Honourably Wounded

F Foyle Marjory

Description

It's always been tough. Whether you are serving the Lord as an office worker, a doctor, a missionary, or a teacher - if you put your head above the parapet you will get shot at. Sometimes you will get hit. This book is for all who have found themselves in the line of fire. Dr Marjory Foyle draws upon her extensive clinical experience and her work as a missionary to address a range of important topics: Depression; Occupational stress; Interpersonal relationships; Parental and home-country stress; Singleness and marriage; Children; Burnout; Caring for Christian workers.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857213938
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright © 1987, 2001 Marjory F. Foyle. This edition copyright © 1987 Lion Hudson
The right of Marjory F. Foyle to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the UK by Monarch Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England. Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] www.lionhudson.com/monarch
Revised edition 2001. Reprinted 2009.
ISBN 978-1-85424-543-4 (UK) ISBN 978-0-8254-6333-4 (USA) e-ISBN 978-0-8572-1393-8
First edition 1987
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society, Inclusive Language Version 1995, 1996, 1999. Used by permission of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. All rights reserved.
British Library Cataloguing Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Stockxchange/Kriss Szkurlatowski
This book is dedicated to my family who have supported me through fifty years of expatriate service.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my gratitude to the editor and staff of Monarch Books, to the many people worldwide who have given their time to discuss personnel problems with me, and to the personnel themselves who have talked with me, answered my many questions, filled in questionnaires, and provided hospitality and care during my overseas work. My prayer is that this book will support them in their work, and help them to maintain their health and well-being in difficult circumstances.
I am also deeply indebted to the Panahpur Trust for travel and research grants which have enabled me to do the work God entrusted to me, and to those who have read chapters of the book in manuscript and made many helpful suggestions.
Contents
Title Page Copyright Dedication Acknowledgements Introductory Notes Introduction Chapter 1 The Changing Face of Missions Chapter 2 Understanding Stress Chapter 3 Dealing with Depression and Discouragement Chapter 4 Adjustment and Culture Shock Chapter 5 Occupational Stress Chapter 6 Interpersonal Relationships Chapter 7 Parental and Home-country Stress Chapter 8 Stress and Singleness Chapter 9 Missionary Marriages Chapter 10 Stress and Missionary Children Chapter 11 Special Forms of Stress – Burnout and PTSD Chapter 12 Re-entry Stress Chapter 13 Caring for Missionaries Chapter 14 God’s Model of Missionary Care References
Introductory Notes
Examples used in this book do not describe any one person. Details have been altered, identities disguised, and problems of several people combined into one story to preserve confidentiality. They should not, therefore, be identified by any one individual as their personal story.
In preparing the second edition, terminology has been a problem. The use of the terms ‘old and new sending countries’ are based on a recent research project on missionary attrition, ‘old sending countries’ indicating those with a longer history of modern missions, and ‘new sending countries’ those with a younger history (Taylor, 1997). The same division has been utilised throughout this book.
The second problem has been what to call the people I am writing about. Due to the changing face of missions, use of the word ‘missionary’ is becoming rare in many old sending countries. As Bryan Knell wrote, ‘the word missionary has passed its sell-by date and is now more unhelpful than helpful’, but so far nothing acceptable to everybody has been found to replace it. This current uncertainty has led to a plethora of different terminology. During my travels in 41 different countries to consult with mission personnel, I have found that in most of the new sending countries and many of the old sending countries the term ‘missionary’ is still used. In other countries such as the UK, the word ‘mission partner’ is more common, signifying the co-operative relationship between the sending agency and the host country. However, to make things even more confusing, in one very large organisation the overseas national host is called ‘the partner’, and those who go are the ‘personnel’. Other agencies use the rather clumsy term ‘church-related volunteer expatriates’, or simply ‘expatriate’ or ‘personnel’ or ‘cross-cultural worker’. This last term is perhaps the most useful, for it indicates not only those who go overseas to serve the Lord but also the many others who remain within their own countries to serve people from other cultures, although they may move interstate.
Because of this confusion I have decided to use the term ‘missionary’, but must be forgiven for using the other terms on occasions. In the context in which I am writing they all mean the same thing: Christian people sponsored by their home churches to serve God cross-culturally, whether or not this involves crossing national boundaries. In addition I shall use the term ‘sending agency’ to indicate the old ‘missionary society’, this being common practice in many countries.
The final semantic problem concerns the absence of a common pronoun for both sexes in the English language. Therefore, unless I am dealing specifically with male or female problems, ‘him’ also means ‘her’, and vice versa.
References. There are many ways of inserting references, but in this book I have decided to use one of the standard methods. They will be inserted in alphabetical order at the back of the book, and will be indicated in the text by a name and date in brackets. As an example, if I write ‘it has been found that missionaries have fun’ (Foyle, 1999), it means ‘look me up at the back of the book, note the date, and find out where I wrote about it!’
Statistical significance. Many people, and I am one of them, thoroughly dislike statistical terms, so by way of introduction, whenever the term ‘significant’ is used it merely means important, more likely to be true than not.
Introduction
This book deals with some of the stresses experienced by mobile Christian workers serving cross-culturally. Included within this major category are three groups of people. The first is those who feel God has called them to serve as expatriates, which involves crossing national boundaries into a totally new pattern of life. The second group includes those who remain within their own countries but cross State boundaries, which often involves adapting to a new language and unfamiliar local culture despite being of the same nationality. In the third group are those who remain more or less within their familiar environment, but because they work mainly with immigrants and their descendants, they have to familiarise themselves with the customs and background cultures of the people they serve. In addition, past experience has shown that some who are not working cross-culturally and are not actually involved in mission have found areas of the book relevant to their needs. My basic prayer as I write is that anyone who reads this book will find it helpful.
I have aimed at keeping the book both descriptive and practical in approach — without this balance it would be unproductive and possibly threatening. It is not intended to be a textbook, hence such advice as is given is aimed at practical self-help rather than a detailed technical description of how to do things like selecting missionaries. I have tried to maintain the original easily readable approach so that it does not become boring. Some areas are inevitably a bit complicated, but if the reader perseveres, hopefully the writing will become a little more exciting after a few pages.
The publishers have asked me to provide a little autobiographical information to complete the introduction. I became a Christian as a medical student in 1942. Initially my conversion was a somewhat emotional affair, but in God’s goodness the next day the Travelling Secretary of the (then) IVF came to our city and took me out to tea. We sat for four hours while she taught me that there was more to it than emotion, and that biblical understanding was also involved. Naturally, we kept one eye on the waitress and ordered more tea whenever she looked unhappy. I went back to the same city recently, went to the same seat in the same café, ordered tea and sat thanking God for all he had done for me during the past 50 years.
Shortly after this famous tea, I was reading a book about Dame Mary Scharleib, a renowned British woman doctor who was concerned at the needs of Indian women prevented for religious reasons from being treated by male doctors. This was her motivation for graduating as a doctor, and as I read it I realised that this was to be my own future life. Accordingly, after graduation as a doctor and gaining experience in UK hospitals plus two years Bible training, I joined what is now called Interserve and went to India. There I worked for five years in women’s hospitals, five in the exciting newly opened work in Nepal, and a further five back in the same hospital in India until it closed down. During this last period I had a time of illness for which I am deeply grateful. What I learnt during that time set me on a new pattern of personal development that is still continuing. I began to understand that dedication and commitment to God, while essential if we want to go on with God, do not mean wholesale denial of the real person within, but provide us with freedom to expand, develop, and enjoy the good things God has created.
When I had recovered I was unexpectedly offered the opportunity to do postgraduate training in psychiatry. I felt this was the right move, and so from 1965–1969 did my resident training and the requisite studies in the UK,