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

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

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

Why are MOUs important?

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

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

How to Write an MOU

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

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

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

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

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

Core Categories

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

Optional Categories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…every time there has been a spiritual awakening, women are often called up into ministry and spiritual leadership. It’s one of the signs of a revival that isn’t talked about very often.

Dr. Jo Anne Lyon, 181

In Developing Female Leaders, church consultant Kadi Cole addresses how churches and leaders can better develop, empower, and elevate women leaders, with strategies on how to navigate common “minefields” and barriers that women leaders experience.

Cole draws from research from more than 30 executive and high-level female ministry leaders from a variety of settings, survey results from over 1,000 female leaders around the world, and interviews from male church leaders who are actively engaging in this issue. Each chapter outlines a “best practice” for church leaders to follow and ends with discussion questions to work through with a leadership team.

We have found this book incredibly relevant and practical. Kadi Cole’s best practices challenge many common assumptions held about women in ministry leadership, and reveal how those assumptions might actually be holding leaders back! But when women leaders are intentionally developed in a supportive environment, all that stunted potential can be unleashed for the expansion of the kingdom of God!

…there’s always room for one more at God’s table…there will always be more than enough people to love, more than enough people to serve, more than enough people with whom we can share the gospel, and more than enough people who need great leadership. In God’s kingdom, there is more than enough for all of us.

Kadi Cole, 178

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

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

“Effective leaders increasingly perceive their ministries in terms of a lifetime perspective.“

The Making of a Leader by J. Robert Clinton helps spiritual leaders understand God’s process of developing them over a course of a lifetime. Clinton draws principles from the lives of Biblical and ministry leaders in history, breaking each leaders’ journey into 5 phases – sovereign foundations, inner-life growth, ministry maturing, life maturing, and convergence. Each chapter provides reflection questions and tools to help you identify key points in your leadership development journey. We especially appreciate Clinton’s breakdown of spiritual giftings as they relate to ministry.

This book was instrumental in helping us identify different events that God has used in our own lives to develop our character, skills, and calling. Overall, we highly recommend this book for leaders who want to understand their development process and discern how they can continue growing in the ways that God has been moving in their lives.

“God is working primarily in the leader, not through them. Many emerging leaders don’t recognize this and become frustrated. They are constantly evaluating productivity and activities, while God is quietly evaluating their leadership potential. He wants to teach us that we minister out of who we are.”

Before we launched, Jenn and I were in pre-engagement counseling and we took a stress test as a way to gauge different stressors and how we responded to them. Our counselor came back and said, “Steven, you scored the lowest stress we’ve ever seen on this test. You have like no stress at all.”

I semi-pridefully, semi-jokingly responded, “I guess it’s just trusting in Jesus!”

My 23-year-old self had yet to be introduced to the pressure cooker of cross-cultural life, ministry, and leadership. Man, I want to go back and slap that 23-year-old version of myself.

When we’re in our home countries, we perhaps unconsciously and easily move towards the things that keep our stress low and keep our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health high. There’s an abundance of resources to help you thrive and the added bonus that they are all in your own language. Pastors, small groups, counseling centers, local churches, friend groups, classes, workout groups, sports teams, etc.

Moving overseas, most of these are wiped away overnight.

In the chaos of transition, language learning, pioneering ministry, and team conflict, we can take for granted that all the ways we are used to pursuing health and thriving in our lives are no longer there. Additionally, the stressors in our lives spike to levels we’ve never experienced before: change in culture, climate, job, community, proximity to family, access to hobbies and other supports.

The Holmes-Rahe stress inventory gives a score for different stressful events that might happen in your life, like changing your job, death of a family member, or changing residences. Score over 200, and you had a 50% chance to have a major health breakdown within 2 years. Over 300, and that percentage would shoot to 80%. Dr. Lois Dodds of Heartstream Resources did some analysis of first year missionaries’ stress levels according to the Holmes-Rahe stress inventory. They found that first term missionaries peaked at 900 and even veteran missionaries averaged about 600!

Yikes.

As we’ve repeatedly said before, much of what is posted on this blog are lessons from how NOT to do it. Jenn and I completely disregarded any thought of health and powered through new marriage, transitions, team leadership, language school, and pioneering ministry without a thought of how to manage our stress, much less be aware of how we were doing.

In month 6 on the field, we noted that I had been sick almost every month upon landing on the field when I barely got sick once a year in the States. At a team meeting in our second year, out of curiosity I asked the team to raise their hands if they had experienced the following “minor”  health issues: regular migraines/headaches, panic / anxiety attacks, eye twitching, vertigo, stomach issues (both directions), increase in colds/sickness, weight gain, difficulty sleeping, random muscle pains, and hives. As I went through the list, at least half to ⅔ of the team raised their hands. Except the stomach issues one. That one was 100%.

Even on our own team, we didn’t know that we were all experiencing these issues.

Before you launch to the field you hear of the extreme stories of missionaries thrown into jail or maybe even those that have seizures and find out they have brain cancer. But what’s often not mentioned is the ongoing, dangerously high levels of stress that we experience at a regular level.

There’s also an underlying, unmentioned belief among goers that the more you suffer, the holier you are. And it’s true that Romans 5 tells us that suffering produces perseverance, which produces character. But I think holiness and character are produced from how we respond to suffering, not just whether we have it. There’s nothing particularly holy about disregarding your own health or your family’s or team’s out of ignorance. How can goers persevere amidst all of this?

After 10 years of living on the field, our first answer is still abiding in Jesus through our union with Christ. Realizing when you’re anxious or stressed, surrendering control, and receiving what you need from the vine.

Secondly, setting rhythms and boundaries for health is critical for sustained thriving on the field.

At the end of 2022 as we were about to head back to Thailand after Jenn’s cancer treatment, our counselor asked us how we were going to pursue healthy rhythms after returning. I told her I wasn’t sure, and she asked, “When was a season in Thailand when you felt you were healthy?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a season in Thailand when I was healthy.”

She gave us the following tool to complete before returning: Red-Yellow-Green Health Markers.

Red-Yellow-Green Health Markers

Summary: With culture stress, ministry challenges, and life transitions, life on the field as a cross-cultural worker can quickly cause areas of physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual health to suffer. This tool is meant to help workers self-evaluate what their markers of health are, and establish rhythms to help them maintain thriving.

Red: markers that indicate you are outside a window of tolerance, need to take a hard stop and make changes.

Yellow: markers that indicate you need to take caution, slow down, and go back to green. Warning signs to pay attention to.

Green: markers that indicate that you are healthy and thriving when these are in place.

Below is an example table of what indicators and rhythms you could add. These can span physical, mental, emotional, relational (e.g. marriage/singleness, team, ministry partners, friendships, spiritual community), and spiritual areas of life. You can take the template and fill in your own health markers. Feel free to add any categories that might have a significant impact on your health, including travel, schedule, personal development, or anything else that is helpful.

After each filling this out, Jenn and I have tried to adhere to these rhythms as best we can for the past 2 years. We had our counselor check in and help us honestly evaluate how we were doing for the first two quarters. For the most part, we’ve been in and out of the yellow-green areas, which has been way better than our first 8 years on the field. And when we have weeks where we dip into the red markers, we’re both much more aware of it and quick to enact some changes.

Our encouragement for those that are on the field is to take a day of prayer and evaluate your health indicators and rhythms. Share your markers with a supervisor, leader, or member care friend and ask them to check you on it monthly or quarterly.

We want to persevere until the vision that God has given is accomplished! Constantly redlining into burnout and unhealth is a sure way to leave the field or be forced out before that vision is realized. More than that, the promises of Jesus are for abundant life (John 10:10), for a light burden and easy yoke and rest for our souls (Matthew 11:28-30), for an overflowing cup and refreshment for our souls (Psalm 23). The lie of our flesh or pride is that goers must only suffer and not thrive. And while seasons of suffering are almost guaranteed for the goer, it is to release us into more thriving! May we be an example of overflowing, abiding fruitfulness that multiplies into those we lead and into new disciples among the nations.

Main Resource:

Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness by Andrew Murray, a missionary to South Africa in the 1840s, is highly recommended reading for anyone who joins our team. Murray’s writings challenge and focus our hearts to love Jesus through deeper abiding that starts with a humble and surrendered heart. It is only out of this constant dying to self are we able to access the power and presence of God for our ministry.

Quotes:

Here are a couple excerpts that we consistently return to.

When people are frustrating:

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

When life feels out of control:

Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.

When feeling powerless:

Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down! Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.

This has been one of the most impactful books on our walks with God and we highly recommend it to you!

One of the prevailing messages many of us are taught growing up is that emotions are a bad thing. For those of us who grew up in the West, emotions are often seen as illogical or considered a weakness.

However, the Bible is filled with emotional language because God himself feels emotions! He can be grieved (Genesis 6:6), can rejoice over us with singing (Zephaniah 3:17), and he can love (John 3:16). In the same way, as people made in God’s image, we also can be thankful for the many emotions we are able to experience!

For missions leaders, self-awareness around emotions is critical. In the high-stress environment of field leadership, emotions will be flying all over the place in yourself, your family, and your teammates! It’s critical we learn how to identify our emotions properly, rather than to stifle and ignore them. Our feelings are often a reflection of what is actually going on in our hearts, and can help us to understand our own motivations or those of others. And when we understand these deeper motivations, we are then able to apply real and effective solutions.

Below are some resources that can help us to understand and to access our deeper emotions.

Tool: Feelings Wheel

The feelings wheel is a handy tool that you can regularly reference to help put specific words to the feelings we experience. A good way to daily process your emotions is to pick out 3 emotions that you experienced during the day and to review why you felt those things.

Book: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzerro makes the point that spiritual maturity is deeply tied into emotional maturity. This books discusses how to integrate the two together for a more holistic discipleship. We recommend this book for basically everyone on our team or any goers we know! He has also written Emotionally Healthy Leader and Emotionally Healthy Discipleship.

Poetry:

If you have a hard time accessing and feeling your emotions, we recommend turning to art (literature, photography, music, etc.) to help you. Here is one of Jenn’s favorite poems:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers | Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

As you look ahead to the new year, I hope these words encourage you to keep surrendering what is burdensome so that you can grow and run with expectancy and freedom toward who God is creating you to be!

i am running into a new year

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

– Lucille Clifton, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980

Hello from Amazing Thailand! After 1.5 years in the States for Jenn’s medical treatment, we’ve finally been able to return to the country and people that we love. There’s been many lessons learned from God through costly and painful experiences in the last season that we hope to write about soon. For now, we’ll try to get settled, reconnect with team and Thai partners, and look forward to 2023 and continuing to help serve missions leaders like yourself!

Quote:

“Depend on it. God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply. He is too wise a God to frustrate His purposes for lack of funds, and He can just as easily supply them ahead of time as afterwards, and He much prefers doing so.”

Hudson Taylor

Comic:

Main Resource:

GoerFI

There are an insane amount of responsibilities for a Team Leader launching to a new place. We can talk about shepherding, strategy, vision casting, team development, culture setting, and many other things – but one critical part is often left behind: administration. For leaders that don’t have administration as a strength, those menial tasks can feel boring and distracting. But without some attention, either from yourself or hopefully from an administratively gifted person that you recruit to your team, administrative aspects like visas, insurance, finances, and even the minutiae like transportation, areas to live, and how to set up your SIM card will continue to drain a TL’s time and mental energy the longer you go without addressing them.

One of the most confusing aspects of life overseas can be the financial aspect – taxes, insurance, savings, retirement. To that end, one of our friends created GoerFI, which stands for Goer Financial Independence. There’s a lot of great info on this website that will hopefully be a blessing to your team and save you time as a TL to focus on other aspects of leadership. (Disclaimer that you should seek guidance from a licensed financial professional regarding personal finances – GoerFI is for informational and educational purposes and is not financial advice!)

From the GoerFI website: “This guide is designed to help you get informed and take charge of your personal finances. Christian non-profit expat workers, or goers, live in unique circumstances: you live overseas most of the time, work for a non-profit, and raise your own support. When you encounter information or advice on handling personal finances, it’s hard not to wonder, “does this even apply to my situation?” This guide was written for goers like you! It’s your tailor-made starting point for taking charge of your personal finances and pursuing Financial Independence (FI). This is goerFI.”

Quote:

“One reason we are so harried and hurried is that we make yesterday and tomorrow our business, when all that legitimately concerns us is today. If we really have too much to do, there are some items on the agenda which God did not put there. Let us submit the list to Him and ask Him to indicate which items we must delete. There is always time to do the will of God. If we are too busy to do that, we are too busy.”

Elisabeth Elliot

Comic:

Main Resource:

The 80/20 Rule

Leaders can often feel overwhelmed by ministry responsibilities, and struggle with how to best prioritize and allocate their time. The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, is a general framework that we use to guide our schedules, commitments, and boundaries. The 80-20 rule states that a small amount of inputs will lead to the majority of impact. Pareto calls it the rule of the “vital few and the trivial many.” With this mindset, we try to focus on only the most important inputs and find peace with releasing the trivial many. 

For example, if we had 10 church planting teams under our leadership, we could “equally” coach all ten leaders. But we have limitations on our own capacity and time! However, suppose one of those church planting leaders actually disciples 8 of the ten teams! By focusing on that one person, we trust we are influencing 80% of the teams with minimal energy and time spent.