Accountability Areas for Missionaries

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Page 5—Accountability Areas for Missionaries

Personal Christian Growth

Members and candidates should be spiritually self-sustaining. They should exhibit an ability to take care of themselves spiritually and not need to be discipled in basic Christian growth. This means that they are committed to personal Bible study, prayer, serving others, fellowship and receiving discipline. It is also important that candidates have had experience in searching out God's will for their lives in ministry. Openness about ones life is very important, there is a heightened need for workers on this field to be willing to share with team mates about what they are going through. Lastly, but maybe of most importance, workers need to be ministering under grace, knowing how to apply grace to themselves and to co-workers.

Family Growth

Family growth is the core of team growth. Strong family units are the basic and most strategic witness as well as the fountain of strength for ministry. Members should look at leading and serving their families as part of their ministry and not as competing with ministry. Furthermore, Paul makes this a requirement of leadership in his letter to Timothy. Parents, like all disciplers, should be focused on the growth of their children and disciples. A family is the perfect situation for the transfer of life values and ministry skills. Co-workers and non-believers will sense the presence of God in a family where God is the center.

Coaching and Facilitating Workers

Coaching and facilitating workers who wish to minister includes helping them get settled in methods, areas of cooperation, choosing a mate and other areas of general growth as a Christian. To find Christians to work with, one must be involved with Christians. Involvement can be in organizations that minister, like churches and para church organizations, or with people who are ministering on their own.

Building and Maintaining Relationships

Relationships with team members, other expatriate workers, with national workers and with Christian organizations that are involved in the work takes the shape of praying together, studying together, fellowshipping as well as communicating with prayer partners, donors, churches, sending boards and schools.

Service to the Community

Service to the community is an important part of each members ministry. There are so many poor, sick and discouraged people in our area that any person with a desire to help will find many ways and many opportunities to help. This should be seen primarily as our duty and logical response as people of faith. If these service opportunities lead to discussions about faith this is good. However, our service should be based on meeting temporal and emotional needs as our Master has commanded, not just as a means to evangelism.

Personal Outreach

Personal outreach on our team has been built on the "warm bridge" approach. That is, we do not pass out tracts and other literature as a means of stimulating interest. Instead we invest in many personal relationships with non-believers, through neighborhood contacts, professional and business contacts, recreation, sports and other natural contacts. Most workers will find that they have many more opportunities than they can follow up.

Physical and Emotional Health

Health, both physically and emotionally is very important. Getting enough sleep, eating right and getting exercise and recreation contribute to longevity on the field. Current policy allows for three months out of the field per year. This policy is designed to allow members the grace to say they are tired and worn out. The average worker here does not take enough vacations and tends to wait until they approach burn-out before they schedule vacations and recreation. Living and working in a foreign culture will decrease productivity. Many foreign workers do not adjust their expectations and subsequently push themselves too hard. More stress leads to reduced productivity.

Area of Specialty

Having an area of specialty will guide where members can build relationships for both outreach (non-believers) and coaching (believers). Specialists may relate to profession or education like nursing skills or spiritual gifts like an extraordinary gift of teaching or evangelism. A person who is a gifted teacher may teach classes. A gifted administrator may apply this gift by teaching others how to use their time wisely or how to balance a budget. An area of specialty may make meeting visa requirements easier as would be the case of one who has an MA, MBA or any other graduate degree, as one would be able to enter as a college lecturer or consultant.

These areas are not listed in order of importance or the amount of time to be dedicated. In fact, these areas are interrelated. One cannot expect to grow personally if one is not serving others. Also one can expect that if one is growing spiritually then it will be easier to serve co-workers.

The current focus of the team is to plant teams of workers in unworked areas. As this occurs, there might be more specialization but at present members and candidates should define their roles in terms of "How is what I am doing contributing to the goal of finding, training and sending workers?

Indispensibles�

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