In this episode, Jenn and Cynthia discuss how perseverance in both times of crisis and in day-to-day obedience is essential to seeing movements. They share personal testimonies of surrender in times of suffering, and discuss practical ways for how to keep going when the work feels like an uphill battle.

Most-Read Posts in 2025

1. Be Barnabas – What is a NAV?
   • See other posts from the Be Barnabas series
2. What is the “Apostolic” and Why is it Important?
   • See other posts from the Apostolic series
3. Spiritual Warfare
4. Two Types of Kingdom Fruitfulness
5. Team Conflict

Being Barnabas – the role of an outsider in partnering with cultural insiders towards movement continues to be a key missions principle that we believe can unlock many missionaries’ most effective role in the Great Commission. In particular, finding a National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) to partner with can result in exponential multiplication among the unreached.

In order to find these NAVs, we focused on better understanding around the Apostolic gift, the Five-Fold gifts from Ephesians 4:11, and how to practically discern, partner with, and equip these apostolic leaders.

Understanding the Two Types of Kingdom Fruitfulness – the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of multiplication can help us pursue the good works God has prepared for us with healthy balance. Of course, we want to see multitudes of people worship Jesus among the unreached. And, we want to see their lives and our own lives changed to look more like Jesus every day. Both are necessary!

Team Conflict and Spiritual Warfare remain as two critical topics that most missionaries face on the field and need equipping around. Without healthy conflict resolution and team interaction, it can be really difficult to concentrate on the ministry God has called you to do. Similarly, when we’re feeling discouraged and overwhelmed by spiritual attack, that can take over from everything else. Coincidentally, spiritual warfare can many times take the form of team conflict. Clearing both of these issues through community and reliance on Jesus can help you and your team focus on what you and your team are there to do!

Our Favorite 2025 Posts

1. Listening Prayer Part 1 and Part 2
2. Men and Women Leading Together
3. The Five Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader
4. Bonus: The Dare to Multiply Podcast
   • See all the Dare to Multiply Podcast episodes

Listening Prayer is an aspect of interacting with God that permeates our everyday lives. It is a critical component of not only effective ministry, but daily obedience. Our movement coaches helped start the Listening Prayer Movement, where their primary tool when faced with any obstacle or opportunity is to ask God what He wants for them. It has grown into one of the biggest movements in the world off of that one question.

Men and Women Leading Together is something near and dear to our hearts as it’s how we operate in ministry and life. We think that learning how men and women work and lead together can lead to healthier and more impactful leaders, units, and teams. We’re excited to have some future posts around this topic in 2026!

Obviously in finding a NAV, it’s important to understand what the Apostolic gift is first. But the Five Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader isn’t just another ministry tool or framework to find leaders. These elements are actually a result of a life surrendered to God, set apart for great works that will impact the unreached for eternity! Perhaps other than the Be Barnabas approach itself, these essential elements might be the ‘secret sauce’ in actually seeing movements catalyzed.

Lastly, the Dare to Multiply Podcast has been an exciting and stretching endeavor for Jenn as she both shares and learns from other missions leaders and movement practitioners. We hope this resource will be a blessing to many multipliers!

On to 2026!

In early 2026, we’ll publicly launch the coaching ministry that we’ve been working on for the past couple of years. We’re excited to provide opportunities for missions leaders to not only learn from our blog but to get hands on coaching and cohort-based training on topics around partnering with national believers, forming and developing teams, deepening your abiding, and other topics essential for leaders.

Our prayer for ourselves and for all of you is that 2026 would be marked by a deeper abiding and a richer fruitfulness than we’ve ever experienced before, resulting in worshippers from every tribe, tongue, and nations to the glory of God.

Happy New Year! Lastly, a poem that encouraged us this year that we hope will bless you.

Furnace by Gerard Kelly

May God in whose furnace faith is forged
In whose being beauty breathes
From whose dawning darkness flees
Shine on you

May the Father whose love for you
Beats with a rhythm time itself can’t stop
Whose presence in your exile
Is the promise of home
Whose certainties are deeper
Than the cellars of your city
Whose breath is life
Breathe on you

May the son whose story
Is a mirror of your own
Who has journeyed into darkness
To find a key to your prison
Who has dived the deepest oceans
To find pearls for your wisdom
Who has looked into your heart
And found a beauty worth the battle
Who has written your name
On a white stone carved in secret
Hold you

May the Spirit
Who has waited millennia to fill you
Who shaped the word that moved the wind
Of the morning that conceived you
Who holds the earth on which you stand
As a midwife holds a newborn
Who fully knows you
Wholly own you

So may God
The faithful Father
God the scarred Son
God the sculpting Spirit
Journey with you

In the last two posts, we’ve talked about internal barriers for women in leadership. In my experience, it is more important to deal with the internal barriers, as they are issues that we can directly work on individually. Additionally, trying to deal with external barriers before our own hearts is unproductive.

However, as I have rubbed shoulders with other women on the field and other women ministry leaders, we tend to have shared experiences over a list of external barriers and obstacles that are particular to women in ministry. In this post, I want to detail some of the most common external barriers that I have encountered and researched, and ways to address these obstacles. While this list is not exhaustive, I hope it’s a good starting point to examine your own leadership situation, and to consider ways you can continue moving forward.

A Rude Awakening

My first month in full time ministry, Steven was invited to participate in meetings with other leaders in our organization. While these leaders met to discuss long term strategy and objectives, the wives didn’t participate but sat together on the back porch.

One of the wives, who had the longest ministry tenure and field experience, decided to gather us for a discussion to get to know one another. Her opening question – “how are we submitting to our husbands?”

Coming from working in tech and an immigrant family that placed high value on career success, this question, and the following answers, were pretty shocking.

“I love that my husband makes my schedule every day.”

“My husband is the leader, and I just enjoy discipling girls who I meet.” 

“I used to be more involved, but now I am at home raising our kids.” 

At the time, I was newly married, new to ministry, and uncertain and insecure about my role. But I was passionate about Thailand and desired to lead a team there with my husband. While I wanted to learn from these womens’ experiences, these answers did not sound like what I was looking for. So I asked a clarifying question. “I’m obviously very new to this, but what does it look like to lead out in your vision with your husband in missions?” 

The answer came from the woman who started the discussion. “We are not the leaders. We should try to submit to our husbands and do everything we can to support their vision. When we were overseas, there was a couple on our team where the wife flourished in the ministry work and her husband had a harder time. So she stopped doing her own ministry to dedicate all her time to helping him.” 

I respect all of these women. They are faithful and servant-hearted. But this answer shut me down. It felt like my deepest fears, questions, and insecurities about being a woman in ministry leadership were being confirmed. Women couldn’t be leaders here or have ministries independent of their husbands. Our only role was to support our husbands and to tend a home. I couldn’t see a pathway forward for me.

External Barriers

When I talk about external barriers, I am looking at the surrounding contexts, structures, and environments that might limit a woman from entering into or growing in leadership. This post will only cover a few of the most common barriers for women: the biases concerning women in ministry, lack of resources for development, and lack of access to leadership spaces.

While the primary audience for this article is intended for women in ministry leadership roles and those who aspire towards leadership, I want to affirm that if you are a woman who feels called to primarily supportive roles on a team or to a role of supporting your husband’s ministry and focusing on the family at home full-time, that is an amazing and beautiful thing! I truly believe that each of us should be obedient to whatever role God has called us to, and to be secure and joyful in it! My hope in writing this post is to help women who desire to obey a calling towards ministry leadership, but experience difficulties through various barriers.

Biases Around Women in Ministry

There are numerous biases concerning women in the workplace, in ministry, or in leadership. Two biases that particularly impact ministry contexts are that women are expected to be gentle helpers. And secondly, mothers are expected to primarily take care of the home and operate as supports for their husband’s ministry.

Fitting the Supportive Role

In many ministry contexts, women are generally expected to carry out supportive roles. Ministry roles for missionary women that are generally deemed acceptable include things like caretaking, relationship building, hospitality, raising children, or administrative work. In meetings, if I am the only woman in the room, it is often assumed I will take notes.

However, for women who are suited to lead outside these spheres, these stereotypes act as unseen barriers. Decades of research on these topics have concluded that Western societies judge men and women on different criteria. A 2014 study from Stanford University found that women were given “substantially more critical feedback than men in performance reviews”, a significant amount of that being “negative personality criticism” (Take Back Your Power, 13). Women who expressed their leadership were often described as aggressive or bossy, while men were lauded as assertive or confident. 

This means that women in ministry often have to balance a tightrope of appealing to biases so as to not offend, all the while finding ways to still exercise their leadership without smothering their own giftings or voice. An analysis of executive women leaders in missions organizations found that women leaders “…focused on the relational aspects of leading”, which are behaviors that are generally more acceptable for women, while “…[direct leadership] behaviors are used with care and may also be perceived as high risk [for the woman leader] (Playing by the Rules, 140).” I have been in many conversations where capable women have been passed over for greater responsibility due to a perception that they would be too angry or dominating because of the stereotype that women should be gentle helpers.

Mothers Should Stay Home

Another common bias that impacts women in ministry is a general confusion around the role of mothers. If women generally should take supportive roles, then a mother even more so is expected to primarily focus on her family and in supporting her husband’s ministry work. One study revealed that job applicants who mentioned they were mothers on their resumes were viewed as “less competent than child-free women or men”, or seen as less serious about their jobs (Take Back Your Power, 18). These biases are sometimes more blatant in ministry contexts as well depending on theological or cultural context. It seems silly, but for years I struggled with a fear that if we had a child, I would be “forced” out of ministry because a good missionary wife should primarily dedicate herself to ministry at home.

When our organization first wrote their maternity policy, they mirrored other similar evangelical organizations that offered a 10-day maternity leave and no paternity leave. This is a senseless amount of time to expect a woman to recover from labor, childbirth, and to adjust to motherhood. Although the heart behind this choice was to allow new mothers freedom to roll off of staff to focus on their children, it also revealed an unspoken expectation that mothers would not want to stay on staff and that they would be able to easily leave prior ministry commitments. However, for mothers who wanted to stay in the ministry and did not feel called to be at home full-time, returning to work in 10 days felt like an impossible task and many ended up leaving staff as a result. Though adjustment and transition are needed, having a child should not disqualify a mother from being a leader or serving in ministry.

How to Respond to Biases Around Women in Ministry

When considering leadership, it is important to be aware that these stereotypes exist and to respond to them in a humble and God honoring way. Sometimes we can be surprised when we realize we believe them ourselves! 

When you run into policies or people with biases about women in ministry or leadership, don’t jump to assumptions about a person’s intentions! Instead, ask questions and deliver helpful direct feedback. In my experience, people rarely have malicious intent, and usually there is a lack of understanding that can be brought to light and corrected. A helpful question could be something like, “can you help me understand how you reached that decision?” or “can you explain the history of that policy to me?” 

After gaining clarity, provide clear feedback. A good phrase to use is “I see where you’re coming from, but this is how I experience you / this policy / this situation.” While these conversations can feel risky to initiate, the goal should always be for mutual benefit – for you to express yourself authentically and for others to grow in understanding, and together to find solutions as co-laborers and not enemies. Try to prevent bringing frustration and anger into these conversations as, ironically, negative emotions can feed into an “angry woman” stereotype and end up stifling your influence. When humbly offered, I have found that most people have generally responded positively to feedback I have given.

If, despite your best efforts, things don’t change or people continue to not see their biases, don’t try to force your issue and get bogged down in these types of conversations. It is not our job to make everyone see our point of view. In these cases, pray and consider – what are creative solutions that can address the biases that are working against you?  Is there someone who can advocate for you? Is there an environment you need to leave? Is there forgiveness that you need to extend?

Lack of Resources for Development

In my own story, one of my biggest barriers to growing as a leader was that I had never seen it done before! In a study of 1,000 evangelical nonprofits, women represented only 16% of leaders at any level. When we don’t have a model to follow, it becomes that much harder to envision what stepping into leadership could look like. 

For years, I tried to be a leader based off of the example set by my male leaders. While there were many things I have learned from male mentors, they were still unable to fully help me navigate the uniqueness of being a female leader. And many of their methods of leadership didn’t work for me when I tried to put them into practice. Role stereotypes exist for men in leadership as well, and the type of male leader that is celebrated is usually someone strategic, direct, and who speaks well in front of a room. As someone who is not naturally wired this way, I despaired of ever becoming a “good leader” until I learned how to lead out in a way that was more instinctive and natural to who I am.

Along with lack of access to leadership examples and mentors, women leaders often have less opportunities for development. Like often attracts like, meaning that we are more drawn to people who are like us. In a missions leadership context, this means that male leaders will generally be more open to mentoring and coaching other men, or inviting men into more ministry or development opportunities. One of my male mentors’ main method of developing other leaders was to invite them to be “side by side”. He would bring someone he was trying to develop into all his meetings and ministry activities, have meals together, and debrief his thought process with them. This is an excellent way to bring someone up, but it is much easier for a male leader in ministry to invite a man into this type of mentorship than a woman. 

Biases about women’s roles, as previously mentioned, can also contribute to whether or not women will have access to resources and developmental opportunities. When we launched to the field, I was not given a supervisor since it was assumed my role would be to support Steven in his ministry. This meant that Steven received coaching, information, or opportunities for development from his supervisor that wouldn’t get to me other than as a trickle down from him. Too often, this can be a common situation with women in more conservative ministry organizations. Another prevalent situation is for single women to not receive adequate coaching from supervisors if a male supervisor has a conviction to not meet one on one with a woman.

How to Respond to Lack of Resources for Development

 If you find yourself in this situation of lacking models or developmental opportunities, my encouragement is to not let that stop you! Even if there aren’t others to help you develop actively or current models of women in leadership to follow, continue to pursue personal development by using tools like a personal development plan or a 360 evaluation to assess your strengths and weaknesses and find areas where you can grow. Read books (including the topical studies in the Bible!) and proactively ask for opportunities where you can serve, learn, and grow through experience. Sampling many types of ministry and service helps to clarify what kind of leader you might be.

At the same time, pray and ask God for a mentor and then seek one out. When Steven and I started leading, we were overwhelmed by all that we didn’t know how to do. How do we help teammates navigate conflict? How do we write a team MOU? What are the steps we should follow to see a church planting movement? Help! We wrote down a list of names of people who we respected and had expertise in the topics we needed help with, and asked them to speak into our lives and the situations we were dealing with. Over the years, this group has become a consistent source of mentorship and encouragement for us. In the same way, if you are looking for an example or someone to help you grow, seek out that person and ask them to help you! Though it can be scary to ask, most leaders are going to be honored that you have asked for their help and will be happy to lend their expertise.

Finally, as you seek out mentors, take time to network with other women leaders who are also running a similar race to you. Having a network of peers who can empathize with you addresses much of the loneliness many women leaders face from often being the only woman in the room.

For women reading this, who are 2-3 women you could ask to mentor you in your leadership journey? Who are 2-3 women who are in a similar leadership space as yours that you can connect with? Write those names down and begin to pray that they would say yes! 

Lack of Access to Leadership Spaces

Traditionally in our organization, after leaders came together for planning and meetings, they would spend time together at a bar with drinks. On top of building community, this informal time was used to debrief, share information, discuss new ministry assignments, and plan forward. In the business world, this time is called the “meeting after the meeting”, which is often where the real work gets done as people feel greater freedom to brainstorm and plan in a more informal setting. While I was privileged to sit around the table due to Steven’s advocacy in bringing me along, many women leaders in our organization found that the bar often felt inaccessible. In a Christian ministry, it felt vulnerable and uncomfortable for a woman to stay out late in a group of majority men with alcohol. The timing also made it basically impossible for mothers to join. The next morning, women leaders who missed the time at the bar would come into the meeting and find out that multiple decisions were made and responsibilities were given out without them ever hearing about it.

Oftentimes, growing in leadership in mission organizations and on ministry teams depends more on influence and who you know, rather than following an official pathway. A title doesn’t necessarily equate to leadership influence and authority. However, women are often underrepresented in the leadership rooms where they could receive coaching and development, build influence, express their desire to grow in leadership, or advocate for their perspectives. This can be incredibly frustrating for women who continually feel “passed over” as prospective leaders simply because they weren’t in the room. 

Additionally, though there are opportunities for skills development for overseas workers through seminars and trainings, I have observed that most participants and trainers are men. The reasoning is often that if someone needs to stay back, the wife is the default. Unfortunately, this results in exacerbating the previous issue of lack of examples. By not attending trainings, women seldom have an opportunity to see other women leading out in ministry, find like-minded mentors, or to meet with other women on the field with similar ministry responsibilities. 

How to Respond to Lack of Access to Leadership Spaces

For women leaders who are feeling overlooked, my first encouragement is to continue to serve humbly and with joy! We aren’t in ministry for a title or for man’s validation, but because God himself has called us into this work. If He has a leadership title or influence for us, then He will reveal the pathway forward. But to become angry, frustrated, or entitled will only sabotage ourselves more. Steven often encouraged me to, “assume I belong in the room.” If I assume that I belong and that my contribution and perspective matter already, then there is no need to fight for it.

That being said, there are some strategies that women can employ to receive greater access into leadership spaces. Firstly, express your desire to be a part of the leadership conversation! Most people are not badly intentioned or desire to deliberately block women from leadership spaces. However, they may not know you are interested, or that current systems do not lend themselves to being inviting towards women. In the situation with the drinks at the bar, my feedback to the main male leader was to have that time in one of the women leaders’ homes instead of the bar, and to explicitly invite women leaders.

While it may feel risky, continue to ask for clarity. What is required to enter this leadership room? How are decisions being made? Is there a place where I can contribute my input and voice? After expressing your desire and receiving clarity, if nothing is blocking you, show up and represent yourself well! Even if you are the only woman, it only takes one to be a barrier breaker. 

Deb Liu, CEO of ancestry.com, recommends including 4 elements in your ask: your desire, the why, the timing, and a specific invitation for how this person could help you now. For example, instead of just saying you want to be a team leader, say something along the lines of, “I have focused on training disciplemaking tools for the last few years and I would love a chance to grow and learn more about leading others to do the same things. In the coming year, could I shadow you as you lead the team, and also take on some smaller leadership assignments?”

Secondly, find an advocate or a sponsor. While a mentor is someone who can consult, encourage, and share wisdom over specific topics, an advocate is someone who can represent you and your viewpoint in leadership spaces and can vouch for your ideas to other leaders, clearing the way for you to enter the room. If you’re desiring to be a leader, a sponsor can open the path for you with decision makers in your organization. According to a study of business leaders by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, men are 46% more likely than women to have true sponsors. In my case, Steven was my greatest advocate. He saw me as a leader and reported truthfully on my contributions. He also deliberately brought me into his meetings and into leadership spaces so that other leaders might experience working with me, and so that I could grow in my own confidence.

Take the First Step!

As we consider the myriad of obstacles and issues that must be overcome in order for women to fully embrace their leadership, it can be so easy to feel discouraged. Is it even worth the effort? The painful conversations? The risk? 

Throughout my leadership journey, I have felt humiliated, exposed, hurt, and overwhelmed more times than I can count. If it was up to me, I would have given up hundreds of times, except that the Lord kept making clear to me in Scripture, community, circumstances, and prayer, that His calling on me was to serve as a leader! 

God is so faithful that He will not be satisfied with anything less than us becoming who He intends for us to be as leaders.

If you hear that call, even if it’s small right now, I want to encourage you to surrender to Him the barriers that hold you back and ask Jesus to help you take the first step. He will supply every need as you step into the good works He has for you!

Application and Reflection

1. Pray and ask God – Are you sensing that God is calling you to leadership? What internal or external barriers are keeping you from embracing that calling?
2. What is something you can do to address current barriers you may face today?  
3. Who are you going to share or encourage with what you learned today?

As we close out 2024, the Missions Leaders Blog has been around for about 18 months. We’ve been thankful for the opportunity to share lessons and encourage other leaders who are pursuing pioneering work among the unreached.

We have some exciting things in store for 2025, as we launch a new ministry focused on helping missions team and ministry leaders abide, lead effectively, and pursue multiplying ministry throughout the world.

But for now, here are some of the top posts from 2024 along with some of our favorites!

Most-Read Posts in 2024

1. Team Conflict
2. Women in Leadership
   • Other posts from Women in Leadership:
   • Internal Barriers (Part 1)
   • Internal Barriers (Part 2)
3. Spiritual Warfare Part 1 and Part 2
4. Be Barnabas – What is a NAV?
   • Other posts from the Be Barnabas series:
   • Be Barnabas: Intro & Mint’s Story
   • Why Be Barnabas?
   • Who Was Barnabas from the Bible?
   • How to Find a NAV
   • How to Partner with a NAV
   • Be Barnabas – Life Together
5. Lessons from Cancer: Suffering Leads to Surrender
   • Other posts from the Lessons from Cancer series:
   • Lessons from Cancer: Surrender the Self to the Point of Death
   • Lessons from Cancer: Receive Resurrection Life and Power

Team Conflict continuing to be a highly read post just highlights for us how prevalent and intense of a topic interpersonal conflicts on missions teams continues to be. Although this topic arguably has the most resources, team conflict can be an issue that can make or break teams. In the past 10 years, Jenn in particular has mediated several conflicts in and out of our team (including an 8 hour session this past year). Please reach out to contact@missionsleaders.com if you’re desiring specific coaching around conflict mediation!

Women in Leadership takes the second spot! Research shows that single women outnumber single men on the field up to a ratio of 7 to 1! And despite the great need for leaders among the unreached, there remains significant confusion and numerous internal and external barriers for women to enter into roles of missions leadership. Jenn will continue to break down these issues to encourage and empower women throughout the unreached to take up the role God has called them to!

Spiritual Warfare was one of our earliest posts, and one that people ask us about most frequently. The Enemy’s opposition is strongest against those pushing forward the Kingdom on the front lines. Goers, and especially leaders, need to be equipped and able to equip others to engage in spiritual warfare.

The role of Barnabas and lessons of suffering that lead to surrender and resurrection life are two of the topics that we felt were most important for us to share on this blog.

Our Favorite 2024 Posts

1. Reflections from 10 Years on the Field – Part 1 and Part 2
2. Be Barnabas – Life Together
3. How to Recruit Teammates Part 1 and Part 2

Reflections from 10 Years on the Field was the culmination of Steven’s processing during our first sabbatical this past summer. The sheer volume of intensity and weightiness from our time starting a new team and leading it to expand into three teams was surprising and churned up a lot of emotions to bring to the Lord. But ultimately, that reflection and processing led to gratitude and joy that God allowed us to be a part of so many significant moments, relationships, and Kingdom opportunities.

Be Barnabas – Life Together is one of our favorite posts, not only from the series, but overall. We were both in tears as we wrote this post, praising God for allowing us to have such close relationships with our Thai partners. There are many biblical and strategic reasons to take a Barnabas role as an outsider pursuing movements, but the relationships we get to invest in and that we receive blessing from are some of the things we most cherish from our time on the field.

How to Recruit Teammates is similarly another topic that many new team leaders ask us about. Ultimately, the Lord will bring the right people to your team. Although it can be a pain sometimes (a lot of times!) to enter into all the cultural transitions, interpersonal conflict, and personal development issues that come with leading new teammates, looking back at how the Lord has given us some of our closest friends and co-workers filled us with thankfulness that we had the privilege to lead others towards Jesus and his purposes.

That’s it for 2024! We’re eager and ready to post more resources and stories for missions leaders in 2025. To those reading, may Jesus draw so nearly to you through abiding that you experience oneness with him, and that oneness would lead to many others to know the hope that we have in him.

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?

Union with Christ and Resurrection Life

As we’ve mentioned in several other posts, the most significant lesson we’ve received from the Lord during our time on the field has been union with Christ. It has made such a radical difference in our practical experience of walking in the Spirit that it is the message that we most want to share with other leaders, goers, and believers.

The critical explanation of oneness with Jesus comes best from Hudson Taylor:

The Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.

How great seemed my mistake in wishing to get the sap, the fullness out of Him! I saw not only that Jesus will never leave me, but that I am a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. The vine is not the root merely, but all – root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit.

Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves?

The sweetest part… is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret

To us, learning about union with Christ unlocked the practical application of the promises of God in our lives. Those biblical promises for provision, joy, wisdom, power went from a distant and vague hope that they would happen to a daily, rich, and real experience in our lives and ministry. Without the secret of oneness with Jesus, we most likely would not have made it past our first term in Thailand.

And although we had been surrendering our control and receiving His promises throughout team leadership and growing ministry in Thailand, the shock and trial of cancer and burnout brought us deeper into the lessons of union. There was more surrender, more death to self that the Lord was bringing in order to receive the true goal of union with Christ: resurrection life and power.

We are continually learning and desiring to experience more intimacy, more of Jesus’ presence, more of our very lives, will, thoughts, words aligning with his. He continues to respond by giving more. 10 years into our time on the field, anxiety has gone from a near constant reality with no reprieve before learning about union, to something we had to actively surrender to receive peace from Jesus, and now to a rare occurrence that is honestly surprising when it pops up.

The circumstances of life and ministry on the field have not gotten much easier. But for thoughts of anxiety and the corresponding tension headaches, panic, desperation, escapism, and inevitable conflicts to go from 10 times a day to 10 times a year is a testimony of God’s power to transform our lives. 

This is not to even speak of —

• supernatural empowerment of strength and energy when my gas tank is completely empty,
• wisdom for decisions that I would never be able to make from my own knowledge, 
• joy in the midst of the lowest points in my life,
• favor and blessing in ministry with people that we did not earn,

and so many other miraculous and practical ways that Jesus has shown himself to be faithful.

His promises in Scripture are true. And they are available to us right now.

And there is so much more that he desires to give us than we can even imagine.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

More posts on Union with Christ and Resurrection Life:

1. Union with Christ Part 1
2. Union with Christ Part 2
3. Resurrection Life Part 1
4. Resurrection Life Part 2
5. Resurrection Life Part 3

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God’s Faithfulness, Provision, Protection, and Presence

It feels a bit cliche to say that God’s faithfulness has been a theme of the past 10 years, but there’s a reason why Scripture so often speaks to this aspect of His character. Samuel Saldivar examines 1 New Testament and 4 Old Testament terms that highlight God’s faithfulness and counts up to 733 times these terms are used in the Bible.

In spite of whether I realized it or looked to Him for it, God has been faithful. He has been provider, protector, and Friend.

When our marriage struggled and we fought nearly every day for our first year on the field, He brought healing and unity between me and Jenn to turn a weakness into a joyful point of strength.

When we didn’t know what to do as leaders or how to make decisions for our team, His Spirit gave wisdom and discernment generously and protected our team from catastrophe.

When our team had conflict and disagreement and unhealth, He created unity and camaraderie for us as one body in Christ.

When we were physically exhausted, sick, and out of gas, He provided supernatural strength, energy, and healing.

When trying to pursue a vision for multiplication among 70 million people without the gospel and being told from numerous experienced workers that it couldn’t be done, He blessed us with cherished Thai partners that are bearing fruit beyond what we could dream.

When my wife was in the ICU after a seizure and I didn’t know if she would live or die, in the waiting room of the hospital at 2AM, I experienced His faithfulness and presence beyond any other moment I had before that.

Before you launch to the field, you hear testimonies from workers and read the words from missionary biographies like Adoniram Judson in the prison, Jim Elliot the night before they go to encounter the Huaorani and are martyred for their witness, and John Paton in the tree running for his life from savages. In those testimonies, they all talk about experiencing His promises for peace, joy, and trust, and about how Jesus had never been more present or nearer than in those moments of crisis.

John Paton writes, 

Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe as in the arms of Jesus. Never, in all my sorrows, did my Lord draw nearer to me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among those chestnut leaves, and the night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus. Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then?

You read the word, you pray and plead, you hope within hope that when those moments of trial come, that He will give you faith to believe the promises. That your faith won’t fail. That He will be and do everything that He said he would.

Sitting in that waiting room, distressed and scared, I prayed the simplest prayer that I could muster: “God, I trust you. I believe that you are with me and that you are sovereign and that this will be for your glory and my good.”

The moment that I realized that I not only prayed but I believed those words, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and joy that He gave me faith to believe the promises. That He had not abandoned me but had drawn nearer than ever before. It felt like I had passed the test of faith, only because He allowed me to. I didn’t know what tomorrow would hold, but I knew that I was held by Him. My Friend that would not fail me in the very embrace of death itself.

God is faithful, even to give the faith to believe His promises.

_______

Joy in Fulfilling Calling

At one missions conference we went to, we heard a speaker say, “Many goers do not persevere long enough to see the vision that God has given them be fulfilled.” Obviously there are many uncontrollable reasons that people leave the field, but his exhortation to us was to continue persevering in the work even if it is slow or difficult or plodding.

Timelining out the significant events of the last 10 years was emotionally heavy. It took me 1-2 hours per year to look back, remember, and note the significant moments, and inevitably to feel and experience those things as well. Even with as many good moments as there were, much of what we experienced still feels weary, sad, and melancholic. In some seasons, even if there wasn’t a distinct negative event, it just felt like we were constantly plodding uphill in the mud and rain, two steps forward and three steps back. It’s hard to count how many moments we wanted to give up, to escape, to just pick an easier life. Difficult conversations, hospital visits, sin issues, burnout, and self-dependence tinged the timeline like stains on the page of a book. And this didn’t even count all the smaller burdens like missing home, lingering sicknesses, feeling strange and misunderstood in a foreign culture, and a continual underlying stress, anxiety, and loss of control.

I decided to mark the events with a green color for positive and a red color for negative. After tallying them up, there were 211 positive, joyful events and 56 negative, difficult events. For every difficult thing, there were nearly 4 joyful things.

Life on the field is low lows and high highs. There were 267 significant events in 10 years, about 2-3 per month. I doubt if I would’ve even had 1/10th of that had I stayed in the States. And it’s true, life would’ve probably been easier, safer, more stable. And I would’ve, for the most part, avoided most of these very difficult, heavy moments.

But I would’ve missed out on joy.

He had good works for us to walk in. And even in the difficulties and suffering, he was teaching us lessons of how to receive joy and peace and rest in Jesus.

Jenn shares that when we returned back to Thailand after cancer, it felt like her soul clicked back into place. There is a joy and a contentment in your inner being to be exactly where God wants you to be.

And there’s joy in seeing a vision begin to come to fruition. 

We came in response to a calling and a Commission towards a spiritual need for the gospel in Thailand. At first, though I might not have admitted it, I was seeking validation. I wanted to be validated that I wasn’t crazy for leaving a good job in the States to essentially start over in a foreign country. To be validated that I was a good leader. To be validated that we could see ministry fruit happen where others said it couldn’t happen.

When the first trials and challenges came, most of those inane desires went out the window as we were just trying to survive. Being humbled by the Lord quickly checked our motivations, and learning union with Christ made us realize that Jesus’ words in John 15 were painfully and wonderfully true – “apart from me you can do nothing.” We started to focus on abiding not so we could get what we needed to bear fruit, but simply so we could experience more of Jesus.

When the ministry started seeing fruit, no one was more surprised than we were because we knew how incompetent, stupid, and weak we were. It was clearly because of what God was doing through our Thai partners, not because of us.

But still we experienced joy. Not validation of ourselves, not affirmation of our strength, but that we had a front row seat in seeing God’s goodness in bringing the first new believers, the first new churches. We celebrated when reports of new believers and baptisms came in. We worshipped when the sick were healed or demons were cast out. We wept with gratitude when we saw obedience and transformation in people’s lives and families. We were in awe when we realized that God was doing a work much bigger than we had anticipated.

If we had given up when things felt impossible, or perhaps never even took the first steps of obedience towards this wildly insane calling, we would have missed out on all of the joy that God wanted us to experience.

“Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit… These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

_______

Conformed to the Image of Christ

Lastly, what stuck out to me in looking back on the timeline was how much I have been changed. In the timeline above, the red events were negative and the green were positive, and I marked the blue events and lessons as significant moments of change, growth, and development for me personally.

This can perhaps be said of any 25 year old, but the word that comes to mind in describing myself at 25 is “naive”. My reality for the first few years in Thailand was something in between “I don’t know” and “What the heck is going on?!” In regards to life overseas, marriage, team leadership, and suffering, I had no idea what I signed up for.

I have failed as a follower of Jesus, as a husband, as a friend, as a ministry worker, and as a leader miserably, spectacularly, and repeatedly over the past 10 years to the detriment of myself, my wife, our team, and our ministry. Those failures were painful and have left scars that we have had to surrender to Jesus for healing. The fact that we are still here 10 years later with several physical and emotional scars is a testimony to the Lord’s kindness in sustaining us.

Reading through Robert Clinton’s The Making of a Leader helped me to understand that every experience, every opportunity, and particularly every failure has been how God has been shaping me. Those scars are literal and figurative marks of the ways that He has developed us more into who He has intended for us to be.

What excites me for the next 10 years is not only how much more impact we will have armed with the valuable lessons He has given us from the past 10, but how much more the Spirit will change me, how much more He will help me to know and love and become more like Jesus.

With 10 years behind us and the next horizon in front of us, we can simply say – If God has been faithful through all of this, how much more faithful will He be going forward?

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Hebrews 10:23

10 years on the field – in ministry leadership and through a pandemic, cancer, and role transitions – has felt like the equivalent of 20 years in comparison to what life was like back in the States before we launched. As many have said, life overseas consists of high-highs and low-lows. Those events and the ways we’ve been impacted by them have changed us significantly.

We had the privilege to take our first sabbatical this past year to reflect on the past 10 years and look forward to the next season. I ended up timelining personal, team, and ministry events over the past 10 years and drawing key themes and lessons from each year and each term.

In the last 10 years, we have…

Personal

• Moved to 8 different apartments
• Taken over 400 flights, traveling for 50%+ of the year for 4 of the 10 years
• Fought each other every day for our first year in Thailand
• Missed 20 weddings our first year in Thailand, including 3 weddings of our teammates
• Missed the births of nephews and nieces, and the funerals of grandparents
• Lived through a pandemic lockdown overseas (with Animal Crossing)
• Were repatriated for a medical emergency
• Endured 18 months of cancer treatment including surgery, radiation, and chemo
• Burned out and were ready to quit ministry
• Fostered 2 sassy bunnies
• Served for 6 years on our organization’s executive leadership team
• Transitioned out of our original sending organization to start our own new ministry
• Took 6 years to finish a 2 year seminary degree

Team

• Onboarded or helped our team leaders onboard 22 teammates (and counting!)
• Seen 8 teammates leave the field
• Expanded our original team to 3 new teams

Ministry

• Seen our teams train over 1000 Thai believers in disciple-making and church-planting
• Helped train and oversee 30+ Thai church planting teams throughout Thailand
• Seen God begin to multiply our Thai partners’ ministry in disciples and churches, including 1000+ professions of faith
• Developed, with teammates and Thai partners, a training handbook for planting multiplying churches in Thai

The category of items that were uncountable:

• Hours sitting in traffic
• Roaches and vermin killed or chased away (or that we ran away from)
• Hours waiting at immigration
• Intolerably spicy Thai meals, and related trips to the bathroom
• Misspelled and mispronounced Thai words
• Exhaustion naps
• Video calls around the world
• Team meetings, corporate prayer times, and worship sessions
• Times crying out to God in weakness and desperation
• Discernment, peace, blessing, and power given by the Holy Spirit in response
• Difficult conversations
• Hours spent walking with teammates through major health, sin, and life issues
• Minor and major health issues endured by us, our team, and our partners
• Stories of answered prayer, healings, deliverance, and salvation
• People around the world, especially and including teammates and Thai friends, who prayed for us, encouraged us, and supported us

I’ve looked over this list a few times, and even in bullet form, it is difficult not to feel the flood of emotions, the weightiness, the intensity of what this list represents. It has been a story of our weakness, self-dependence, and shortcomings coming to the surface in the midst of difficulties, challenges, and conflict, and the Lord meeting us in faithfulness, intimacy, and power. The last 10 years have been so much fuller, more joyful, and more rewarding than I could’ve ever thought possible. And it has been so much more difficult, painful, and crushing than I could’ve imagined before we launched.

For the sake of posterity, I’ll write down a favorite ministry memory and a favorite team memory. In another post, I’ll share a few of the lessons and themes that came out of my sabbatical reflection.

I thought about writing out some of the most difficult memories, including the day of Jenn’s seizure or finding out about a teammate’s moral failure, but it is heavy enough looking at that list above without going deep into the really tough stuff. And I’ll also save the numerous funny and outrageous ‘life in Thailand’ memories for another time, including the pregnant rat mother or the cheez-it dust story.

Favorite Ministry Memory

There’s probably two dozen that could go in this spot, including:

• Our very first training in Mint’s province where their family made Khao Laam for us afterwards, one of my favorite Thai foods – a coconut milk and sticky rice with red beans dessert stuffed into a piece of bamboo and roasted over an open fire. Or whenever Mint’s mom made us dinner!
• The first house church training we did with Mint’s new believers when we asked, what can we use for communion, and an old grandpa in the back said, ‘I brought ginger juice and sticky rice for my snack – can we use this?’ It felt like a 5 loaves and 2 fishes moment for our very first communion with a new house church that had come out of our ministry.
• One of the first house church gatherings we went to, when we sat in a circle with a room of mostly brand new believers and cried out in worship, “God heal our land that your name would endure forever!”

But the very favored one that comes to mind is at the end of 2020. After Covid lockdowns for 3 months, Thailand mostly reopened and our partners continued to push forward and see new believers and churches nearly every week. After 2 years of a crazy whiplash of travel and trainings and an explosion of new fruit, our partners coordinated a big celebration camp for all the church planters in the network, over 100 people from 30 teams in 20+ provinces in Thailand. We were big enough as a network to get shirts made! They chose สุดปลายแผนดิน to put on the shirt – “to the ends of the earth” from Acts 1:8.

After hearing countless stories of answered prayers, miraculous healing, deliverance, new believers, new churches, changed lives, sacrifice and suffering, trials and obstacles, and faithful obedience, our team prepared an activity to help each team receive vision from the Lord about where He was leading them to pioneer new churches. We grouped each of the 30 teams in 5 regions: North, Northeast, East, Central, And North-Central. We asked each team to listen to the Lord about 3 places they felt He was leading them to focus on in the next year. We told them that after 10 minutes of prayer and listening, to put a sticker dot on their province map on the wall of where they felt led to pioneer.

As these faithful church planters began putting stickers on maps, they looked like bright points of light against the background of the maps. Spiritual points of light in a land covered in darkness.

It was at that moment that I thought, “This work will continue through these people with or without us.” This was a prayer we had been asking for before we even launched, before we had even met these friends, before many of these people had ever started following Jesus.

And through this group, there was a legitimate chance that the promise of Habakkuk 2:14 could be fulfilled in Thailand – “that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

Overwhelmed and with tears flowing down my face, I had to go to a corner to sit down. After wiping my eyes, I looked over and saw my teammates similarly teary-eyed. And next to them were some of the regional leaders, those that we had trained the earliest like Mint and Talia, also crying. It was God showing all of us that the vision He had promised was beginning to be fulfilled.

Less than 6 months later, Jenn and I would be on a plane being repatriated back to the States for cancer treatment. We wouldn’t return for over 18 months, and the church planting network would encounter its most intense season of opposition, with Covid restrictions shutting down the country, Talia also being diagnosed with cancer, our network leadership team falling apart, and teammates coming off the field.

While we were gone, we weren’t sure how the ministry would go and had to release it to the Lord. Much of the work contracted during that time, but the thought I had during that 2020 celebration camp remained true – the work continued on even without us there. The past 2 years since coming back, we have had a season of ‘starting anew’ to help the network restart their momentum.

But just a week from now, we’ll have our first celebration camp with the whole network of church planters since 2020. Many of the people are different, and the people who remain like us, Mint, and Talia have been significantly changed.

Through trial and suffering and loss, the Lord has brought new life and new leaders and new believers and new churches in new areas that have never had the gospel. We continue to believe that this promise of Joshua 1 will be true for our Thai partners: “every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you,” until the gospel has gone to every people and place in Thailand.

Favorite Team Memory

There’s also way too many to count here, but I’ll bullet point a few favorites:

• Our pre-field team retreat where we tried to go through a desert survival scenario to figure out team dynamics and communication but we ended up all dying of thirst. Whoops.
• Our first team fellowship ever, where I told everyone to buy something on the street that looked interesting so we could potluck – 5 out of 7 people brought roast chicken because everything else looked weird!
• Late night McDonald’s as second dinner while watching Friends after 6 hours of meetings with our leadership team. This was a regular occurrence but some of my favorite times together with our leaders.
• Our sub-team getting together for a meeting during a heavy travel and training season where we all decided to put our heads down on the table for a power nap before starting our meeting because we’re all beyond exhausted.
• Thanksgivings and Christmases, including the Thanksgiving where I was super confused about why the turkey was so cold inside and burnt outside only to cut it open and find some mutant turkey breast that had a 3 inch layer of fat that wasn’t cooking – blegh.
• A family gathering in the States where we brought together all the parents on our original team to spend time together, celebrate, and honor our parents for their sacrifice and support in sending their children.
• A prayer activity with interactive stations at our team retreat in 2017 that Jenn and I frantically created 2 hours beforehand, but the Lord met us with intimacy and power. The last station was from Revelation 5:8, which references the “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” before the angels and elders proclaim Jesus’ worthiness among the nations. We had teammates write down prayers towards that final vision and put them in the bowls as an offering to the Lord.

The most impactful team memory however, is our last team celebration in 2019 as an original team before expanding into three teams in 2020. We deeply love and appreciate every teammate that has ever come through our teams in Thailand, but there was something special about our original team of 13. We were all so fresh faced, naive, earnest, and so-so-so not ready for what was about to happen. But we were together and we had each other in the midst of all that confusion and newness.

We had the vision to expand into multiple teams even before we launched, because of the uniqueness of the different contexts within Thailand (Buddhist/Muslim/Tribal) and because the Lord had blessed our team with multiple leaders. After 2 years of prayer, planning, and preparing the new team leaders, we had a final celebration as a team before we officially expanded.

We split into guys/gals time and the guys got to watch Muay Thai together. And we reflected on good and difficult times as a team. We worshipped and prayed together. And we celebrated all that God had done in and through us. Jenn and I prepared small gifts for each teammate as well.

We led a reflection exercise where we asked each teammate to think of 3 words that described them and described the team at the beginning and 3 words for themselves and the team now. Blue text is for personal words and black text is for team words.

Perhaps even more than the ministry fruit we got to celebrate together, this list of transformed lives and a transformed community is maybe one of my most cherished things from our time in Thailand.

From selfish, proud, naive, insecure, broken, superficial strangers to joyful, rooted in Christ, safe, abiding, thriving, tested, humbled, fruitful, impactful family. It’s such an unbelievable thing that God did in a short few years to knit us together.

At the end of the time, while crying the hardest I ever have in front of other people, I commissioned our teammates out to their new teams and fields of ministry in Thailand, and commended them to God as Paul does with the elders in Acts 20.

That time together marked a significant transition for us, as soon after we would be in different places, with different teammates added to the new teams, and Covid happening simultaneously with our team expansion. But wherever God will take us – to different cities, different organizations, or different countries – no matter what, that team will forever be family for us. And when those golden bowls of the prayers of the saints – including our prayers from that team retreat – get poured out at Jesus’ return, I’m sure that this family, clothed in white robes and together with those from Thailand we had the opportunity to impact, will save each other seats around the throne. Maybe afterwards we’ll have some McDonald’s.

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.

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The last few posts have been more instructive about the process of what to do to begin partnering with a National Apostolic Visionary to pursue movements. We wanted to focus on the first few practical steps in partnering with NAVs, as we feel there is a lack of training around how to start. However, as you get into a ministry partnership, there are numerous movement resources to help you think through, plan, and implement movement practices in your field. You can see the Resources page for some of these movement resources.

We will probably have more posts about Being Barnabas in the future, but for now, we wanted to shift gears from practical instruction to illustrate the relational dynamic that we have with our partners and what we’ve heard from other CPM practitioners about their partnership with NAVs. Sometimes we can get caught up in “catalyzing things” and miss the people that we are supposed to be loving and serving. What could be a beautiful image of partnership in the gospel with a NAV quickly becomes something evil and prideful when we are manipulating people towards a ministry goal instead of loving them and authentically serving them towards a mutual vision from God.

One of the best descriptions we’ve heard of the relational dynamic between a movement practitioner outsider and a national partner insider was given by a national partner in South Asia. He broke down Paul’s relationship with the Thessalonians, and in particular focused on 1 Thessalonians 2:7-12.

But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

1 Thessalonians 2:7-12

He highlighted the metaphors Paul uses to reflect the depth of their love and care towards the Thessalonians, “like a nursing mother…” and “like a father with his children.” Ultimately, the relationship is summarized in the words, “we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves.” This is the level of depth and unity that a true partnership in the gospel can birth.

Instead of just telling you what aspects we think are important for you to have in a ministry partnership with a NAV, we wrote a few short stories from our experiences with our partners to illustrate what it could look like. We aspire to have the type of partnership that Paul had with the Thessalonians, likely reflected from his relationship with Barnabas. Despite differences in age, culture, experience, or language, we believe that we have oneness with Christ, which therefore means we have a oneness and unity with other brothers and sisters in Christ (John 17:21). We hope that Barnabas’ example, Jesus’ exhortation, and some illustrations from our relationship with our friends would encourage you to humbly serve, sacrifice, and invest your lives to see national brothers and sisters multiply the gospel to those who have never heard.

_______

Being Family Together
_Steven

After one very long ministry trip to a neighboring province, Mint, Jenn, and I arrived back late at her house where her Mom had cooked dinner. Everyone else had eaten a few hours ago, but the three of us ravenously devoured mom’s epic fried chicken and gaeng som, an insanely spicy and sour southern Thai curry. From the beginning, we had made a habit of going to Mint’s house and eating her mom’s food after every training.

When I asked for seconds of rice, Mint’s mom broke into a big smile and chuckled. I looked at Mint who was also smiling. I asked, “Why’s your mom smiling?” Mint said, “she’s smiling because you finally stopped being polite and asked for more food!” Whenever we see Mint’s mom, she greets us with “​​ลูก! เป็นยังไงบ้าง?” – which means, “my children! How are you?”

Later on, Mint’s brother-in-law told me, “we’ve had other people from churches or groups try to come and help us or run a training. But whenever the training was over, they would keep to themselves or go off and do their own thing. We knew that you cared about us and not just what we did because you guys always came over for dinner.” He always greets me with a big smile and a big hug, and asks me when I’m going to lose the 10 pounds I told him I would lose.

_______

Celebrating Fruitfulness Together
_Jenn

In 2019, Mint’s ministry began to bear fruit, and quickly. Our memories of that year are mostly a blur as we tried to keep up with all that God was doing. Most weeks, we traveled with Mint as she visited new believers and churches, energized by weekly reports of salvations, baptisms, and healings. Though we were so excited, we were also incredibly tired!

To take a breath, we planned a small prayer retreat at an airbnb in Bangkok. We asked Mint to take a pause for a couple of days so that we could pray together, listen for guidance from the Holy Spirit, and plan out our next goals.

On the first day, I handed Mint a sheet of paper and asked her to write what she had seen God do, what she was thankful for, and to draw a generation map of where the ministry was currently at. She prayed silently for a moment, listening to the Holy Spirit. And then she started to draw. New churches were represented by a circle, and a dotted circle delineated a Discovery Bible Study group. Circles began covering the first, then the second, and then the third page as she drew out how God had been moving. She shared with us story after story of people whose lives had turned from darkness to light. Tears of joy and gratitude fell freely from all of us as we realized how God had been working.

I asked Mint, “how do you feel about all of this?”

She replied, “I’m nothing special. I never thought God could use me like this.” 

Before we shifted toward setting goals, we had a time of listening prayer, asking God to speak into our plans. As I listened, the Holy Spirit put a Thai worship song on my mind that I had only heard once or twice. Unsure with what to do with this word, I asked Mint, “do you know this song? Maybe we can sing it?”

A huge smile came across her face. “This is the song God used to call me to be a church planter!” In God’s kindness and wisdom, He brought to my mind a song that was significant in reminding Mint of His faithfulness when she first started this new ministry. As Mint’s ministry began to multiply, the song took on new meaning as our celebration of God’s fulfillment of His promises!

_______

Suffering Together
_Steven

After the first 5 house churches were planted, Mint’s ministry took off. Before we met her, she spent 2 years of difficult laboring to get to her first house church of about 15 people. 7 months after our first training with her team, there were 70 new believers and 5 house churches. 3 months later, 120 new believers and 12 house churches. We were traveling constantly with her throughout her region to train new church planters and follow up with new believers.

But with the highs of fruitfulness also came the lows of resistance and trial. During one coaching meeting, she shared with us that some new believers had gotten into a dispute about money with another believer in the church. Even though Mint tried to resolve the conflict, the new believers decided to leave the church without a word. Instead, they simply left their Bibles on Mint’s doorstep and disappeared.

Mint was devastated.

She said, “it wasn’t just that they rejected us, but that they rejected Jesus too.”

She also told us that this same month, her dad had decided to leave them in the northeast and move back down south to his second wife. Mint’s mom had just baptized him a few months before.

We sat in silence and mourned together with her. And with as much feeling and intention as we could convey in our limited Thai, we prayed for Mint and asked God to be her comfort.

________

The first time I hugged Mint after three years of working together was in the hospital. We were in a province I had never been before to help train some new church planters that Mint had raised up. Upon arriving to the hotel after a 6 hour drive, Jenn had multiple seizures and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

After texting my teammates to pray, the first person I called was Mint, searching for the Thai words to explain “faint, unconscious, seizure.” She told me to tell the hotel to call an ambulance and was there in 10 minutes next to me as Jenn started her 3rd seizure.

We rode in the front of the ambulance together; I remember that Mint was carrying Jenn’s shoes for her. When we were getting ready to move from the government hospital to the international hospital, Mint disappeared for 10 minutes and came back with the bill paid. She wouldn’t let me pay her back.

Around midnight as the hospital was closing, I went to the lobby where Mint and some of her teammates had been waiting for almost 6 hours. With tears in my eyes, I told them thank you for being with me that day, and I gave Mint a hug. For context, Thai culture isn’t very touchy as they ‘wai’ each other instead of hugging or handshaking, and Mint in particular isn’t a touch person. Jenn and I aren’t sure if we’ve even seen Mint hug her own family. But it felt like we had been through something significant and intense together and a ‘wai’ just wouldn’t suffice; she was there with us through one of the worst days of our lives.

The next day, she ran the training for the new church planters by herself and was back at the hospital to see Jenn. 

After we were gone from Thailand for almost 2 years for Jenn’s treatment in the States, we came back to see her and it was like things just picked up right where they left off. Mint gives Jenn a hug now almost every time we see her.

________

Encouraging Towards Jesus Together
_Jenn

Two days after my seizure, Talia sent a text to me and Steven.

“Last night, I had a dream about Jenn. I was really worried and woke up early to pray for her. Jenn, please don’t work too hard!” 

To that point, we hadn’t updated most of our Thai friends about what had happened, and I was recovering in a hospital ICU. It still blows our minds that the Holy Spirit had alerted her of my situation from hundreds of miles away.

After Steven told her the news, Talia responded immediately:

“Jenn, I thank God that we are going through these situations. Everything that happens is in God’s control and in his care. I believe we will see and understand His promises much more, together.”

At the time Talia texted this to me, she was incredibly sick herself. For months, she had been fighting constant weakness and nausea, eventually ending up bedridden from hyperthyroidism, with doctors unable to figure out a medical plan. For the next two years the Lord knit our hearts to each other for a season of suffering and sickness that we would weather together. 

While we fought our respective battles, Talia and I texted constantly. One of the terrible effects of sickness is isolation and loneliness. With brain cancer, no one else was able to experience what my body was going through the way I did. I didn’t have the energy to explain my experiences and the storm of emotions in my heart. But Talia and I had each other – no explanations needed.

We shared with each other verses about God’s promises in suffering, frustrations with sickness, the painful words of people around us, and pictures of new clothes we needed for our changing bodies.

As Talia’s condition worsened, she expressed to me that I had become one of the few people who she felt understood by and who encouraged her. I felt exactly the same. The lessons that she was receiving from the Lord mirrored the things that I was learning. I once asked her, has God given you any promises during this season of suffering?

She said, “God has given me a vision that he will heal me and that I’ll return to my former strength! And that many people will believe in him through my testimony. I want to spend the time I have left to serve him and share the gospel and my story to as many people as I can!” 

625 days after my seizure, we reunited with Talia in Thailand. Although our bodies were exhausted and changed from 2 years of disease and treatment, we were overjoyed to be on the other side of a season of sickness and to meet face to face again. Meeting together also gave us renewed focus and resolve to take the lessons that God had been teaching us through sickness and move forward with His work in Thailand.

When we first launched to Thailand, we knew that our role was to partner with Thai leaders to help them complete the vision God had given them. What I didn’t expect was that God would give me someone that would understand what I was going through better than almost anyone in my most difficult season, despite being across an ocean and a language barrier. I had in mind to have a close relationship with a partner in the ministry, but my good Father knew that what I needed was a dear sister and friend to encourage me in Christ.

I’m confident that God had me and Talia go through our treatment seasons together to reflect to each other what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1: 

Blessed be the… God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God… Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 9-10

As we head into 2024, here are our top 5 most read posts of 2023!

1. Why Be Barnabas?
2. 625 Days and Talia’s Story
3. Lessons from Cancer: Suffering Leads to Surrender
4. Team Conflict
5. Lessons from Cancer: Surrender the Self to the Point of Death

We have a lot on deck for next year, including the last few posts for the Be Barnabas series, as well as other posts about personal and team thriving. In 2024, we hope to connect with even more missions leaders to learn from and share lessons with; we’d love to connect with you personally! Please reach out at contact@missionsleaders.com. We hope you have a great Christmas / New Year’s season!

We hope this poem from Amy Carmichael will encourage you to continue in the way of Jesus, even through all of the ups and downs.

Thy Way is Perfect by Amy Carmichael

Long is the way, and very steep the slope;
Strengthen me once again, O God of Hope.

Far, very far, the summit doth appear;
But Thou art near, my God, but Thou art near.

And Thou wilt give me with my daily food,
Powers of endurance, courage, fortitude.

Thy way is perfect; only let that way
Be clear before my feet from day to day.

Thou art my Portion, saith my soul to Thee,
Oh, what a portion is my God to me!