“I don’t want to go to the unreached. But I also can’t ignore this conviction.”

In 2012, I (Jenn) had journaled this sentiment over and over again. As we kept pursuing steps to move overseas, fears of permanent commitments and of wasting my life persisted.

In the summer of 2012, we took a vision trip to Thailand. We were going to learn more about the country, explore different cities and types of ministries, and see what life could look like overseas. As we met missionaries who had counted the cost and heard their stories, I felt hope and joy at how God was moving in Thailand. We experienced God’s victory as we prayer walked through red light districts and Thai neighborhoods. Each experience challenged the doubt I felt. But I remember feeling like a hypocrite – saying that I was ready to move overseas while internally unwilling to surrender.  

One night, the dissonance had reached a breaking point and the Spirit chose to address the doubts in my heart. And in his kindness, he brought Steven to encourage me and pray together with me. In that time God gave me the faith and clarity that I was begging him for – certainty that this was what I was supposed to do. I had thought this vision trip was centered on learning about Thailand, but to my surprise God revealed lies in my own heart that were blocking me from responding to his calling! And He brought me to a point of surrender.

A vision trip is an essential step in the process of recruiting new teammates to your team. As we’ve mentioned before, who you recruit to your team has one of the biggest impacts on your team’s health, culture, and efficacy in pursuing your mission. A vision trip is one of the best ways to evaluate a potential teammate and see how they engage with and respond to the place where you’re serving. It’s also a critical juncture for the recruit to hear from the Lord and discern their future, like the 2012 vision trip was for Jenn.

For team leaders that already live overseas, most of the interaction with potential teammates is through video calls and emails/messages. It’s difficult to get to know a person beyond the surface level without spending some time with them in person. It’s also difficult for a potential recruit to really feel, experience, and understand the place they’re considering without going there to visit. You and they don’t know how they’ll respond when they’re in context. That’s where a vision trip comes in.

We personally would never officially invite a potential recruit to join the team until they’ve taken a vision trip.

We’ve hosted over 20 units on vision trips to consider our teams, and here are some of the things we’ve learned and things we’d suggest as you host potential recruits on a vision trip.

Vision Trip Basics

A note of caution: hosting vision trips takes a lot of work. It will disrupt your normal team and ministry rhythms, but it is a worthwhile investment if you’re trying to recruit new teammates. 

Goal of a Vision Trip: The objective of the trip is two-fold – for you as the leader to evaluate the vision trip participant’s readiness and fit to join your team and ministry, and for the potential recruit to discern their calling to this specific field and team. For them, you want to create a vision trip schedule that allows them to experience your context in enough breadth and depth to get an idea of what life on the field could be like. And for you as the leader, you need to gather enough information about them during this in-person time to help you make an informed decision about whether or not to invite them to the team.

As a leader, take note of their posture and attitude during the trip. Are they eager to learn? Flexible and courageous to deal with strange experiences? Humble and teachable? Do they have good interactions with the local culture or is everything a struggle? Do they relate well with you and your team or is their tension/friction?

How Long Should a Vision Trip Be?: We’d recommend about a week as a target, not including travel time. International travel is tiring, jetlag can hit hard, and giving just a week to focus on one of the biggest decisions in their lives and your team is prudent. Trying to squeeze in what you need in 3 days while jetlagged is almost not worth having the vision trip. We’d also not recommend much longer than 1-2 weeks for a vision trip unless you’re equipped to handle short/mid-term workers, which then is something different than just a vision trip.

When Should You Schedule a Vision Trip?: Generally, vision trips should happen later in the process of recruiting. Potential recruits should have gone through the initial steps of applying for your sending organization and going through assessments before you buy tickets for them to come visit. You don’t want them to raise all the funds, spend significant time, and potentially get their or your team’s hopes up for them to join only to discover major red flags that prevent them from serving long-term. There are some exceptions like if they will already be in the region for some other travel, but those are more like taking advantage of the proximity to get to know someone before recommending them to start the application process.

Also, because of the amount of time investment for your team, we’d recommend that you try to schedule potential recruits to come at the same time so you don’t have to disrupt your schedule multiple times, or if possible, during some slower seasons of ministry.

Preparation for a Vision Trip

In order to take advantage of the major commitment in time and money for the relatively short amount of time they are there, you, your team, and the recruits should prepare well for the vision trip.

Introductory Video Calls: Hopefully, you can have more than one call to get to know them before they come. You want to get through some of the basic introductory conversations before they come so you have a sense of who they are. That way, you can engage in some deeper topics with them personally or context/experience-specific activities when they’re in-person. You can even consider having them join a group call with some of your teammates as well.

Prep Logistics: As those who have already gotten used to living overseas, we forget that international travel is a big deal for people. Some vision trippers may have never even left their country before. Consider logistics like flights, vaccinations, travel insurance, sim cards, housing, food restrictions, attire, packing lists, etc. and help vision trip participants prepare well for these things.

Support Raising / Prayer Team: There’s a significant financial cost for vision trip participants, so some coaching from yourself or your sending agency/church may be helpful for them if they’ve never support-raised before. You may want to give them an example from some of your support-raising documents to help them prepare. Also, provide a clear and detailed budget for what they need to raise for the vision trip costs.

At the same time as support raising, they should be inviting people to join a prayer team that will be praying for the participant to hear from the Lord during their vision trip. It’s very simple to set up a messaging group and send daily updates during their time in-country. This can also become the basis for a long-term advocacy team that will support them as they serve long-term.

Pre-Vision Trip Learning: Any resources (youtube videos, prayer guides, books/articles) about your country, the primary religion, the people, and your ministry that you can send beforehand will help the vision trip participants start to familiarize themselves with your field. We’d recommend giving them some required content as a basic introduction and some more optional things if they’re interested and want to continue learning. It also gives you some idea of whether or not they are a learner, a self-starter, and teachable.

Spiritual Warfare: Vision trips can be significant points for the Enemy to discourage and attack. Obviously, the Enemy wants to prevent people from serving long-term, and this can happen through spiritual warfare during a vision trip. Just as adequate preparation is needed with logistics around international travel, leaders need to prepare vision trip participants for the realities of spiritual warfare. This can be done through sending them some readings/Bible studies, blog posts, or just having a quick online training call before the trip.

Set Good Expectations: Lastly, because of the shortened time and very new experiences for vision trip participants, it’s important to set good expectations for the objectives of the trip and outline details of the different activities and schedule. It can be written up in a simple document and explained before the trip.

What to Include in a Vision Trip

Since every team and every potential recruit is different, vision trips can be adjusted to create the most helpful experience for them. For example, vision trips for families with children would be different from vision trips for singles or couples. Below are components that we would include in every vision trip.

Time to Connect with God: Since the primary objective for the vision trip participant is to discern their calling and team fit, it’s extremely important to prioritize setting aside time to connect with God, process what they’ve learned, and listen in prayer. The temptation is to pack the schedule with cool activities from morning to night, but we’ve found that to be counterproductive on a vision trip. Set the schedule and expectation that every morning, there will be personal time with God, and in the evening, time to debrief and crystallize what they’ve learned. Vision trips will inevitably be a fire hose of information and experiences, so protecting time to process and summarize what God is trying to show them is critical for an effective experience.

Here are some questions (credit to Lauren M.!) that you as the leader can consider as you set up a vision trip for potential recruits:

• What does He want the recruits to see, know, or experience about him, the place, and the people there? 

• What are ways you can create space for recruits to hear from the Lord and connect with Him throughout the trip?
• What was impactful to you in a previous vision trip, or in your first month in context? What helped open your eyes? Could those be helpful for them, too?

Arrival Orientation: When participants arrive, don’t just release them into the wild. Once they’ve arrived and gotten settled, start the first full day with an arrival orientation. Review the objectives for the trip, overall schedule, and expectations. Give a basic rundown on cultural need-to-knows (like avoiding anything extremely offensive), attire, and basic language phrases like “Hello” or “Where is the bathroom?” (very important). At our orientation in Thailand, we even had a long-time worker show us the step-by-step of how to use a squatty potty! And we’ve included this in every vision trip orientation since then!

Cultural Experiences: Helping participants get exposure to the culture and environment is a primary goal during the vision trip. Prepare experiences where they can learn some cultural basics about the history, religion, and people through visiting city centers, markets, museums, and places of worship. Focus on educational experiences where they can see, feel, hear, touch over simply sitting in a room listening to a lecture. 

Allow them to engage with the spiritual climate in your city and country. Encourage them to ask God where He is moving and what He wants them to know about this place. Below, Jenn will give a breakdown on how to do a temple/mosque prayer walk which is always one of the most impactful parts of a vision trip.

Since one of the first things new recruits will do when they arrive is focusing on language learning, you can give them an opportunity to sit in on a language class or have a short session with a language partner or tutor for a fun lesson.

Team Interactions: Set up opportunities for the participants to interact with your teammates in multiple formats including formal team meetings, informal gatherings, out in ministry activities, and personal 1-on-1s. Give them a basic overview of the team history, formation, vision, and strategy. Create the space for them to experience the team culture and values and see if it fits what they’re looking for in a team and vice versa.

Ministry Exposure: If you can let vision trippers shadow you during a mission activity, awesome. But because of limitations like language or travel, inviting several vision trippers into a ministry opportunity isn’t always feasible. As much as possible, try to give them an idea of what day-to-day ministry looks like. At the very least, bring them to a local church you attend, set up a meeting with a local believer, or go onto a college campus to try and talk to / share with some college students who tend to have better English. Vision cast to them where their gifts and strengths could contribute to the ministry and team!

Making Local Connections: This can be combined with the ministry engagements, but we’d recommend giving vision trip participants the opportunity to meet local people, both believers and non-believers. Allow them to ask questions about their lives, the culture, things that foreigners moving to their country should know. Nearly 15 years after our vision trip to Thailand, for me all the cultural experiences, though important, kind of all blend together. But I still remember the first time we shared the gospel with a local shopkeeper, or talked to a university student about life in Thailand. After all, the potential recruits are wanting to join your team and ministry to serve the local people – so let them have an opportunity to meet some!

Do Something Fun!: Make sure you set up times in the schedule to have a fun experience! It could be something unique to your context (on some vision trips we bring people to see elephants in Thailand!), or just a fun activity in general. Vision trip schedules tend to be packed and busy and tiring – times for fun will be refreshing, help keep the participant’s experience positive, and are opportunities for team interactions in a more social environment.

Allow for Exploration Time: Although we recommend preparing a schedule and thinking through logistics, facilitate chances for participants to explore the city or things they’re interested in without a teammate or guide. If the long-term team is always with them, the participants will inevitably look to them for what conclusions to draw from different places, people, experiences. Serving overseas is an adventure, so allow them a taste of what it’s like to navigate a new culture and place on their own! Something like a scavenger hunt can be fun and exploratory. Even if they have a negative experience, help them debrief why or discover what the friction point was. 

Life Realities: Many of the questions that recruits will have will be around what daily life looks like on the field. Even simple things like visiting grocery stores, navigating local transport, answering visa questions, are helpful for people considering moving long-term. Give them an idea of what it is like to live in your city and how they can adjust some of their normal rhythms that help them to thrive. For example, if they enjoy nature, help them figure out where they can find parks or nature environments. Not everything from your home context will have a substitute on the field, but at least exploring these ideas will help your potential recruits feel like they could live in your context.

If you’re considering recruiting families, it’s a good idea to try to have the entire family come on the vision trip even though there’s a significant cost. Especially focus on helping the kids to have a positive experience! 

Vision Trip Resources

Below are two more tools that we use on every vision trip: prayer walking through places of spiritual sites and vision trip debriefs. Feel free to adapt them to your context. There are some blanks for you to insert your team and ministry location.

Religious and Spiritual Sites Prayer Walk: It is important to cast the perspective that our work is ultimately spiritual in nature and that there are spiritual powers at work, both for and against us. Many of the locations we serve will have locations like temples or mosques where much of this spiritual activity can be encountered and felt. The purpose of a prayer walk through these locations is to have participants (1) engage the spiritual climate of your location, (2) to bring the authority of Christ into these places, and (3) experience God’s heart for the people you are serving. This document is a self guided prayer and reflection tool for how to prepare for a prayer walk, how to pray during the walk, how to pray afterwards, and reflection questions for further processing. 

Vision Trip Debrief: Vision trip participants undergo a variety of new experiences, and likely are taking in a firehose of new information. Having an end of vision trip debrief is critical in order to help participants crystallize and process this information and to come up with clear takeaways and next steps. Here is a document of questions to choose from that you can use to help debrief vision trip participants. You can also use that time to ask some potential ‘interview’ questions that you’d prefer to ask in person instead of online.

Conclusion

We know this is a lot of components for a vision trip but many can be combined/included within a single activity. It’s a major commitment for someone to transition to the field, so addressing each of these and any other questions they may have is really valuable!

Also, things will not go perfectly on a vision trip and we shouldn’t expect them to, as life overseas is chaotic and surprising! Challenging moments like missed flights, food poisoning, and confusing interactions in the local culture are good opportunities to see how potential recruits respond and help them understand what God is trying to show them through it.

Each person is on their own journey of discerning their calling from the Lord, and a vision trip can be a cornerstone moment in that journey. We can trust that God is speaking through each processing time, each experience, and each interaction during the vision trip to bring the right people to your team.

Write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.

I was 20 years old at Urbana 2009. A vision cast from a person I didn’t know, have never talked to, and have never met again, changed the course of my life.

I had just gone to Thailand on a short-term trip that opened my eyes to the reality of the unreached. God had started to put on my heart the possibility of serving overseas. As a part of that process, I went to Urbana, Intervarsity’s triennial missions conference for students. A bunch of other friends from our Intervarsity chapter at UT Austin went, including several that ended up on our original team in Thailand.

Between the plenary sessions, there were opportunities to go to different workshops about different topics, whether business as mission, social justice, or different evangelism methods. One workshop that caught my eye was named “Costly Discipleship: Incarnation, Jesus, and The Way of the Cross.”

Most of the workshops had been helpful and informative, but mostly informal and casual. As we sat down, a man in his 30s walked up to the front. He said, “My name is John David Pitts. My wife and I were kicked out of Pakistan 6 weeks ago. We are going back in 4 weeks. In all likelihood we will be thrown into prison or killed.”

“Today, we are going to call you to come and die.”

I could feel the tension in the room rise as our attention was fixed on the speaker. For the next 45 minutes, John simply presented the hard sayings of Jesus and taught on them.

John 15:20 – “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”

Luke 14:26-27 – “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Matthew 16:24-25 – “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

At the end, he concluded by saying, “Following Jesus requires radically high levels of commitment. His final command was to go and make disciples of all the nations.”

Instead of taking questions, he released us to go spend time with God. I went straight to the prayer room and for the next 2 hours surrendered my life to Jesus. I felt the Holy Spirit say, “If you believe the Gospel, you’ll go to the nations.”

I made my commitment to serve overseas long-term on December 30, 2009.

Vision casting is a powerful form of communication that is critical in our pursuit of the Great Commission. Ministry, missions, and movements are really, really difficult. If we don’t have vision to guide us, we won’t have a clear direction and can get distracted by the urgent and needy. If we aren’t reminded of that vision regularly, we can get discouraged or apathetic.

For missions team leaders, casting vision is needed to recruit people to your team, to motivate your team and partners towards the end goal, to encourage people to persevere, to excite people and give them courage for the work, to and many more opportunities. Vision is needed to help yourself to focus on abiding and endure through suffering. John David Pitts casted the vision towards me for radical commitment to following Jesus and making disciples among the unreached, and I’m still pursuing that vision today.

Our definition of a leader is a man or woman that receives vision from God to influence the people of God towards the purposes of God. The vision piece is critical for leaders, because it is what you use to influence those that you lead towards God’s purposes in their lives. If you don’t have a clear vision, then you’re probably not yet a leader.

What is Vision?

A vision is an end goal, an eventual reality that you want to achieve. It should be biblical, faith-driven, and derived from prayer and listening to the Lord.

There’s a lot of articles on vision and mission statements for businesses, organizations, and even churches. The challenge is that there’s often a lot of overlap between vision, mission, calling, and purpose.

For me, vision is why you (or your team or ministry) exist, and mission is what you do to accomplish that vision. Although I think it’s worth writing down a vision statement, I’m not going to focus too much on the specific details of vision statements but talk more about vision in general.

These are some questions you can consider to try and figure out what God’s vision is for your life:

• What has He called you to give your life to?
• Why / For what purpose does you or your team or ministry exist?
• What is the future picture of the world that you desire to make a reality?
• What makes you “pound the table” / keep you up at night? (something that you’re passionately moved by and want to impact)

After considering these questions, if it’s not already derived from Scripture, see what in the Bible aligns with this vision. Bring it to the Lord in prayer, and listen to the Holy Spirit to see what he says about it. 

We’d also encourage you to think big when it comes to vision! Don’t just think about what you can accomplish by yourself. Big vision forces us to hear from God and depend on God. Big vision should require faith, since “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). Big vision should be beyond our capabilities, beyond ourselves, perhaps even beyond our lifetime!

For our team in Thailand, our vision is “To see multiplying churches among all UPGs in Southeast Asia, through mobilizing the church to catalyze CPMs.”

For our Yield Coaching Ministry, our vision is “To advance the Great Commission by developing abiding leaders to catalyze movements among the unreached.”

These are things that are far bigger than ourselves, and things that I would gladly give my life, time, and effort for.

There’s a few examples in Scripture of vision. Obviously there are specific visions through dreams and images that God gives, and those would fall under the general umbrella of what we call ‘vision.’

For Jesus, there are a few strong candidates for what His vision would be. It could be bringing the Kingdom of God (Luke 4:18-19), coming to give eternal life through his sacrifice (John 3:16), or simply embodied in the Great Commission, that there would be disciples from all the nations (Matthew 28:18-20).

For Paul, as a minister to the Gentiles, his vision and ambition given by God was to “preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named” (Romans 15:20). He would largely fulfill this vision by pioneering the early church and state that “from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ” (Romans 15:19).

Lastly, the ultimate vision for all believers is the gathering of all the nations around the throne of Jesus in Revelation 7:9. This is an actual vision given to John of what will happen in the end times, and remains a clear and motivating vision for many of those called to serve in the nations.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!

Revelation 7:9

Why is Vision Important?

Habakkuk 2:2 gives a compelling argument that writing down clear vision allows the people of God to run. Proverbs 29:18 gives the opposite side: “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (KJV).

Vision helps you and your team to determine your direction, your ultimate goal, and the purpose for which you exist. From there, every other strategy, objective, plan, and decision should be aligned with that vision. In order for your vision to be helpful, it should be clear, memorable, and inspirational.

If a vision is your ultimate goal, a strategy plan is the steps for how to get there. By creating a strategy plan that flows from your vision, you can make decisions on what to do, and more importantly, what not to do. One way that we’ve heard movement practitioners summarize it is, “Big Vision, Clear Path, Simple Steps.” The clear path is the strategy plan or ministry framework you use to guide you towards that vision. The team or movement leader’s job is to set the vision, give the clear path, and make sure your teammates know the next, simple steps for that day/month/year towards that path and vision.

As a leader, you should be considering the vision, embodying the vision, and communicating the vision constantly. But sometimes if all we give is vision without a clear path and simple steps, it can be initially motivating but people that we lead may not know what to do next. Eventually that motivation will fade if there’s no way to progress towards that goal. That’s why strategy and simple steps of obedience are important.

But without vision to guide your strategy and simple steps, you can simply go from one urgent thing or one opportunity to the next, and not know if you are making any progress towards the end goal God has called you towards. As Paul says about his focus on his apostolic work, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it” (1 Corinthians 9:24). If you are willing to sacrifice so much to make disciples and obey God, work and run in such a way to win the prize, to complete the vision!

Sometimes people are confused between determining and casting a vision that helps you focus on your end goal, and casting vision that just seems to be generally motivating for people. These are certainly related! Talking about your specific vision statement and giving focus to it (why we exist, how we can get there, etc.) is vision casting, and motivating people through encouragement and inspiration is also vision casting! You need to do both types of vision casting as a leader.

Once your team is clear about the end vision of why your team exists, you need to consistently help them focus on it and motivate them towards it. We’ve heard it said that vision is a leaky bucket, it needs to be constantly refilled or else it runs out!

Ways to Cast Vision

There are many, many ways to cast vision – these are a few methods that we come back to often. We use these after our end vision is established, and we need to cast vision to motivate and focus those that we lead towards that end vision. 

Our main recommendation is to pay attention when you are praying, reading Scripture, or watching someone casting vision and it moves your heart – use that as a vision cast! Think about what has been effective in motivating you, helping you focus on the vision, inspires you to keep going. Steal those vision casts and make them your own! This also requires that you as a leader should be proactive in receiving vision through prayer, Scripture, reading books, listening to stories, etc.

Here are a few different ways to cast vision:

Through Scripture

If vision is given by God, then God’s Word is the most surefire way to receive vision and deliver vision to others. Look for key passages that align with your team and ministry vision and are motivating towards it!

Vision Casting in Scripture: When God is casting vision or when biblical leaders cast vision in Scripture, many times those vision casts can be a great example to point to. Some examples might be God casting vision to Joshua to take the land of Canaan (Joshua 1), Nehemiah mobilizing the people to rebuild the walls (Nehemiah 2), and Paul’s exhortation to the Romans about his ambition to preach where Christ has not been named (Romans 15).

Promises of God: When you need to cast vision in terms of giving encouragement, the promises of God are a great way to help your team lift their eyes from their current situation and look to the future reality that God has promised He will bring to fruition! In the future we’ll have a post about the promises of God for movement practitioners. Think about what your team is feeling like they’re lacking or having difficulty believing will happen – find the promises of God in Scripture that directly answer those doubts! Read them, surrender your fears and doubts, and receive the faith and courage to believe the promises and persevere until they are fulfilled!

Through Listening Prayer

Prayer is another surefire way that you can receive vision from God to communicate to others. It requires asking and listening to the Lord about what He wants to tell the people you lead.

A Word You’ve Received: As you’re in prayer for your team and ministry, what is God telling you? What Scripture is He highlighting, what promises is He elevating? Listening in prayer and relaying it to your team is a powerful way to cast vision.

Listening Together: Sometimes, the Word I would receive from God was just to seek Him together. I wouldn’t come into a team meeting with a prepared message to share, but would set aside our normal meeting agenda to let the team simply sit and listen to the Lord. We’d then all share what we were hearing and look for the common theme the Holy Spirit was trying to convey to us! This is a great way to include your team in receiving vision directly from the Lord instead of always hearing it through you as the leader. A great example is in Acts 13 when the leaders at Antioch were worshipping, praying, fasting and heard the Holy Spirit set apart Barnabas and Saul, sparking new movements in the region.

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

Acts 13:1-3

Through Personal Convictions or Stories

Your Own Stories: The personal experiences that are cornerstones in your own journey towards the vision God has given you can also be motivating for others! Share stories of experiences you’ve had that opened your heart to pursuing this vision, that encouraged you that God was moving, that were examples of this vision starting to be a reality. Make sure you tell the story in a way that is encouraging for those that are listening, not just nostalgic for yourself!

Stories of God Working: Stories of miracles, answered prayers, changed lives, and salvations are great vision casts to get people excited about joining in what God is doing in your region or ministry. When you hear stories of God working in other places or in history that make you excited and you start to desire those things in your ministry, take note and share that with others! For example, I tried to hear as many stories of movements happening all around the world to build my own faith that it was possible here in Thailand, especially things that were sparking in the Buddhist world. If they worked for my heart, surely some of them would work for those I was leading! I would tell these stories and ask the question, “Why not us, and why not now?” And that would be the basis of our pleas to God in prayer!

Inspirational People Missions and Their Words:

Reading the biographical stories of great missions leaders throughout history has inspired countless people to follow in their footsteps. These faithful pioneers in our past have many lessons for us to learn. Recounting some of their stories and sharing their quotes are a great way to cast vision. Some of our favorites:

• Jim Elliot – “Canst thou bear this, my soul – short life? In me there dwells the Spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him. ‘Make me Thy Fuel, Flame of God.’”
• Hudson Taylor – “If I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Saviour?”
• Amy Carmichael – “We will have all eternity to celebrate our victories, but only a few short hours to win them.”

Through Needs and Opportunities

A vision, a future reality, isn’t needed if everything is perfect in your current reality. Your vision is trying to meet a need or answer an opportunity that exists in the world today. Illustrating that need or opportunity and how you want to respond to it can be a compelling way to draw people towards your vision.

Stories About the Need: During our first trip to Thailand, we were struck by the lack of access to the gospel across the country coupled with the spiritual darkness in Buddhism and Animism. Jenn and I met a shop owner who had never even heard the name of Jesus before. We heard testimonies of Thai believers who were miraculously delivered from demonic oppression. These stirred our hearts to want to make a difference, to proclaim Christ where there was no foundation. We relayed these stories to others to see if God would also stir their hearts to join us!

Unique Current Opportunities: As we said earlier, people want to join with what God is doing. Sharing about current opportunities can convey a sense of urgency that is compelling. During our early years in Thailand, a Thai pastor told us , “Thailand is based on 3 pillars – Religion, Country, and Monarchy. Right now all three are shaky and Thai people don’t know where to place their hope. There is a great opportunity for the gospel!”

Statistics and Maps: Sometimes, illustrating the vision through statistics or maps can be powerful forms of vision casting. I’ll always remember at Perspectives when one speaker told us that Americans spend more money on costumes for pets at Halloween than on bringing the gospel to the unreached. Juxtaposing such a trivial category against the core of the Great Commission was a sobering challenge to give sacrificially and in a focused way towards the unreached. Using maps can also be a memorable way to cast vision. The 10/40 Window is a striking combination of a map with a statistic: over 95% of the world’s unreached population lives within the 10/40 window. Simply by drawing a rectangle around that area, we can be reminded and convicted of the great need among the unreached.

Tips for Vision Casting

Directed Towards Your Audience: Always consider your audience when you’re vision casting, especially at that moment in time. Sometimes your best vision casting vignettes will fall flat if it’s not what your audience needs to hear. One illustration is to be a sniper, not a shotgun; you want to cast vision with your target audience in mind, not just throw out whatever cool stories you have. After you share, it’s good to take note of what worked and what didn’t.

Share Out of Your Passion: Good vision casting will affect and pull at your emotions. It may bring you to tears, invoke anger at injustice, feel inspired to do something. You’ve been affected by vision before, and when you cast vision, allow that passion and emotion to come out! Speak with conviction, with anger, with excitement, with joy! Jenn cries often and just says, “Don’t be afraid – I’m a crier.” But those tears highlight the significance of what she’s saying and display the passion she carries.

Cast Vision Often: Take every opportunity to cast vision! Like we said earlier, the vision bucket needs to constantly be refilled. We might take opportunities to cast vision during team meetings, 1-on-1 meetings, ministry trainings, in front of large groups, with supporters, or in recruiting conversations. 

Short and Simple: Vision casts don’t have to be and probably shouldn’t be very long. You aren’t trying to do complicated problem-solving that uses a lot of mind-power, but instead wake up the heart to be motivated to push forward. Sometimes vision casts might be the length of a seminar or longer talk, but most times 5-10 minutes will be plenty!

Practice and Get Feedback: If you’re not a natural communicator, that’s OK! Listen to the Holy Spirit, prepare what you want to say, and practice! Even the best vision casters practice! Try out your vision casts in front of a friend and get feedback.

Make It Your Own: Even if you are “stealing” a vision cast from someone else, don’t feel like you need to copy their style. Again, you don’t have to be a “charismatic” speaker in order to vision cast. Do it your way! If you’ve been impacted by vision, let that conviction and passion come out in a way that feels comfortable to you.

Listen to the Holy Spirit!: We mentioned this above, but it cannot be overstated that listening to the Spirit is the best way to make sure your vision cast impacts those that you are communicating to. He knows what your team needs!

It can feel intimidating to put yourself out there and try to inspire, influence, and encourage others towards great and challenging things the Lord has called you towards. But if He has given us this vision to communicate, we can be confident that He will be the one to give us words and to change the hearts of those we lead. This frees you to boldly cast vision, trusting the Holy Spirit to be the one who convicts hearts through your words.

There are so many transitions, unknowns, and moving parts when new teams launch to the field. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is a document that most missions teams have to provide clarity in the midst of those unknowns. We would define an MOU as a non-binding agreement created between two or more parties explaining how they will work together and interact with each other.

As common as MOUs are on missions teams, there’s surprisingly few examples or short articles out there to help with how to write one. But, “can you help me with how to write our team MOU?” is one of the most common questions we get from team leaders. Vision of the Possible by Daniel Sinclair is a really good book about missions teams in pioneer church planting, and has a short appendix on MOUs/VSPs that we’d recommend.

One of the agreements in our MOU was no dating in the first year. The two single guys on our initial team took that to heart… and both asked out another teammate on a date at 1 year plus 1 day. I guess they technically followed the agreement. I’m happy to report they both ended up marrying those teammates.

Why are MOUs important?

I quickly wanted to address why this document even matters and why it’s worth the time for team leaders to work through this.

1. Clear Expectations. As I mentioned above, clarity is kindness. New teammates especially are being introduced to a new country, culture, community, career all at the same time. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to interact? What is success every day? These are questions that every new goer faces in their early season on the field. As much as is possible, an MOU can lay down some basic foundations of clarity and expectations for your team. 
   
   For a new TL, it can feel overwhelming and difficult to write down all of these expectations. Write down what you know, and put down a ‘TBD’ in the categories that you’re not sure about yet! But provide as much clarity as you can in this document for your teammates, and then you won’t have to answer it in person that many more times.
   
2. Sets Team Culture and Values. An MOU is also one way you can write down and reinforce your team culture and values. What you talk about and what you do on your team will influence your team culture and values more than a document, but it still acts as a cornerstone for your team.
   
   How often will your team interact? What values do you want to have as a team? What’s your expectation on learning language? Many of these things can be expressed in an MOU.
   
3. Guidelines for Challenging Situations. Team conflict is a guarantee on missions teams, and some of it will certainly come out in the early season of a team forming. A team MOU is a good tool for outlining solutions to potentially challenging situations.
   
   In our experience, topics that result in conflict tend to be things in the ‘personal’ realm – vacations, parenting, travel, money, decision-making that infringes on what people think to be their own personal boundaries, etc. Teammates will mostly be willing to discuss things like team rhythms and ministry approaches with openness, but those ‘personal’ topics will get teams and team leaders in hot water. It’s important to write down some basic expectations and guidelines for how those things will be approached before you get into conflict.
   
4. Brief Summary for Outsiders. An MOU can be a good document to share with people in your team’s ecosystem that aren’t teammates. Church support teams, sending agencies, potential new recruits, etc. It will give them an idea of who you are, what you’re there to do, and how you want to interact.

How to Write an MOU

Some tips: don’t worry about perfecting the language. It’s not a legal document. This was a huge roadblock for me in trying to ‘wordsmith’ the MOU into being really professional or airtight. That’s not the purpose – write in common language that your team can understand easily and discuss.

Think of your first draft as just that – a draft. It’s not something the TL writes and then the team just agrees and signs. You want the first draft to be something your team can discuss and then incorporate their feedback into the MOU. It’s an agreement you enter into with each other, not a contract between you and your team members.

Here’s our step-by-step guide for how to write an MOU for your team.

1. Consider the requirements from your sending agency or church. If they already have staff handbooks, you don’t (and shouldn’t) need to rewrite everything that is already in there as all your staff have to adhere to that handbook anyway. If there’s additional aspects that aren’t outlined in the staff handbook, then go ahead and include that in your team MOU.

2. Consider what categories you want included in your MOU. This isn’t exhaustive, but below we’ve outlined some potential MOU categories into “core” which we’d recommend most MOUs have, and “optional” which could be added on a team-by-team basis.

Core Categories

• Purpose of this Document
• Vision and Mission Statements
• Strategy Summary / Ministry Distinctives – short summary that should refer to a Vision and Strategy Paper (VSP) or Strategy Plan
• Team and Leadership Structure – potentially including decisions that the leader reserves the right to have the final say
• Process and Requirements to Join the Team – if your staff handbook already has this, only add the parts that are unique to your team
• Preparation and Language Learning – pre-field requirements, commitment to language learning, hours and timeframe, approach
• Decision Making Process – general description of how decisions are made, potentially can cover decisions that will be by vote, consensus, consultation, and command
• Conflict Resolution
• Vacations, Home Assignments (HMA), and Travel
• Communication and Reporting
• Crises and Emergencies – basic overview that should refer to a Crisis and Contingency Plan document
• Restrictions and Recommendations – including security considerations
• How Future Changes to this MOU Can Be Made

Optional Categories

• Core Team Values
• Philosophy of Ministry
• Accountability Groups
• Expectations of the First 2 Years
• Job Descriptions and Team Roles
• Partnerships with Local Churches and Believers
• Contextualization
• Statement of Faith / Theological Distinctives
• Family / Children / Parenting – becomes very important if there are children on the team, but not necessarily beforehand
• Team Life and Lifestyle – general guidelines about team life and lifestyle
• Dating and Relationships
• Team Funds – running a team will include expenses; it’s easier to pull a regular amount from each unit and be support raised before launching to the field than to figure out finances for every gathering
• Visas / Identity

3. Read other example MOUs. Contact the other TLs that you know, or ask your sending agency for examples if they can provide them. Add categories that you might be missing.

4. Write down quick points of what you know in each category. Feel free to just copy and paste whole sections from other MOUs if it says what you want. If you’re not sure, write down ‘TBD’ or the questions you need answered in that section.

5. Let your draft sit for a while and have some informal conversations with your team or other advisors on the topics you have not yet filled in or need questions answered.

6. Take your last pass through filling out the MOU with coherent language and incorporating the feedback you’ve heard.

7. Bring your MOU draft to your teammates during a team meeting and read through it, asking for their feedback. Again it may be good to explain the purpose of the MOU is for mutual agreement, not to be ironclad against all situations or to be wielded against one another as a ‘gotcha.’

8. Incorporate your teammates’ feedback as best you can. Bring it back to them for final review. Have everyone sign and date their agreement with the MOU. Our recommendation is for new teams to set a 1-year evaluation period for the MOU because there are so many things you don’t know yet and may need to change. You could possibly edit the MOU earlier than that if needed. With future teammates, it will most likely be that they are joining an established team and simply need to read it, ask any clarifying questions, and sign it. But with your initial team (if you have one), it’s good to solicit feedback in the MOU’s creation.

9. Update the MOU as needed. Our recommendation is when there are significant team transitions – from language to ministry season, when teammates start having children, moving cities, changing platforms, changing ministry approaches – it’s a good idea to take a brief look at the MOU and see if everything still aligns or if anything needs to be added. 

Attached is an example of our original team’s MOU with some of the specifics removed, just so you can have a place to start. We have other team MOU’s that we can share as well. If you want some other example MOUs, want some guidance on how to write your MOU, or just someone to review your current MOU, please reach out at contact@missionsleaders.com. We’d be happy to help you!

Remember, as a team leader, your role is to serve your team members and help them to thrive and stay on task. Bringing clarity to some major categories through an MOU is one way you can serve them. The goal isn’t to be directive or controlling – a pushback you may receive – but to provide guardrails for your team members so they can move forward through all the unknowns.

Feel free to also directly subscribe to the Dare to Multiply Podcast on whatever application you use for podcast listening!

In this episode, Jenn is introduced as a co-host for Dare to Multiply and gives practical advice around leading teams toward a multiplication vision.

Our first year on the field we established a rhythm of monthly team fellowships. At these fellowship times that Steven and I led, we ate together, worshipped together, and did a quick Bible study. Usually people stuck around afterwards to play board games. Seems simple enough, right?

Except that everybody had a problem with team fellowship. Some didn’t like the food. Some didn’t want to do Bible study. Some wanted more Bible study. Others said – why are we playing games when people are dying without the gospel?! Some didn’t like the game choices. With a team of 13 all storming and adjusting to a new context, there was always someone unhappy. It was frustrating that such a simple thing meant to help our team bond and fellowship was such a source of conflict and disagreement.

Fast forward 5 years to our last team retreat before we expanded into 3 teams and moved to different locations. Every part of this retreat was delegated and divvied up among the team members. Some led worship, and others facilitated prayer times. Our “fun” teammates coordinated a kickball tournament and a coffee tasting activity. Some teammates gifted at administration helped coordinate all the logistics, our teaching-gifted teammates led Bible study parts, and other shepherding-gifted teammates facilitated a time for celebration and remembrance. Steven and I kept the part that we were good at – vision casting for the future – but almost every other part of the retreat was owned and executed by our other teammates. It’s one of our most memorable, enjoyable, and fun times that we’ve had with our team. We left feeling renewed and refocused on the vision. What changed?

I believe that one of the significant reasons for the change in this team retreat, and in the thriving and multiplication of our team, was the valuing and empowering of each person’s spiritual gifts to edify the body. By delegating each part of the retreat to those that were gifted to lead it, each person had more ownership and had the opportunity to exercise their gifts. Steven and I are not fun, we can’t lead worship, we’re bad at logistics, and we’re bad at celebration. Our other teammates are not just good at these things, but gifted by the Spirit to serve others in these ways. And in seeing all the parts of the body use their gifts, our team was able to look more like the body of Christ.

Why Spiritual Gifts Matter on Teams

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many…

1 Corinthians 12:12-14

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul lays out some foundational truths about spiritual gifts and how we are to view the giftings in both ourselves and other people. Despite a variety of giftings, believers are one in Christ and are part of one body made of many parts. Contrary to our instincts, diversity of giftings in the body of Christ should lend itself to greater unity and mutual love and concern for one another! And when we display this type of unity on our teams, we present a powerful witness and example of Christ to the world.

Later in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul instructs the early church to seek or to “…try to excel in [spiritual gifts] that build up the church.” For many goers, moving overseas means surrendering many of the spiritual inputs that we consistently used to rely on. Our teams often become our greatest venue for spiritual development and community, and may even become the closest expression we have for church. If gifts are for the edification of the body (Ephesians 4:12-13) and Paul encourages us to seek gifts that build up the church, which is the body of Christ, then we should regularly be using our gifts in our team life.

Using Spiritual Gifts for Team Life

In the last post, Steven already mentioned how different giftings serve and supplement one another in the work of ministry and pioneering. Similarly, when spiritual gifts are turned toward edifying the body, team life can become a source of vibrant community, encouragement, and development.  

Here are some examples of different ways spiritual gifts can be harnessed on a team: 

• Helps and hospitality – A common experience for all goers is tiredness or weariness. We can often feel physically, mentally, and spiritually drained as we pour out for the people we are trying to serve. While our teammates with service oriented giftings like helps or hospitality may not be “front of room” types of people, they are supernaturally able to sense who is discouraged or is feeling need, and meet that need. Those gifted in hospitality have the unique ability to create a space where all feel welcomed, rested, and served. 
  
  I am not gifted in these types of service oriented giftings. On our team, we regularly hosted team fellowships, events, meetings, and gatherings. It feels silly to say that these were some of the times I felt most anxious or drained. Was everyone enjoying themselves? Is the house clean enough? Will I have energy to clean afterwards? But by God’s grace, many of our teammates were gifted these ways. Without being asked, they would come early and stay late to help with cleaning. On hard days, they would ask the incredibly loving question of, “is there anything I can do for you?” And then follow through on what I said! Those with hospitality giftings would take ownership in hosting, leading games, welcoming guests, creating festive settings for holidays, and coordinating logistics. 
  
• Shepherding / Encouragement – Ministry overseas is often compared to a crucible – hurts, suffering, crises, failure, and discouragement create a constant pressure that bears down on a goer. In this type of environment, wounds can fester and turn into bitterness, crises can turn into long-term trauma, temptation toward sin increases, and it can feel very easy to give up. Shepherds are drawn to people who are hurting and long to see the people of God cared for, restored, and healed. Encouragers, similarly, find joy in speaking uplifting words and truths to help others grow and to keep going in the work. They help those in the crucible of overseas missions find 1 Peter 1:7 type success, the testing and refining of their faith that is revealed to be more precious than gold. Roles that a shepherd or encourager can take include facilitating personal development plans, transition or term debriefing, providing care for teammates, consulting with team leaders about the needs on the team, or (if trained) counseling. 

• Administration / Government – Administrative types excel in things like project and systems management and often serve as foils to open-ended idealists. They are the ones asking, “how are we going to get this done?” Those with administrative giftings are able to understand and manage details, often freeing up leaders from having to think about these things.
  
  Though we can do them, working on logistics and details are not mine or Steven’s strength. Before launching, we invited a couple to join our team specifically for the sake of helping carry the administrative and logistical load. In watching them work, I quickly realized that the power of the Holy Spirit can turn administrative tasks into as supernatural a work as miracles or healings. In their first year on the field, this couple had identified and secured health insurance for our entire team (and later, the organization!) and created and managed our visa platform! They uniquely sharpened Steven and myself, helping us to clarify our often abstract ideas and put things into writing for the benefit of current and future teammates, other workers, and national partners.

• Teaching, Knowledge, Wisdom, Exhortation – Sanctification and growing in holiness is a lifelong process. Those with teaching gifts are able to explain, instruct, and expose biblical truth in understandable ways for other believers. Similarly, the Holy Spirit moves through those gifted in knowledge, wisdom, and exhortation to be able to speak His heart towards certain people at specific times. Teammates with these giftings can be called upon to help develop and instruct other members of the team through things like leading Bible studies, discussions on topics pertaining to ministry, or facilitating worship and prayer times that create space for hearing the Holy Spirit.

Teaming is a Means of Grace

“Accept every humiliation, look upon every fellow-man who tries or vexes you, as a means of grace to humble you. Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow-man as a help to remain humble before God. It is by the mighty strengthening of His Holy Spirit that God reveals Christ fully in you.”

Andrew Murray, Humility

There is a reason that almost every passage on spiritual gifts is accompanied by instruction towards love and unity. Learning to work with and live in community with people who are different from us is difficult! In our flesh, we like to be right. Our different giftings will cause us to perceive the same situation from completely different perspectives. A shepherd gifted person might view an evangelist as flighty and inconsistent with new believers. A prophetic leader might prioritize speaking truth over caring for the heart. And yet, the picture of 1 Corinthians 12 is that this one body NEEDS all the parts. 

Spiritual gifts are gifts given and allotted by the Holy Spirit. They are gifts that we did not earn. Instead of fixating on differences, we are commanded to be humble and realize what we don’t have so that we can appreciate others with the giftings that we lack. Andrew Murray, in his book Humility, teaches that we should see other believers, especially the ones that vex us, as a means of grace to grow in our character. In this type of community, we are developed into Christ-likeness. This friction with our teammates develops humility, servant-heartedness, and surrender. And as we grow in Christ-like character, we are able to persevere in the work and bear fruit of the spirit along with ministry fruit!

Implications for Leaders

For leaders, knowing about spiritual gifts is critically important not just for yourself but also for those that you lead. 

Many times as leaders we fall into the trap of thinking that we need to carry everything ourselves. We need to lead the ministry, lead and develop a team, solve every conflict, handle every administrative task, and interact with organizational responsibilities. All the while maintaining our own personal abiding, rhythms, and responsibilities to family and friends. Being the answer to everything is a dangerous rut to fall into, and often speeds leaders along a path to burnout. 

Instead of doing it all, we recommend leading out of your giftings while proactively building a team around you, along with structures and rhythms, to supplement your weaknesses. As a leader you will still need a base level of competency in your weaknesses, but having a team with complementary gifts means that you won’t have to forever lead out of your weaknesses alone.

Recruit the Gifts That You Need

Knowledge of our own spiritual gifts helps us understand what kind of leader we are. For example, I am gifted in evangelism and prophecy. The strengths I bring into a team are a focus on the lost and in offering feedback and development to teammates. However, what I lack is shepherding and administrative giftings. With that knowledge in hand, I can keep my mind focused on finding shepherds and administrators while recruiting. For some reason, in our initial team of 13, not a single person had a shepherd gifting! And we saw that while our team excelled in strategy and personal development, we needed help in areas of healing from trauma, debriefing, and care. In those cases, we looked for outside sources – counselors, mentors from our church at home, and professionals – who could help supplement the lack. 

A simple grid you can use is from Ephesians 4:11:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Ephesians 4:11

Generally, leaders in the apostolic / prophetic / evangelist camp will tend to be more outward and ministry-focused. Shepherds and teachers conversely will focus more on inward care and development. As you consider your own giftings and leadership style, where do you feel like you need help? What kind of co-leader, subteam leader, or teammate could you recruit to balance out your own giftings?

Honor All the Parts

For those of us who have more visible spiritual gifts that seem more applicable for direct ministry work, it can be tempting to judge or disparage lesser seen giftings. Gifts like helps, hospitality, giving, shepherding, and administration are often most comfortably utilized behind the scenes as supportive roles. Although people with these types of giftings are not “flashy”, the Bible has a special word about them. 

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor…

1 Corinthians 12:21-23

Paul calls these types of people indispensable to the body and deserving of even greater honor! If not for the faithful servant-types on our teams, our team would never have been able to become a safe space where true and authentic community could form. They set an example of selflessness that is truly Christlike and something to be emulated by all.

As much as you can, cultivate a heart and a team culture that proactively celebrates these humble servants. Speak well of their deeds to others on the team, have celebrations to thank them for their unique contributions, and create space for their voices and perspectives.

Developing Your Team

As you recruit people with different types of spiritual gifts onto your team, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your team is suddenly rounded out. Spiritual gifts are not static things. We are encouraged to practice our giftings and develop them. As leaders, one of our main jobs is to develop the people on our team, both in character and skill. Here are some suggestions for ways you can start developing your team in spiritual gifts.

• Create Opportunities for Exploration – Many of our teammates may have landed on the field without explicit knowledge of or confidence in their spiritual gifts. While assessments can be helpful, teammates may lack the experience in ministry to really answer assessment questions with confidence. After language learning and acculturation, create opportunities for your teammates to explore different types of ministry activities and debrief them regularly. This debrief could include reporting on outward disciple-making ministry, but also potentially about roles within the team. What activities did you most enjoy? Where did you feel energized? Where did you feel discouraged? What is something you uniquely could contribute to the team?
  
  As your teammates dip their toes into these opportunities, it may become obvious what they feel supernaturally empowered to do and where they begin to see supernatural fruitfulness.

• Create Personal Development Plans – As your teammates begin to identify and practice their spiritual gifts, help them to form development plans that will help them to grow in their gifts. The goal is to create a consistent habit or practice that can be tracked over time, and to introduce helpful resources. What are Bible passages, books, mentors with the same gifting, podcasts, etc. that can be used to help supplement your teammate’s growth? We go more into detail on how to create personal development plans here.

• Develop Roles – Finally, we found that our teammates most thrived when they were able to work out of their giftings in the ministry. A task that one person finds taxing might be another teammate’s greatest joy to do! As much as you can, without sacrificing what is necessary for each person to do for the team to effectively pursue its ministry vision, try to work with your teammate to create a job description that fits them and the needs of the ministry best.
  
  In order to figure out everyone’s ideal roles, we had our team run through an activity. Every teammate wrote down on post-it notes every task they did in their role. After writing everything down, we then asked them to categorize each activity/task into “I love to do this”, “I could take it or leave it”, and “I would rather not do this”. Then we compared notes and, for areas where it made sense, divided up responsibilities based on who had giftings for those tasks.
  
  Obviously, some things like maintaining communication with your supporters or language study cannot be passed off, but it can be revealing to see where you can build more synergy on your team according to giftings! For example, leaders on our team tended to dislike logistical work or hosting, and this responsibility was easily given to those who were more service or administrative oriented.
  
  This activity also helped us understand where we could team up people with different giftings. Evangelists struggled with followup and deep discipleship of new believers, while those with more teaching bent were drawn to those types of tasks. Naturally, it made sense to pair them up to have the people-gatherer and the deep relationship builder work together!

Perseverance is a Team Game

Teams can be a pain. And so, the Holy Spirit, out of His great mercy and love, gives us supernaturally empowered spiritual gifts not just to accelerate the ministry, but to edify and strengthen our teams. And these teams are where we can find the deep community, mutual sharpening and development, and encouragement we so desperately need in a ministry so far from home.

In the ten years that our team has existed, we have been afflicted and tested by sicknesses, criticisms, conflicts, and seemingly unending crises. And yet, most of our original teammates have remained on the field and are still faithfully pursuing the vision. People have asked us – why do you think so many of your team are still on the field? The first answer is purely because of God’s grace to sustain us. But the second reason might just be that having a strong community that loves each other and has each other’s back in any situation could be the critical component that has kept most of us on the field. Perseverance can be a team game, where we help one another as different parts of the same body to complete the vision that God has given to us!

Reflection Questions

• How are you feeling about team life? Why? 
• What do you hope team life on your team could look like? What needs to happen to reach that ideal? 
• How do your spiritual gifts affect how you lead your team? 
• Are you seeing teammates contribute their spiritual gifts to team life? Why or why not?  
• What are the spiritual gifts of those you lead? Where do they need to be developed in their giftings? Are they in a role that activates and allows them to live out of their giftings?

In our previous post, we covered a simple definition of spiritual gifts and some key points about gifts. In this post, we’ll explore why using spiritual gifts is critical on the missions field.

As we’ve mentioned in our spiritual warfare posts, our encounters with spiritual warfare during our first short-term trip to Thailand opened our eyes to spiritual realities. It also made us begin to seek out the Holy Spirit and learn about spiritual gifts. As we discerned our calling to go and sought out development and preparation before launching, this category of the Holy Spirit (listening prayer, spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare) was a blind spot for us. As we heard stories from movement practitioners on the field, they shared about healings, demons being cast out, Muslims having dreams of Jesus, and supernatural usage of spiritual gifts. We studied Acts and saw miraculous signs and wonders accompanying the proclamation of the gospel.

It made us ask the question – how come these supernatural acts seem so prevalent on the mission field but feel so rare in our home context? And, if these things are happening and are critical to the work, what can we do to learn about the gifts and access them?

Part of the answer has to do with our own cultural and theological perspectives about the spiritual world, what Paul Hiebert calls The Excluded Middle. Another reason is that we simply are more self-reliant on our ‘natural’ skills and giftings rather than the Spirit’s power when we are in our own comfortable culture. Laboring cross-culturally can humble you quickly and turn you towards looking for power beyond yourself.

The truth is that we need the Spirit’s power for supernatural impact just as much at home as we do on the mission field – it just isn’t as apparent to us. But the field has a unique way to draw out the reality of our need for the Spirit’s power.

The Missions Field is a Pioneering Environment.

Floyd McClung coined the term ‘apostolic passion,’ which he defines as “a deliberate, intentional choice to live for the worship of Jesus in the nations.” It’s drawn from Paul’s ‘ambition’ in Romans 15:

“And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”

– Romans 15:20-21

I think many, if not most, cross-cultural workers have this apostolic passion. We not only desire to see Jesus worshipped among the nations, but have what McClung calls the apostolic abandonment and focus to give our lives and time and efforts towards making disciples among the unreached.

Those with apostolic passion will go to start new work among people and places where Jesus is not yet known. These missions fields are what I would call pioneering environments, where the methods, systems, structures, institutions, and the sufficient number of disciple-makers needed to reach a people or place do not yet exist. As such, pursuing disciple-making and church planting in a pioneering environment requires different approaches than in reached areas, including increased innovation, more flexible methodology, a higher rate of experimentation and failing forward, and more agile teams that can adjust quickly to change.

But above everything, pioneering environments require spiritual breakthrough.

The Pioneering Environment Requires Spiritual Breakthrough, Including Spiritual Gifts.

And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

– Mark 16:20

As much as I believe that strategic and innovative approaches can be helpful in starting movements, too often we see cross-cultural workers put their hope in their strategies and tools rather than in the Spirit’s power. These unreached communities have been resistant to the gospel for potentially hundreds of years, and there are too many cultural, religious, historical, and most of all spiritual barriers to the gospel in these pioneering environments for human ability to make a dent. Even the perfect persuasive evangelism tool has no power to change the heart of someone who lives in darkness. Seeing people among the unreached repent and believe the gospel requires the Spirit to move in power!

Paul tells us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12), and that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). Throughout the New Testament, we see signs, wonders, gifts, and power coincide with the proclamation of the gospel in the mission field, whether through Jesus himself (Matthew 9:35), in the disciples (Luke 10:19), or through the early believers in Acts (Acts 14:3).

These spiritual realities of warfare that faced the early church should inform how we approach the pioneering environments that we are in! For every hour of planning, how many do we give to prayer? For every resource we develop, how much do we focus on receiving and using the Spirit’s power and gifts? Do our approaches even allow for “divine power to destroy strongholds,” or are they weapons of the flesh and human wisdom? These are questions that I need to ask myself often!

If we can see the battle is spiritual, just as Elisha’s servant had his eyes opened (2 Kings 6:17), the good news is that the “weapons of our warfare” are already promised and given. I love that in every one of the Great Commission passages, power is promised to accompany the commission to make disciples and preach the gospel. One significant aspect of this power is through the spiritual gifts that each believer is given.

We should expect, depend on, and regularly use the gifts of the Spirit in the work of pioneering movements.

Our Thai partners greatly outpace us in this category. Their primary method of entering new communities is by praying for needs. We train and practice praying for people with a simple prayer, and then see if God moves and opens their hearts to hear more about Jesus. Often, people request prayer for physical ailments and illnesses.

Early on in our partnership with Mint, we went with her to visit one new believer’s house that was 40 minutes down a dirt road. After going through a new believer lesson with the new believer Sarah, she introduced us to her mom. Sarah told us that her mom hadn’t been able to stand or walk for several months, and a doctor told them that she would likely never walk again because of severe osteoporosis. Together with Mint, we gathered to pray for Sarah’s mom. Nothing happened. We said our goodbyes and Mint told Sarah that she would come back next week to go through more discipleship lessons.

A week later, Mint and her team went back to Sarah’s house. And they prayed again for Sarah’s mom.

And Sarah’s mom stood up and walked down the stairs for the first time in months.

The next week, she walked into the nearby creek to be baptized by her daughter.

As more and more disciple-makers were trained to engage the harvest, reports of healings, miracles, and salvations began coming in weekly. 

• One new believer was beaten by her husband so severely that her right eye swelled and she was blinded in that eye. She came to the local house church and had the believers pray for her. The next day, she woke up, and the swollenness was gone and she could see! 
• In another province, a new believer discovered he had the gift of healing and met a sick woman while selling bus tickets. After praying for her, she invited him to her nearby village where he healed an entire group of elderly ladies and started a new group! 
• Another new believer was in the hospital and prayed for a person in the bed next to them that had stopped breathing and was declared dead – and they came back to life! 
• At one training, we heard one leader yelling “Go out! Go out!” into the phone which is the same word in Thai as the go in “go and make disciples” from Matthew 28, so we thought he was training. But one new believer was working on a rubber farm and a coworker put on an amulet and became possessed by an evil spirit. She didn’t know how to cast it out so she called this leader to cast it out over the phone!

Over the past 7 years of partnering with this network of church planters, we’ve heard dozens, if not hundreds, of answered prayer stories like these, and probably have missed hundreds more. We start almost every meeting or training with the question – is there anything you would like to praise God for? And stories begin flowing out. One of my favorites is where one new believer prayed for rain on their farm, and the storm poured out rain just on their land and stopped exactly at the border between their farm and their neighbor’s!

These types of supernatural breakthroughs are common and normative in movements, like those in the book of Acts. When normal, faithful disciples (and almost all of the above stories are from new believers) are released to operate in power, God shows up! Are we expectant of these things? Are we asking the Spirit for them?

Though All Gifts Are Useful, Certain Gifts Are Particularly Helpful in the Pioneering Environment.

Certain spiritual gifts are particularly useful in pioneering ministry work, and others are more useful for building up the body in the context of a local church or mission team.

To give some examples:

• Healing and Miracles – We see this as a standard aspect of bringing the Kingdom of God to the world. Accompanied with the proclamation of the gospel are signs and wonders like healing and miracles. The several stories from the previous section are examples of what it can look like!
  
• Evangelism – Obviously, evangelism gifts are valuable to pioneering environments! All believers should share the gospel regularly regardless of gifting, and, those gifted in evangelism should use it frequently! People with an evangelistic gift just seem to very easily connect with people, and can have more effectiveness in sharing the gospel and winning people to Christ.
  
  Before we launched as a team to Thailand, we tried to live out disciple-making rhythms in preparation for overseas work. Out of our team of 12, one teammate who was evangelism gifted had led more people to Christ than the rest of our team combined! We will talk more about Ephesians 4 later, but evangelism-gifted leaders shouldn’t only exercise their gift in sharing the gospel, but need to use their gift to equip others to share.

• Teaching / Training – At first glance, it’d seem that teaching would be a gift more appropriate for within the local church. But for teams trying to start movements with a ‘Be Barnabas’ approach, catalyzing near culture believers to share the gospel means there’s a lot of training! It means that those with a teaching gift who are able to handle the Word simply and equip near or in-culture believers to share the gospel, make disciples, and multiply churches is extremely valuable! Also, teaching gifts can be crucial in developing simple, reproducible, biblical curriculum that can be used in new multiplying works.

• Helps – Another gift that seems like it would be more suited to within the local church is helps. But a Be Barnabas approach means that the National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) leader is the “Paul” that God has chosen to pioneer new ministry among their people, and our role as outsider is to serve and support that leader. If we want to Be Barnabas, it requires a humbling of ourselves to serve that leader, and those with the gift of helps will be particularly suited to caring for, supporting, and providing whatever is needed for that NAV leader to thrive and multiply.
  
  One of our teammates gifted in helps walked alongside a local believer who was going through burnout. That believer wasn’t implementing movement practice or actively making disciples, so Jenn and I questioned if that was really the best use of that teammate’s time. But after helping this Thai friend take a sabbatical, this local believer came back and said – I want to devote my time to multiplying disciples! – and has recently started a number of new groups! As people not gifted in helps, we saw that time investment as questionable, but to our teammate, she was drawn to serve through her gifting. That’s why it’s critical that all the gifts have an opportunity to participate in the Great Commission! Side note – this is why we love the Be Barnabas approach! The apostolic and evangelist will clearly have value in supporting the NAV’s ministry, but so do the teachers, shepherds, and helpers in a very different and much needed way!

We Should Have the Ability to Identify and Develop Spiritual Gifts In Our National Partners.

Lastly, it’s critical that we have studied, practiced, and developed our own gifts and gifts in others so that we can identify and develop spiritual giftings in our national partners. When we’re looking for a “Paul”-type national partner who can catalyze movements, part of that is looking for a specific type of gifting. It’s in the name – a National Apostolic Visionary leader. We break down some of that in our article about what a NAV is. We’ll also have a future post further exploring the word “apostolic” including the apostolic gifting.

Although we have a certain eye out for apostolic leaders, we should also partner with local believers that have other giftings. Anyone who is ready to be obedient to the Great Commission to share the gospel and make disciples is worth investing in! At the end of the day, the goal is to multiply healthy churches, and that requires all of the gifts, though different gifts might be emphasized at different phases of ministry. For example, apostolic and evangelistic gifts might be most helpful in pioneering in a new area to win people to faith. But as churches grow, gifts like pastor/shepherding and teaching will need to be emphasized. As issues needing correction come up in the church, giftings like exhortation and prophecy will need to be elevated.

Do we know what the Word says about each of these giftings? Are we able to identify them in emerging leaders? Do we know how to develop these giftings and encourage local partners to use them to advance the work of multiplying churches?

In our next post, we’ll explore how different spiritual gifts can help edify the body, either in the local church context or on missions teams. Below are some questions for reflection about spiritual gifts and the missions field.

Reflection Questions

• Are you expectant for the power of the Holy Spirit to work in you and in your ministry? Why or why not?
• Have you seen the Holy Spirit’s power working actively in your ministry? In what situations, experiences, or people have you seen this most clearly?
• Are you, your teammates, and your national partners regularly using spiritual gifts in ministry? Why or why not? Where do you, your teammates, or national partners need greater development in this topic?
• How could God specifically use your spiritual gifts to move your ministry forward?

This is one of the lessons that God has impressed on our hearts over the last decade of ministry on the field. Scripture tells us that apart from abiding in Christ we can do nothing, but our pride, our selves still default to being self-dependent in trying to achieve success in ministry. For some reason, we think that our intelligence, hard work, strategies, and skills can make a dent in winning entire people groups that have been resistant to the gospel for 2000 years. It’s ludicrous!

The nature of the work of disciple-making and church planting among the unreached is spiritual! Meaning, it is not a physical or mental problem – for people to turn from darkness into light, for the Enemy to be pushed back, for believers to obey the Great Commission – it requires the Holy Spirit to move! We cannot do a supernatural, spiritual work without supernatural, spiritual power. The good news is that we have been promised and given this power!

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Acts 1:8

How much clearer can it be? Now the question is – will we by faith receive this power? Do we know how to receive this power?

In this series of posts, we’re going to address what we’ve learned about spiritual gifts and missions – on missions teams, in missions work, and an overview of the term ‘apostolic.’ It’s a critical topic that we feel many cross-cultural workers are under-experienced in, especially when  they come from theologically conservative backgrounds. But it’s one of the questions that comes up the most when cross-cultural workers come to the field because of the prevalence of the spiritual world in different cultures and the necessity for guidance and empowerment from the Holy Spirit in an impossibly difficult work.

Our posts on spiritual warfare address why cross-cultural workers can be generally unaware of spiritual realities. Spiritual realities for goers can cover a wide range of topics, including but not limited to spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare, and listening prayer.

What Are Spiritual Gifts?

Type in ‘spiritual gifts’ in google and you’ll be inundated with spiritual gifts inventories and articles breaking down each gift. It’s almost too much information! The blog posts we’re writing aren’t trying to be an exhaustive study around spiritual gifts but more so how spiritual gifts are applied in the missions field and on missions teams. However, we’ll give a quick definition and some key points so that we can be clear about what we mean for the sake of application.

“A spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church.” – Wayne Grudem

Our best suggestion in understanding spiritual gifts is to study what the Word says about gifts as there are several key passages about them! I think we can get overly fixated on ‘what is my gift,’ which is important, but miss the general purpose and essence of why gifts are given. Here are some of the key passages concerning gifts, and at the bottom of the post we’ll give a few resources that have been helpful to us in understanding gifts.

• 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14.
• Romans 12:3-8
• 1 Peter 4:7-11
• Ephesians 4:11-16
• 1 Timothy 4:14-16
• 2 Timothy 1:6-7
• Exodus 31:1-11
• Acts 2:1-21
• Acts 6:1-7
• Hebrews 2:4
• Matthew 25:14-30

From our study of these passages and in practical usage, here’s what we would conclude about spiritual gifts:

1. Every believer is given at least one gift from the Holy Spirit, but you can have more than one.

Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that each person is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. This means that our question is not, “do we have a gift?” But, “what gift have I been given and how should I use it?”

A gift has been given explicitly by the Holy Spirit to you! We can and should desire other gifts (1 Cor. 13:31) but it’s also critical for us to be content with the gift we’ve been given because it means the Spirit has good works prepared for us to do with that gift! It means that He has a vital role for you in the body of Christ to play. Don’t ignore the gifts you have been given!

In terms of having more than one, even in Paul’s breakdown of tongues and prophesying in 1 Corinthians 14, he basically admits to having at least both of those gifts. Robert Clinton concludes that leaders in particular are given a cluster of giftings, where a core leadership gift is supported by other supplementary gifts (e.g. a faith gifting to accompany a missionary gifting, or an exhortation gifting to support a prophetic gift). One of our mentors, Char, also notes that gifts can potentially change according to the season of life or ministry assignment that you are in, and the Holy Spirit equips you for those new works appropriately.

2. We know we are operating in our giftings when we sense supernatural empowerment and see supernatural fruitfulness.

We learned this key point from Matt Carter’s sermon on 1 Corinthians 12. He shares his own story about how he identified that his spiritual gift was prophecy exercised through preaching. For him, most ministry activities were draining, but his first time preaching he felt empowered and energized. Not only that, people were impacted by his preaching and there were supernatural results.

We’ve seen these two aspects of supernatural empowerment and supernatural fruitfulness affirmed over and over again in our own discovery of our gifts and helping others to find their gifts. Some people describe the empowerment aspect almost like an ‘out-of-body’ experience, where the Spirit is the one speaking, moving, acting through them and they are simply being used by him.

For me, I started to discover that I had a teaching / training gift in college. Soon after I started following Jesus, I began to volunteer at our old church’s youth group. I had just learned about Inductive Bible Study and how the Word had so much to offer when we are willing to dig deep and learn. I would facilitate a Saturday night IBS with a bunch of high schoolers that would go for 2+ hours. If you’ve ever been in youth ministry, you’ll know that getting the attention of high schoolers is like herding cats. Their attention span, even before iPhones, usually lasted about 20 seconds.

But the Spirit impacted our time in such a way that we had all these easily distracted teenagers deeply studying the Word, with earnestness, curiosity, and passion. It would get to the point where their parents would be there to pick them up and they would shoo them away or ask for more time so they could get to the end of the Bible study for that day. For me, I would receive so much energy and excitement, and as a person who normally wasn’t great at public speaking, I would feel the Spirit give me not only the words but the passion and wisdom to say the right things in the right moment.

I started to say yes to more opportunities to teach and train, and ended up leading our campus ministry’s weekly large group gathering of 300 students during my senior year, which required giving some kind of teaching at least 2 out of every 4 weeks. I repeatedly saw a pattern of the Holy Spirit empowering me with the right words, energy, and authority during opportunities to speak, and by God’s grace, saw the supernatural fruit of people being impacted by the things the Spirit was speaking through me. That has continued even to our time on the field, even being empowered to teach and train in another language! My Thai language ability is 10 times worse when I’m in normal conversation compared to when I train, which is normally the opposite for most people. That is undoubtedly the Holy Spirit!

3. Spiritual gifts are not to be used for personal pride, but to serve others in a spirit of unity.

Repeatedly throughout these passages about gifts, there is an emphasis on humility, serving, and unity in one body. It’s like the writers know there is a potential for the Enemy and our pride to twist this wonderful gift from the Holy Spirit into opportunities for comparison and dissension. Any usage of a spiritual gift that results in pride, comparison, and dissension is a misuse of that gift, and achieves the very opposite of what the Spirit intended in giving it to you.

Any usage of a spiritual gift that results in pride, comparison, and dissension is a misuse of that gift, and achieves the very opposite of what the Spirit intended in giving it to you.

The point of this post is that the gifts given by the Spirit are wonderful and should be used with joy. But there’s a dangerous line when we start to be identified by our gifts instead of identifying with Christ. On his teaching about gifts, Paul emphasizes unity in the body of Christ and then inserts a teaching on love right in the middle with 1 Corinthians 13. We often use this at weddings because it sounds good, but it’s a teaching given in the context of unity in the body among diversity in the gifts. In some ways, it’s the litmus test of if we are using the gift correctly: patiently, kindly, not envying or boasting, not arrogant or rude, not insisting on its own way, not irritable or resentful.

When we say, I have a certain gift and therefore shouldn’t waste my time on menial serving tasks, we’ve missed the point.

When we say, our doctrine and beliefs about how we should use the gifts is different from that group so we can no longer fellowship or work together, we’ve missed the point.

Whenever we are elevating our gifts and our preference over the oneness we have in Jesus, over unity in the body, over love that serves others – we’ve missed the point.

If we are approaching the gifts appropriately, it should create immense humility in us. Firstly, because the gift is not your own – it’s literally given by the Holy Spirit! When you’re using your gifts, God is the one to be glorified, not us! And secondly, knowing that we have a gift but not all the gifts means that we need other members in the body. If the church is working correctly, all the different members of the body should be operating in their gifts together to make the body grow!

…from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Ephesians 4:16

4. The purpose of the gifts is for the edification of the church and expansion of the Kingdom.

Lastly, the second litmus test of our usage of the gifts is whether or not it’s being used for others. The gifts were not given to edify ourselves, but to “strive to excel in building up the church” (1 Cor. 14:12), for “the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7), for “building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12), and “to be witnesses… to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

We are given so much by Jesus for our own growth and edification. We are given the free gift of salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, we are given the Spirit to be comforter and helper, we are given the Word to guide our steps into daily obedience, we are given the community of believers to receive encouragement and love. But the gifts are not given for our own growth or desires. The gifts are given to be others-focused.

It can be exciting and make us feel special that we’ve been chosen specially to be given a gift! And we should joyfully receive it and be thankful to use it! But Paul gives a warning in 1 Corinthians 14 against using the gift to “build up” ourselves. He specifically calls out tongues, that it needs to be paired with interpretation so that it is beneficial for others around them. Not coincidentally, tongues remains one of the more controversial gifts in the current day.

Use your gift to serve others in the church or to bring others into the Kingdom!

Application

Now we have some clarity around spiritual gifts – you have at least one, it is accompanied with supernatural empowerment and fruitfulness, it is not for pride but for serving in unity, and gifts are meant to edify the church or expand the Kingdom. What next?

Gifts need to be identified, practiced, and developed.

Identify your Gifting

The first step in identifying is knowing what the gifts are. Study the passages in the list above! Certain resources can give you an idea of what a certain gift looks like – we recommend Robert Clinton’s resource “Understanding our Giftedness Set.” Inventories and surveys like this can help but only as a way to understand what you’ve experienced in ministry that you’ve already done.

Secondly, serve in a lot of different types of ministries! Whether at your local church, on a disciple-making team, or on a field missions team, volunteer and initiate to serve in multiple ways. As you try different things, be on the lookout for where you feel supernatural empowerment and see supernatural fruitfulness. Do ministry in team and community so that others can give you feedback about where they see your gift!

Lastly, identify by praying, asking, and listening to the Holy Spirit! If the Spirit is the one who has given you the gift, he can most surely tell you what gift you have and how to use it. Ask others to pray for you to receive gifts and help you discern! We see in the New Testament that the laying on of hands leads to imparting the Spirit and gifts (2 Tim. 1:6), and we’ve also had people pray over us to awaken certain gifts!

Practice your Gifting

Now that you know what your gift is – practice by using it! Paul encourages Timothy repeatedly to “fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Tim. 1:6), and to “not neglect the gift that you have” but to practice, immerse himself in it, and see progress in it (1 Tim. 4:14-15).

One disclaimer is that receiving a gift is not an excuse to disobey other parts of the Bible. Too often we hear “I don’t have an evangelism gifting’ as a reason to not share the gospel. This should go without saying but practicing your gifting can never supersede obedience to the Word and to the Spirit. That’s just our pride making an excuse.

Develop your Gifting

Develop your gifts through practice, but also by learning more specifically about them. Study the Word concerning specific gifts, and look for examples of people in Scripture with those giftings. Find and read books about these giftings. Find mentors that have those giftings and ask about their story and experience.

Often we see people begin with somewhat of an immature usage of their gifting, and over time as they gain experience and knowledge, they’re able to use their gifts more proficiently. For example a young prophet could see someone living in unbelief and desire to call them back towards the Lord but may be overly blunt and lack the wisdom for how to do it tactfully and graciously. A young apostolic might be sensing God call them towards a big vision and starting something new, but trample over everyone else on the way towards that new thing in a posture of judgment and criticism. More than developing the practical skill of your gift, the focus should be on the development of our Christ-like character and humility in using our gifts.

As a general guideline, we’ve heard that developing your gift can be a lifelong endeavor. In your 20s and 30s as you try lots of different ministries, you begin to identify your gifting. In your 30s and 40s you’ve learned what your gift is and begin to practice and use it more. And in your later life you become more proficient with your gift, and ideally, can align your ministry and leadership role primarily with your gifting and experience.

Conclusion

Now that we have a better idea of what spiritual gifts are, and how to identify, practice, and develop them, our next posts will address how these play out on the mission field and on missions teams. Below are some questions for personal reflection and some resources we’ve found to be helpful on the topic of spiritual gifts.

There’s plenty of reasons to learn and use your gifts. Beyond the fact that the Holy Spirit has specially given you one, and that Scripture repeatedly tells us not to be ignorant about our gifts or to neglect them, we’ve found that using our gifts results in our joy! There’s something amazing about being used uniquely by the Spirit, to experience that supernatural empowerment and to see supernatural fruitfulness. It is God being pleased to use us! It’s like trying out a bunch of different sports or extracurriculars as a kid and struggling and failing in them over and over again. And then, all of a sudden, you pick up the violin or dive into the pool or throw a football for the first time and it feels natural. Like you were born to do that thing. Don’t miss out on what He has uniquely created and designed you to do!

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10

Questions For Reflection

1. Do you have personal or theological barriers that keep you from studying or embracing spiritual gifts? 
2. Have you identified your gifting? If not yet, what steps can you take towards identifying your gift?
3. If you have identified your gifting, how can you grow and develop in the usage of your gifting? How can you create more opportunities to practice and work out of your gifting in your ministry? 
4. Have you observed any aspects of pride, comparison, or dissension emerge in the usage of your gifting? Why do you think that is? Are there certain situations, people, or contexts that trigger and bring out pride? If yes, then repent and surrender these things to God.  
5. How can you create a culture and space for your teammates to grow and develop in their giftings?

Additional Resources

• Unlocking Our Giftedness is Robert Clinton’s booklet on spiritual gifts detailing how leaders can develop in their giftedness and help develop others. Understanding Your Giftedness Set is a spiritual gifts assessment that goes with the booklet.

• Systematic Theology (chapter 52-53) by Wayne Grudem – an overview of spiritual gifts and addresses continuationism v. cessationism
• Get in the Fight! – Sermon on 1 Corinthians 12 by Matt Carter

In the last post, I broke down some of the most common ways I have noticed women leaders in ministry tend to self-sabotage. In this post, I will continue with two more examples of internal barriers. If you are a female leader reading, ask the Holy Spirit to help identify areas that he would have you grow in, without shame or guilt. For male leaders, ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom for how to navigate these issues with women that you may lead or work with.

Not Leveraging Our Emotional Intelligence as Leaders 

For years, I felt like being soft-hearted was one of my greatest weaknesses in leadership. When people shared their hardships with me, I would cry openly. Steven teases me that I can’t hide my face – if I’m angry, frustrated, sorrowful, or amused, everyone will know it. I was ashamed of this trait until one day, a woman I was leading told me “I love that you are a strategic leader, but also an emotional one.” What I hadn’t realized was that my tears were actually key to building trust with her, and that my openness created space for her to feel like she could be authentic in how she felt too.

What it is: One of the greatest strengths many women leaders bring to the table is emotional EQ and empathy. Many female business leaders tend toward empathetic and collaborative leadership styles that involve deeper relationship building and personal connection. And while both men and women have emotions and express them, many professional and leadership contexts still hold to the tradition of “keeping emotions at the door”. Women who show emotion will more quickly be stereotyped as “hysterical” or more “irrational”, while men are usually given a pass. Ironically, women who are less prone to showing emotion can be stereotyped as “cold”. Consequently, women who are more connected with their emotions are often not trained to appreciate or leverage their emotions in their leadership for God’s glory, but instead may feel pressure to stuff down their emotions to avoid a stereotype.

Underlying beliefs: When we have weaker emotional control or understanding, we may believe that our emotions are simply too much. We may feel like we are out of control and weak, or that emotions sabotage our leadership. As a result, we fear portraying our authentic selves to others because we internalize that who we truly are is embarrassing, could never be accepted, and would end up only burdening others.

What Poorly Leveraged Emotions Look like:  

• Suppressing emotions – Western society has generally limited what emotions are appropriate for women to essentially always wearing a smile. But women experience a whole gamut of emotions, including negative ones! So we often associate emotions with weakness or disapproval, and will do everything in our power to not express them. This creates dissonance within ourselves and causes others to perceive us as unapproachable. In addition, the longer we bottle up our emotions, the more likely we are to overreact.
• Manipulation – Sometimes, our emotions can take over. We may lash out in anger, gaslight, or cry to manipulate and win sympathy from others. Women without control over their emotions may be seen as volatile and untrustworthy.

How to address poorly leveraged emotions: God created women in his image, and a unique thing about God is that he also experiences emotions! Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus (John 11:35), turned over tables in righteous anger (Matthew 21:12-13), and rejoiced in the Spirit (Luke 10:21). Our emotions help us to connect with God’s heart, and to reflect him to the world when we express our emotions out of the security, safety, and union that we experience in Christ. We don’t have to be ashamed of them. If you want to learn more about how to leverage emotions, we wrote an article on emotional thriving on the field.

When women leaders are unable to properly express their emotions or understand how to leverage emotions into their leadership, we lose a huge opportunity. Being vulnerable in our emotions allows us to display our authentic selves and to invite others to do the same. More often than not, properly leveraged emotion draws others towards us. The heart of ministry is always the people, and people are complex, messy, and emotional. Learning to be comfortable in our own feelings allows us to understand and be comfortable with others’ emotions too. This allows us to build empathy and collaboration into our leadership. 

Application:

• Learn to be curious about your emotions. At any given time when you experience strong feelings, pause to consider where those emotions are coming from. What are your emotions telling you about your values, motives, situation, needs, and your place in it? What are they telling you about the values, situation, motives, needs, etc. of those you lead? A helpful tool to use is the Emotions Wheel.
• Step away when feeling emotionally overwhelmed and surrender your feelings to Jesus to carry. An easy tell for when you are emotionally “flushed” can include behaviors like complaining about others, speaking poorly of others, feeling overtaken by a feeling, or dumping raw emotions and venting onto a listener. It may take at least 10 minutes to calm down when you feel “flushed.” Learn to ask for time to process. “I want to take some time on this one and I’ll get back to you.” In that time, pray and ask Jesus to carry your emotions for you, and to help you sort through them.
• Share your feelings, not just information or directions, while maintaining proper boundaries! If you are emotionally aware and comfortable in expressing your emotions, those you lead will likely feel more comfortable being authentic with you. Ask those you lead for feedback, if you are uncertain how they received it.

Perfectionism

One of our best leaders in Thailand was a self-proclaimed perfectionist when she first launched overseas. And for her whole life, perfectionism served her well. She was excellent at almost everything she attempted and was the one you always could depend on. But when she landed in Thailand, language learning nearly broke her. No matter how hard she tried, planned, practiced, she couldn’t ever hear the tones of the Thai language. In a matter of weeks, she went from the consistent excellence she was always used to, to bottom of the class, just struggling to keep up with her husband and teammates. She had never not attained what she worked for, but the ability to pick up language was completely out of her control. Everybody around her had a front row seat to her failures. What must they be thinking of her? Every day she went to class, she experienced more shame at what a failure she was. 

What is it: Perfectionism is the tendency to demand an extremely high or even flawless performance, in excess of what is required by the situation. Perfectionists maintain this high standard by controlling their own behavior, others, a narrative, or circumstances.

Perfectionism particularly impacts women because social messaging often portrays ideal women in confusing contrasts – beautiful but not tempting, nurturing others but never expressing personal needs, smart and assertive but not bossy, and always smiling – leaving women spinning as they try to be all things at once. 

Underlying Beliefs: Perfectionists learn that people value them for what they do instead of who they are and come to see their worth as contingent upon other people’s approval regarding their contribution. This leaves them dependent on external validation and highly vulnerable to criticism. To protect themselves, perfectionists adopt the false belief that being “perfect” or achieving “perfect work” is their best defense against criticism and is the way to secure the future they desire. Perfectionist thoughts sound like, “if I can get this right, I can attain what I need and God will come through for me (or love me). It’s up to me. I can’t make mistakes.”

What Perfectionism Looks Like: 

• Having a standard for yourself that is higher than the standard you would say is appropriate for others.
• Overwork and the inability to rest or delegate. Perfectionists will often take on the work of others (including work that really belongs to the Holy Spirit and not us!). Over time, working too hard leads to joylessness. 
• Deep shame in failures and mistakes creates an inability to learn from those failures, admit mistakes, or receive critical feedback. 
• Lacking grace for others when they make mistakes. Judging and competing with others. If other people perform better, they may become a competitor for the validation you seek. 
• Oftentimes, those who are led by perfectionists may feel anxious, controlled, and pressured to be similarly perfect.

How Jesus Addresses Perfectionism: Freedom from perfectionism is found in the truths of the gospel. Perfection is impossible for us apart from Christ, and no amount of effort, discipline, or control will ever attain it. That’s why Jesus achieved perfection for us (Hebrews 2:10)! And through his death and resurrection, the inheritance of Jesus is yours by grace, not works (Colossians 1:12, Ephesians 1:3). Therefore, there is no need for striving, anxiety, or fear. Your work, your vision, and your fruitfulness is ultimately God’s responsibility, and he will accomplish it through you if you will surrender your methods for his (1 Corinthians 3:5-7)!

We also can remember the examples of biblical leaders who “failed” or did not have a perfect reputation, like David, Rahab, Peter, the Samaritan woman, or the sinful woman. How did God respond to these people? Despite making major mistakes, God still chose, anointed, and used these people in powerful ways. In fact, many times it was their weakness that magnified and enhanced the perfection of God (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). 

Application: For perfectionists, battling perfectionism can feel like a lost cause because a mistake can trigger intense shame and hopelessness. But keep learning to extend grace to yourself every step of the way, and trust that it is Jesus who will give you freedom!

• Acknowledge your limitations and take intentional time to meditate on and receive God’s love for you, and how much he desires to show up for you in your weakness. Figure out what triggers your feelings of perfectionism / control. In what situations do you most feel like God won’t come through? What are the worst case scenarios that constantly play in your mind? Who are the people you most need to impress? As you learn to better recognize your triggers in the moment, take a step back, surrender whatever it is you’re trying to control, and remind yourself of your identity in Christ. 
• Set reasonable goals that make sense for yourself and for others, and preemptively surrender the outcomes. Sometimes it helps to run your goals through others to make sure they aren’t unrealistic. Practice delegating responsibilities to others. And fight the urge to hover or dictate how other people complete these assignments. 
• Set strong personal boundaries to prevent overwork. Schedule in times to rest, connect with community, and to disconnect from work.
• Own mistakes gracefully and view them as an opportunity to learn. Practice self affirmations when receiving feedback – “I make mistakes and that’s okay. God can use my mistakes for His glory.”

In reading lists like this, it is easy to feel discouraged. I know that I have personally struggled with each of these internal barriers, and sometimes become overwhelmed at what it will take to keep growing in order to be the leader that God has purposed me to be. But my encouragement to you is that finding freedom from these obstacles is not your sole responsibility. In fact, your sanctification and growth is the responsibility of the Holy Spirit, and he has every resource and wisdom to do so. Philippians 1:6 is a great comfort to me: 

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 1:6

The leader I mentioned in the section on perfectionism experienced this promise. Here is the rest of her story:  

“The language learning season was the most painful, prolonged, and difficult season of my life to that point. I was the kind of person who never did anything that I wasn’t good at and only focused on the things that I was good at and that ‘worked’ for most of my life. I fell into a deep and dark depression, wrestled with suicidal thoughts, and became a shell of a person.

Even in the midst of that darkness, I knew the Lord was with me and was doing something in me. I know now that God was using that season to show me the ugliness and wickedness of my sin. Perfectionism which is rooted in pride is sin. Ironically, I prided myself on my perfectionism because it was how I achieved many things in my life. I finally saw perfectionism for what it was and realized it was not just an empty promise or a bad coping strategy but that it was destroying me.

The Lord lifted me out of the pit. Once I understood what perfectionism was and what it was costing me, I wanted it gone forever. I didn’t want to be ruled by it anymore. The Lord supplied the faith I needed in the moment to believe and trust that He could heal me forever of perfectionism, and He did. 

Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

Acts 13:38-39-38

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1

These verses were so precious to me in that season. The heart of Christ is to free his people from their sins. Christ has purchased our freedom and the FULLNESS of our freedom. It’s so much more rich and vast and beautiful than we could ever imagine. But sometimes we fail to take Jesus up on his promise and live out of these truths. This doesn’t mean that process will be easy and pain-free, but it’s so worth it. I would walk through that season again just to live out of the freedom I have been walking in.” 

This story happened ten years ago, and this leader would say confidently that God healed her of her perfectionism. She hasn’t struggled with it since. Not only that, in the past ten years she has gone on to disciple and develop women on our team and dozens of Thai women (speaking in Thai!), and take on leadership of her own team. Currently, their team and their Thai ministry partners are seeing weekly baptisms and churches planted in some of the least reached parts of Thailand!

God knew what he was doing when he called you into leadership. He knew who you were and still desires to not only work with you, but IN you! He wants to finish the good work he began in you at salvation by helping you find freedom from impostor syndrome, perfectionism, the need for approval, and uncontrolled emotions. Our job is to simply surrender these things to him in faith, trusting that the Holy Spirit will give you the power, guidance, and desire to overcome. 

Take a moment to pray with the Lord: 

• What would it look like if he freed you from all the obstacles in your heart that hinder your leadership? 
• What would you attempt for God? 
• What could he accomplish through you?

This content was co-written with my friend LB who previously served as a team leader in East Asia and is currently serving in member care.

In the previous post, I shared about my leadership journey and the unique internal tension I felt about being a woman leader in ministry and on the mission field. Though I felt called and affirmed by God to step into leadership on our team in Thailand, I also continually struggled with doubt, anxiety, fear, and anger. While it was easy for me to blame these feelings on outside circumstances or people, I eventually came to the difficult conclusion that many (if not the majority) of my tensions were self-generated.

When God calls someone into leadership, he is primarily concerned with that person’s character and heart. Who we are is just as important to God as what we do for him. A person could learn every leadership development framework or tool, but without a heart freed from lies and filled with the identity found in Christ, their leadership will never reach its fullest potential.

In this post, I will focus on the most common ways that women leaders (including myself!) sabotage ourselves in the secret places of our inner lives and hearts. Before we can even begin to address external barriers or specific contexts, we want to always start by looking inward. While this list could also apply to men, I have noticed women in particular tend to struggle with these areas. Research suggests that one reason for this comes from gender-role stereotypes, which means that our social understanding and expectations of what it means to be a leader coincides more with an expression of male leadership than female leadership. Because of this, women leaders find they often need to navigate through unspoken rules and expectations that society does not necessarily place on men. For example, male leaders who speak up are applauded as confident and assertive, but women who speak up can often be labeled as “bossy” or “pushy.” So we often end up adopting self-sabotaging mindsets and behaviors as a way to cope (Playing By the Rules, 12).

As you read through these examples, ask the Holy Spirit to highlight any you may struggle with and ask how He might help you find freedom.

Imposter Syndrome

A few years ago, Steven and I were invited to a meeting of other team leaders around the world to discuss strategic ways to onboard and train new missionaries. Those attending, mostly men, seated themselves at the multiple tables in a large conference room, but I hung back paralyzed about where I was supposed to sit. It felt like the middle school cafeteria all over again! 

All the women in the room, mostly stay at home moms who were not involved in their teams or in ministry, fit around one single table. Do I shrink over to the women’s table, simply there as “Steven’s wife?” Or do I join the tables with the other men and get to talk about ministry?

Would they acknowledge me as a leader?

I ended up shuffling over to the table of women and sitting with them. Because discussions were organized by table, I ended up not being able to participate in any of the discussions as my table was assumed to be non-participants. After the meetings, Steven asked me, “why didn’t you sit at the main tables? You have just as much experience and just as much to say as anyone else here.” I felt ashamed by this question, because what Steven said was true! I did have experience as a leader and had unique things to contribute. But instead of trusting that God had called me to be a leader and to bring my unique perspective, I chose to hide (literally!) and diminished my own voice.

What Is It: Imposter syndrome is a feeling of unworthiness tied to our self identity, particularly in leadership spaces. Kate Coleman describes imposter syndrome as “…profound feelings of self-doubt and pervasive feelings of being unqualified” (7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership, 7). In a 2020 KPMG study of 750 female executive leaders, 75% reported regularly experiencing imposter syndrome, mostly because they never expected they would ever attain such a position. In that same study, over half of the participants revealed a fear that they would never meet expectations. 

We can experience imposter syndrome for a variety of reasons, from societal messaging that presents men as ideal leaders, the roles we played in our families, or our own lack of self esteem, just to name a few. Deb Liu, CEO of Ancestry.com, elaborates on why women tend to experience imposter syndrome more – “this feeling is even more acute when you are ‘the only,’ someone who doesn’t look like everyone else. You feel singled out. You are not only being judged on your merits but also feel the weight of being different (Take Back Your Power, 63).” Many times, women leaders are the only women in the leadership room. It can be hard to feel like you belong when no one else looks like you.

What Impostor Syndrome Looks Like: The way we display impostor syndrome can take a multitude of forms. Here are some of the ways I have seen it play out for myself and other women leaders: 

• Inauthenticity or “shrinking to fit” – pretending to be the ideal person who actually belongs in the leadership role and becoming less of your authentic self. Changing yourself to match the archetype of who actually fits.
• Fear of taking risks or of volunteering for assignments that carry a risk of failure.
• Inability to take feedback well. Constructive feedback will feel like a confirmation of all your insecurities and positive feedback will feel like a lie.
• Inability to ask for help for fear of revealing that you don’t have everything together, and isolating to make sure no one finds you out. 

Underlying Beliefs: When we experience impostor syndrome, common messages we tell ourselves may sound like, “I’m not good / smart / talented / liked / experienced enough. I don’t belong in leadership because I don’t look or sound like other leaders. Everyone, including God, was wrong to think that I might have something to contribute because they don’t know who I really am. I have to hide who I really am from everyone else or else they all will be disappointed.” 

How Jesus Addresses Impostor Syndrome: We must battle the lies of impostor syndrome with the truth of who Jesus says we are. The Bible says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8-9). Jesus fully knows who we are and he chose to love us, save us, and adopt us into his family. Not only that, he has given you a leadership assignment and good works that only you can do (Ephesians 2:10). He promises to finish the good work of sanctification that he started in us (Philippians 1:6). And in fact, you are not a fraud because the Bible says that you are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:21) and a royal priest (1 Peter 2)! 

When we believe the lies of impostor syndrome, we reject the identity that Christ died to purchase for us. We defy God’s vision of who he wants us to be and replace it with a lesser identity based on our fears and insecurities. But you don’t need to change yourself into a certain kind of person to “belong in the room”, or shrink back from faithful risk-taking in your leadership. God knows who you are and desires for you to lead as you are.

Application: If you find yourself falling into impostor syndrome in your leadership, here are some things you can do.

• Memorize scripture about your identity. Remember your leadership call and find confidence in your identity from Jesus first. Remember that if Jesus was the one who called you to leadership, then you absolutely belong in the room because he was the one who placed you there. 
• Know and celebrate what you bring to the table, as well as what you don’t. This helps you to portray your authentic leadership, and also keeps us from drifting into pretending to be who we are not. Find mentors and peers who you trust to guide and speak truthfully to you about who you are and to help you not deviate towards pretending. 
• Learn to accept feedback and mistakes gracefully, without shame or over apologizing. All leaders have weaknesses, and we miss out on crucial development when we are terrified of constructive feedback.

Desiring the Approval of Man over God

Early on in our team, I led a girl who was very talented in the ministry work but struggled with anger. We were good friends and I knew where these struggles had come from and that she wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt people with her sharp comments. However, though it was my job to manage and develop her, I found myself often pulling my punches. I withheld feedback and made excuses for her behavior (despite often being on the receiving end of her frustration) because I feared hurting her feelings, making her dislike me, or of having to deal with the fallout that might come my way if I did share what I truly thought. I prioritized winning her approval – or avoiding her disapproval – over being faithful to do or say what I knew the Lord was asking me to do in order to lead her well.

What is it: Desiring man’s approval is the act of placing others before God in your life. This includes being afraid of someone, holding someone in too high esteem, being controlled or mastered by people, putting excessive trust in people, or needing people to fill needs that God should fulfill.

What Needing Man’s Approval Over God Looks Like: 

• Needing constant validation from people – our leaders, those we lead, peers, family, anyone! When it’s not received, we can shut down in despair, or try to hunt for it in the form of attention seeking. It might look like fixating on trying to guess what other people are thinking of you.
• Needing man’s approval leads to people pleasing behavior. When we people please, we change ourselves to match other peoples’ expectations, thus affecting our ability to say “no” or to have proper boundaries with others. We may deprioritize our own responsibilities, ideals, or values in order to not rock the boat. But over time, this may cause us to feel like we are compromising ourselves in order to maintain approval. 
• Fear of making decisions and being held responsible for those decisions. Leaders often will be the lone voice or final decision maker for a team, and this is a daunting and heavy responsibility. It is almost impossible to make everyone happy all the time, and people who struggle with approval will have trouble trusting their own perspectives and logic enough to confidently own the responsibility or repercussions of their decisions.

Underlying Beliefs: My value / security / protection is found in how people perceive me. I am not enough and need affirmation that only other people can give me. God’s approval of me is not enough or not guaranteed.

How Jesus Addresses Fear of Man: When we struggle with a need for the approval of man over God, we forget that we are called to love and fear God above all else. When we love God first, we find that he is perfect, deserving, and the safest person to anchor our value and security on (Proverbs 29:25). We cannot call ourselves a servant of Christ if we value man’s approval over God’s (Galatians 1:10). His is the only approval that matters. From there, we find hope in the things God says of us. God loves us so much that he invites us to enjoy the fullness of union with Christ (John 15:1-10). How could God disapprove of us when we are one with the Son, who is absolutely approved of by the Father? We are valued, seen, and secure in God, and so we have freedom from needing it from fallible and imperfect people.

Application: 

• Have mentors and peers who you can consult and process with in your leadership decisions, and who you can trust to give you loving and trustworthy feedback.
• Know your triggers for when you start falling into patterns of approval seeking from people. In what situations and with whom do you start to dwell on what people are thinking of you? In what situations and with whom do you find yourself assuming peoples’ expectations or  intentions? Who can you never disappoint? 
• Plan well before meetings where you will have to make decisions, especially those with people whose approval you seek. What are you there to say? What are your non-negotiables, limits, and requests? Pause before saying “yes” and take 1 minute to assess your motives. If you say yes, what is the cost? 
• If you are hesitant to give feedback or to say hard things, consider what the cost of not saying something might be. In many cases, leaders are the only ones with the visibility into a person’s life and authority to be able to speak in, and our silence may rob a person we lead of critical development. 

These two internal barriers both come from not viewing ourselves rightly compared to how God sees us. When we judge our own value based off of things like other people’s opinions or societal stereotypes of what a leader should be or look like, we will often compromise ourselves to fit. We shrink back from risks and acts of faith that are required for bold leaders. This deeply saddens the heart of God, as he doesn’t see us or value us through any of those lenses. Instead, he desires that we would embrace fully the way he has created us and lead out of a confidence that our value is found in Christ alone!

Processing Questions

• Are internal barriers preventing you from stepping into greater influence or leadership?
• What are some internal barriers that keep you from being the leader God has called you to be? 
• Where do your internal barriers come from? How have you seen them play out in your life?
• How does God see you today? What are some truths from scripture that can help you remember this? 

In the second part of internal barriers for women in leadership, we’ll address two other significant topics – perfectionism and shame in our emotions.

Filter Selectively

Even though we cast vision to anyone that will listen, team leaders should filter who actually joins their team very selectively. There are a few different things you can do to find out if a recruit is the type of person you truly want for your team. This requires asking many questions to understand them more, probing into things like motivation and passion. If you’re curious or unsure, don’t be afraid to ask – it’s always better to hear a potential recruit’s response over guessing or assuming.

Prioritize character over gifting. All goers have to hit a minimum standard for spiritual maturity and character, or they will be difficult to lead in the stress of a cross-cultural field context. Do they have a rich and abiding relationship with the Lord? Do they have any spiritual bondages that they haven’t seen consistent victory over yet (generally, the minimum is 6 months of sobriety or freedom over a sin addiction before launching to the field)? Is there anything significantly lacking in their character or in bearing fruit of the Spirit? Look especially for humility, patience, perseverance, flexibility, and faith, as these are critically important on the field. Many times, agencies will have a clear standard for who to deploy, and evaluations to help determine a goer’s readiness. It’s a good idea to take their list and even add more of your own values from your own team. If your agency does not have a list like this, you can use the personal evaluation we developed as a baseline. 

Consider their experience and track record. Can they do the job or role you’re inviting them to do on your team? Ask questions looking for demonstrated competency. Anyone can answer that they are ‘passionate’ about something, but see if they have at least some proven experience in doing the main activities in your ministry (e.g. training, evangelism, disciple making, etc.).

Check their references. A potential recruit will always put their best foot forward when going through the recruiting process, not unlike the first few dates with a new person! Ask them for references – their peers, their leaders, people they’ve led – and ask thorough and direct questions about the areas that you need to check them on like character, calling, strengths, and weaknesses.

Don’t be afraid to say “No” or “Not yet.” If you’re hearing from God that they won’t be a good fit for your team, don’t be afraid to tell them that. Sometimes as leaders we feel bad about influencing such a significant decision in a recruit’s lives and then closing the door. But ultimately, it’ll be better for them and for the team to not continue on in the process if they aren’t a good fit. This can happen at any point in the process. It can sometimes be helpful to provide gentle but clear feedback about why they might not be a good fit for your team, and propose areas of development. However, once you say no or not yet to joining the team, don’t be the one to take responsibility for their development. This can cause you unnecessary burden when team leaders already have so much they need to focus on. Let them have the opportunity to work on their own development in their home context, as this is a good indicator of their humility and initiative. We’d also heavily caution you to not just take whoever your mission agency proposes – each team is different and you should do your own homework about whether the potential recruit is a good fit and has acceptable character and calling to persevere on your team. Take the agency’s recommendation as one proof point and continue to discern and filter yourself.

Discern Their Fit

Along with evaluating their character and competency, you’ll be simultaneously getting to know their giftings, strengths, and personality to see if they’ll be a good fit with your leadership, your team, and your ministry.

Role, Strengths, Weaknesses: Get to know a recruit’s strengths and weaknesses and think through what potential role they play on your team or ministry. Find giftings that are generally complementary to your leadership and your team. For example, if you have no administratively gifted people on your team and need that help, try to find those that might have that gifting. Other than just asking questions, helpful tools to discern giftings and aptitudes include spiritual gifts inventories (like this one from Robert Clinton), Clifton Strengths, enneagram, etc. in order to get a generalized view into what their strengths and weaknesses might be. As weaknesses surface, also factor them into your team makeup to see if there’s any glaring deficiencies on your team as a whole.

Responsive to your leadership: See if the potential recruit is a person who is responsive to your style of leadership. For example, if you are a hands off type of leader that expects a lot of self initiative and the recruit is a person that needs more directive and detailed leadership, that is an aspect to consider. Or, a family might have reservations being led by a single person. Perhaps another person on your team could help provide some more leadership, but ultimately you want to make sure they are willing to submit to your leadership decisions and work with your style.

Look for diversity / variety on your team: Although you’re looking for the potential recruit to be responsive to your leadership, you also want to value and look for diversity and variety on your team. Recruiting a team that all thinks and acts like you means that you will lack perspectives and giftings that could help your team to thrive or be effective on the field.

General chemistry: How is the general chemistry between this person and you and your team? Learn about their hobbies, values, family of origin, lifestyle, etc. These might not be make or break issues but it’s good to be aware of where there might be friction points. 

Let teammates or others you trust interact with them: Lastly, let your teammates or those you trust interact with the potential recruits! As the TL, you’ll likely drive the process of getting to know them, but try and set up times for teammates to get to know their potential future teammates and solicit feedback from them about the recruit. Your experience may vary, but because adding a new teammate is such an impactful event, we ask that all of our current teammates have consensus with adding them before we make a formal invite. Adding a new teammate at the disapproval of a current teammate is like one step forward and five steps back.

Pray, fast, and ask the Lord: Selection is a critical component of discipleship, as we see from Robert Coleman’s Master Plan of Evangelism. And a huge aspect of selection is hearing from the Lord. We can see Jesus model this for us in the choosing of the 12:

In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles. (Luke 6:12-13)

We set time aside to pray and fast all throughout the process of considering a recruit, and ask the recruit and our current teammates to do so as well. Don’t skip this step! There are few decisions as impactful on a team as who you recruit, so spend the necessary time to bring recruits through the process and have clarity from the Lord.

Provide Clear Next Steps and Process Overview

At each point of the process, you want to provide clear expectations and next steps as much as possible to the recruit. A next step could include praying and processing what they’ve learned, talking to a teammate, taking a vision trip, or inviting them to a ministry or team event. Remember that this is a weighty decision for their lives and calling, so clarity is kindness.

If you’re serious about having them enter the recruiting process to potentially join your team, give them a clear expectation of the process and timeline. A simple one-page document outlining this can be very helpful. Also make it clear to them that you’re inviting them to start the recruiting process, which is different from an invitation to join the team!

Work together with your sending agency in terms of assessments and other logistical aspects. As the TL you will probably drive more of the personal connection and discernment parts, as well as connecting them to the right people in your agency.

Once you’ve had the initial conversations and done the relevant assessments and evaluations, we’d strongly recommend that the recruit comes on a vision trip for at least a week if possible. Interacting with them in-person and with the team is completely different than on Zoom calls. And allowing them to engage with the culture, people, and environment of your field is a critical piece of the discernment process, for both you them. Some recruits that we thought were slam-dunks came on vision trips and felt strongly from the Lord or personally that Thailand wasn’t a good fit – which is way better to know before they join the team than after!

Make A Compelling Ask

Lastly, after you’ve gotten to know them, gone through all the necessary assessments and meetings, discussed with your team, and prayed and listened to the Lord, if you still feel that they are a good fit for your team, make a clear and compelling ask! “We feel like you could be a great fit on our team and we’d love for you to join us. We’d like to invite you to join our team! Take some time to pray and consult others and let us know in the next 1-2 weeks.” If possible, try to make the occasion special through a nice meal or a gift! In all likelihood, unless they are also looking at other teams, by the time you’re ready to make an ask they are probably ready and expectant to join.

Conclusion

Recruiting is much more of an art of discernment than a scientific process, but hopefully the guidelines above give you a grid of what to think and work through in recruiting someone to your team. As a TL, there will be different seasons where recruiting may take up a lot of your time versus other seasons when it’s quieter. As you pray and plan for the future of your team, consider the resources you have – your people! – and whether you need to add more. The onramp for a recruit from when you get to know them to when they are on your team, through language and culture, and contributing as a teammate is VERY long, potentially multiple months or years depending on language learning. Even if you don’t think you need a teammate today, be open to casting vision broadly and seeing who God might bring in front of you! Remember, recruiting leaders will almost always help to multiply your team, ministry, and impact.

To bring the soup terrine story to its conclusion, this couple that first gifted us the soup terrine now leads one of the new teams in Thailand after our team expansion in 2020, and are some of our closest friends in the world. The night of Jenn’s seizure, when they heard what was happening, they immediately booked flights to be with us in the hospital without even asking me first. After 10 years on the field, our relationship with them has gone far beyond ministry teammates.

Our prayer is that the Lord would provide teammates, partners, and friends of this quality on your teams!

Questions for Reflection

• How much do you prioritize recruiting and casting vision as a key responsibility for a leader and why? How high of a priority should recruiting be for you in this next season?
• What areas of the recruiting process do you feel confident in? What areas do you feel less confident in? What can you do to improve in those areas or invite others to help?
• Do you have other potential leaders on your team that you can develop or rely on?
• Are there any specific roles or giftings that you feel that your team has a need for?
• Do you have networks of potential goers that you can recruit from? Is there someone you know from your home context that can advocate for your team and need, and find potential leads for you?
• How many leaders and teams could potentially be needed to fulfill the vision God has called you to?