gen Z tells us, “[Gen Z has a] tendency to avoid risk. They have grown up surrounded by anxious adults, in a culture promoting safety as a priority, with devices that convey 24/7 the world’s trouble, personal conflicts, and cruel criticisms.” In trying to hold back a global pandemic, we may have inadvertently absorbed the idea that we need to prioritize safety above all else. But is this perspective compatible with the Great Commission? Elevate missionary stories – past and present – of those willing to count the cost to take the gospel to the nations.
2. Challenge their parents too. Perhaps this is just as important. Mobilizing Gen Z references Barna when explaining, “Career success and physical safety are the top concerns [of church-going parents]. Nearly half said, ‘I’d rather my child get a well-paying job than be a career missionary.’” In my experience in missions mobilization, I have seen first-hand that Christian parents are sometimes the biggest detriment to potential missionaries.
I also recently posted this one over at A Life Overseas:
The Hidden Super-Stars of Missions
I coach new missionaries as they prepare to go overseas. I’ve found I can often predict how quickly they’ll be able to raise support based on one crucial factor: whether they have an advocate who will come alongside them.
What do I mean by an advocate? Let me explain.
Raising support has got to be one of the most daunting experiences in any missionary’s life. So God’s called me to India, but I need you to fork over some cash so I can do it. Sound good? Awesome. What can I put you down for?
Let’s hope it doesn’t come out exactly like that, but it’s what missionaries dread. Raising financial partners has extraordinary joys, but it also comes with dark lows. It’s incredibly intimidating. Dozens – maybe hundreds – of friends ghosting their calls, emails that don’t get replies, events where no one shows up. It can be one of the most demoralizing experiences in a person’s life.
Who can turn that whole experience around? An advocate.
We’d been on the mission field only six months, and we were already experiencing every missionary’s dream story: a Muslim convert. We participated in his baptism, guided his discipleship, and supported him through persecution. We had so much to write home about.
It all started when Gil and I—both just 24 years old—moved to a large city in Tanzania in 2001. We lived in the heart of the Indian section of the city, serving a subgroup from Southeast Asia who had flourished there for generations. We lived in a tiny, 600-square-foot, concrete block house, and all day long we could hear ripe fruit from our giant mango tree slam onto our tin roof.
Right outside the gate of our compound, a dusty road hosted small fruit stands, a butcher shop, and taxis that bumped through the potholes. Just down the street, a Muslim school educated hundreds of young Indian boys. Soon after we arrived, the school asked Gil to coach volleyball, and that’s how we first met the young man I’ll call Abbas.
Abbas was 19—only a few years younger than we were. We joined an Indian church plant, and when Gil started inviting the boys on his volleyball team to the youth group, Abbas jumped right in. Gil and Abbas quickly became fast friends. It wasn’t long until Abbas spent nearly every afternoon at our little house—playing chess or volleyball and arguing with Gil over soccer teams.
Abbas got used to my American cooking and developed a special affinity for cheese. I can still remember him imploring me daily, “Hey, Amy, do you have any cheeeeese?” He’d also scold me for throwing away the chicken neck because “that was the best part.”
He had eyes that danced and an infectious smile. During the regular greeting time at church, he’d make us all laugh by personally greeting every person in the room. He was smart, he was a jokester, and he was hungry to know about Jesus.
Abbas began meeting with Gil twice a week to study the Bible. We didn’t want to pressure him, so we let him set the time and determine the length of study. “How many weeks do you want to meet?” Gil asked. “Until I understand,” was Abbas’s reply.
Read the rest here in the Christianity Today Globe Issue.
We’d absorbed the unwritten rule in missions: Failure is unacceptable. I’d grown up immersed in missions culture, yet I couldn’t remember a single time that a missionary story, presentation, or newsletter ever included failure.
