On Being a Missionary (Abridged)

Gene Daniels, Thomas Hale

Description

Adjusting to a New World  

Missionaries must adjust to new cultures, learn languages, work as a team, maintain healthy relationships, and discern best ministry practices. Nothing can fully prepare a person for life as a missionary. However, for almost thirty years, Thomas Hale’s On Being a Missionary has helped to equip cross-cultural workers to not only survive but thrive in their calling.   

This abridged version of On Being a Missionary remains practical and accessible. It addresses the new realities of the changing missionary force. It also looks at the challenges of bonding with a new culture in an increasingly globalized and technologically connected world. The book is written for everyone with an interest in missions, whether the missionary on the field or the supporter at home. It is written by learners for learners.  

Drawing from years of experience, the authors provide down-to-earth advice and perspective concerning the problems, struggles, and failures that missionaries often face. At the same time, this book exposes various myths related to missionary life. Find out why a generation of mission workers has benefited from On Being a Missionary.

Preface from Thomas Hale 

Preface to the Abridged Version 

1 Introduction 

2 The Call of Missions 

3 How to Prepare

4 Funding Your Calling

5 Entry into a New World 

6 Connecting across Cultures

7 Contextualization

8 Dealing with Stress of All Kinds

9 Learning the Language and Bonding with People 

10 Relating to Nationals 

11 Lifestyle Choices

12 The Lord’s Discipline 

13 Sin, Interpersonal Conflict, and Resolution 

14 Teaming 

15 Meeting Physical and Spiritual Needs 

16 The Major Mission Ministries 

17 Prayer and the Holy Spirit 

18 Single or Married? 

19 Missionary Children

20 Home Assignment and Leaving

Afterword

Bibliography

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Missions
• Discipleship
• Christian Ministry
• Christian Living
• Personal Growth
• Philosophie et théologie
• Minister (Christianity)
• Disciple (Christianity)

Informations

• Publié par: William Carey Publishing
• Date de parution: 11 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645085027
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

On Being a Missionary ( Abridged Version ): An Introduction to Cross-Cultural Life and Ministry
2023 Gene Daniels. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise-without prior written permission from the publisher, except brief quotations used in connection with reviews in magazines or newspapers. For permission, email [e-mail].
For corrections, email [e-mail] .
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version , NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com . The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.
Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Published by William Carey Publishing
10 W. Dry Creek Cir
Littleton, CO 80120 | www.missionbooks.org
William Carey Publishing is a ministry of Frontier Ventures
Pasadena, CA | www.frontierventures.org
Cover Designer: Mike Riester
Interior Designer: ProjectLuz.com
ISBNs: 978-1-64508-500-3 (paperback)
978-1-64508-502-7 (epub)
Digital eBook Release 2023
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023940451
Contents
Preface from Thomas Hale
Preface to the Abridged Version
1 | Introduction
2 | The Call of Missions
3 | How to Prepare
4 | Funding Your Calling
5 | Entry into a New World
6 | Connecting across Cultures
7 | Contextualization
8 | Dealing with Stress of All Kinds
9 | Learning the Language and Bonding with People
10 | Relating to Nationals
11 | Lifestyle Choices
12 | The Lord s Discipline
13 | Sin, Interpersonal Conflict, and Resolution
14 | Teaming
15 | Meeting Physical and Spiritual Needs
16 | The Major Mission Ministries
17 | Prayer and the Holy Spirit
18 | Single or Married?
19 | Missionary Children
20 | Home Assignment and Leaving
Afterword
Bibliography
Preface from Thomas Hale
T his book is not designed to be a theoretical textbook. It does not put forward new theses or new approaches to mission. It makes no attempt to break new ground. Instead, I have tried to absorb and clearly present the ideas, experiences, and insights of over a hundred missionary writers. I am indebted to all of these writers.
I want to acknowledge the following authors as being particularly helpful to me in the writing of certain chapters: Dwight Carlson, Marjorie Collins, Marjory Foyle, David Hesselgrave, J. Herbert Kane, Dennis Kinlaw, David Seamands, John Stott, Christy Wilson, and Ralph Winter.
I also want to thank my wonderful missionary colleagues, who have served as an inspiration and an example-in particular, my lifelong partner and wife, Cynthia. To her this book is dedicated.
Biographical details of people referred to in this book have occasionally been altered to protect their identities. Otherwise, the incidents related are true. I write in the belief that there is no higher or more glorious calling than that of being a missionary of Jesus Christ. It is a subject worth writing about.
Since its publication in 1995, this book has received broad acceptance in the worldwide missionary community. It has been used as a basic text not only by mission agencies but also by seminaries and Bible colleges. Because of the many new developments in missions over the past few decades, an updated and abridged version of this book has become necessary. I am very grateful that Gene Daniels has undertaken this work. Gene is an experienced cross-cultural worker, an excellent writer, and a mission scholar. He has done a superb job updating this book.
Preface to the Abridged Version
I took up the task of revising and abridging On Being a Missionary with fear and trepidation, for classics are seldom revised-and Dr. Hale s book surely is a classic. It is perhaps the defining work in the genre of practical yet spiritual missionary books. This fact, however, raises an interesting point.
If this book were just about spiritual topics, it would not need revision. But Dr. Hale rightly perceived that the spirituality of cross-cultural missionaries is a lived-out spirituality, rooted in the practical details of daily life. His book bears that mark from cover to cover.
In the same way, the editorial staff at William Carey Publishing rightly perceived that the daily life of missionaries has undergone massive changes since Dr. Hale began making his keen observations about it. When he and his wife took their little boys to live in the Himalayas, the internet was barely a dream in the minds of a few computer geniuses, yet today it shapes the lives of billions around the globe. Since Dr. Hale treated his first patient in Nepal, the number of missionaries arising from the non-Western world has gone from a tiny trickle to a mighty river.
Not only has missions changed, but the reader has changed as well. The pace of our lives has gotten faster. People are today looking for books that are quicker to the point. Thus the goals of this new version are twofold: to bring the content into the twenty-first century, and to reduce the overall length without sacrificing any of Dr. Hale s depth of wisdom.
It may seem strange to some that I have never met the man behind this amazing book. In many ways, however, I do feel as if I know him, partly through his writing, and partly because of a close friendship with his eldest son. Yet even that does not completely explain the real connection that I share with Dr. Hale.
I have come to realize that the substance of our connection is much more than that of people who share common friends, or even of writers with comparable styles and experiences. Rather it comes from being men of similar convictions about what it means to be a missionary. In Dr. Hale s case, those convictions were birthed as a medical doctor treating Hindus in the lofty land of the Himalayas; my own emerged as an ethnographer observing Muslims in the wastelands of Central Asia.
This fact points to something important: although settings and ministries may be vastly different, the spirit of God often works in similar ways in the hearts of those called to take the name of Jesus to the nations. For this reason, Dr. Hale s book will always be a missionary classic.
Gene Daniels
April 2023
1
Introduction
W riting a book about being a missionary doesn t mean one has mastered the subject. This book is written by learners for learners. Missionaries make a broad subject. They represent almost every profession. They come short term and long term. Some come as students; some are retirees. Some are church-supported, others self-supported. Some come under mission boards and societies, and some come independently. They come from Europe and North America; they come from the other side of the equator in the Global South. And they go into all the world.
In this book we don t differentiate sending nations and receiving nations, because almost every nation has become a sending nation. Indeed, in a massive shift that caught the mission world by surprise, there are already more missionaries going out from the Global South, the lands we used to think of as receiving countries, than from the old standard-bearers in the North. The reason is simple: the non-Western world is now home to more evangelical Christians than the West. The balance has shifted. The missionary enterprise has become truly international.
Although this book is necessarily written from a Western, or Global North, perspective, much of its content applies equally to missionaries from other parts of the world. Even those problems which seem particularly related to the Western missionary will, with some modification, also be faced by most of our brethren from newer sending countries. Hopefully, they too will find this book instructive.
This book is not primarily concerned with theology or mission strategy. It is not a handbook on how to plant a church, run a community development project, or start a mission hospital. Neither is it a treatise on anthropology, comparative religion, or cross-cultural communication. Though all these are important topics for the mission enterprise, this book is about being a missionary. It endeavors to describe what that life is like, with its challenges, heartaches, and joys. This book also addresses the problems, struggles, and failures of missionaries because it s from these difficult topics that we learn the most.
Missionary life is two parts joy and fulfillment and one part frustration and defeat. We can only hope to reduce the frustration and defeat by facing it, not denying it. Far from wanting to scare off missionary candidates, we want to be sure they know some of the reality they are facing, so that they may avoid many of the problems that have plagued others.
Missions Is for Everyone
The church is missionary in nature. Missions, therefore, is the task of every member, not just a few. In the early church, missions gave rise to theology. Missions is more than just one subject in a seminary curriculum; it lies at the heart of all subjects. Missions is what makes theology relevant. It s what makes seminaries relevant. It keeps seminaries and churches from becoming inward-looking and self-absorbed-putting their lamp under a bowl (Matt 5:15).
Theology and missions cannot be divorced. Theology inspires missions because God s word is full of missions. As academic disciplines, theology and missions are, of course, distinct. This distinction explains why seminaries and Bible colleges are right to offer courses in missions