Character, competence, chemistry are needed

AS I READ newsletters, send emails back and forth, and have phone or Zoom conversations with EMC missionaries serving around the world, I have been inspired by several things. These are ordinary people from our EMC churches doing ordinary things in other countries. They’re also doing extra-ordinary things in the sense that they are doing everyday life but in cultures that do those everyday things very differently than the way we do them in Canada.

I’ve also heard that most, if not all, of them are consistently tired, burdened by the needs they see around them. What I don’t hear from them is a pity-party, feeling sorry for themselves, or even bitterness that they are missing out on birthdays, graduations, new babies, and retirement parties of friends and family back home. They have felt called by God to do this work and are overflowing with stories of God-moments in their lives.

One theme that I hear regularly is a request for more workers to join them in their ministries. The needs are vast, and the workers are few. They are praying for more help, and while they are so grateful for the support they have from their sending churches, they would love to have EMC churches send more workers.

What kind of help do they need? People who are willing to do children’s ministry, youth ministry, home Bible studies, and music ministry. They would really appreciate people who are trained counsellors, business entrepreneurs, schoolteachers, Bible translators, curriculum developers, disciplers, pilots and mechanics, agriculture specialists, nurses, midwives, and the list goes on.

But invariably the qualifications that they are looking for have nothing to do with the skills and gifts that workers may have, but something of far greater value. That is, they are looking for people with godly character, people who have a teachable spirit, people who are adventurous and self-driven, who know how to build relationships, who are resilient and innovative.

They are looking for people who love Jesus and have a burden for the lost. People who spend time in prayer and worship. People who have boundaries but are also flexible in their approach to life. They want team members who will not become hard-hearted with all the brokenness and stories of trauma that they hear. These are the types of workers that our EMC missionaries pray will join them and, Lord-willing, expand and move their ministries to greater levels of discipleship, to go to new regions of the world where the person of Jesus Christ is not known, to establish new ministries that meet the ever-changing dynamics of our world.

So, on behalf of our 90 EMC missionary units serving the Lord in career missions, I say thank you. And on their behalf, I invite you to continue identifying, equipping, and sending out more workers to expand the reach of the gospel to the ends of the earth.