Filter Selectively

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

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

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

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

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

Discern Their Fit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Provide Clear Next Steps and Process Overview

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

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

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

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

Make A Compelling Ask

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

Questions for Reflection

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

One of the responsibilities of a Team Leader is to recruit the right teammates onto your team. We’re often asked many questions around the area of recruiting, including:

“How do I know if someone’s right for my team?”
“How do I cast compelling vision for someone to join?”
“Should I prioritize role fit, gifting, or character?”

We hope to answer these questions and more to help you figure out the process of recruiting and building a thriving team overseas! In part 1, we’ll address the overall process of recruiting, and more of the front end activities to find potential recruits. In part 2, we’ll talk about how to filter for the right teammates and discern their fit on your team, as well as how to close the deal and invite them to your team!

The Legendary Soup Terrine

When we first were preparing to launch, Jenn and I [Steven] were the team leaders and about to get married but everyone else on our team was single at the time. We knew for our relational thriving that it’d be important to recruit another married couple on the team. We also needed some teammates that were administratively gifted to help us navigate all the needs on the field.

One couple in particular seemed to fit the bill. The wife had been in a year-long development cohort at our church with Jenn and had developed a good friendship with her. This couple were looking to launch overseas but had several other invites from way more established and impressive team leaders than our extremely inexperienced selves.

We invited them to start the process, shared our vision with them, and even brought them on a vision trip to Thailand (one month before our wedding – much to Jenn’s displeasure as she tried to plan our wedding). And then we formally invited them to join our team, asking that they would give us a response in two weeks.

After two weeks, they asked us to come over to their apartment to talk about their decision. By then, they had already gone on another vision trip to visit another team and had three other very good options on the table. As we pulled into the parking lot, Jenn and I were sure that we were going into a breakup conversation and that they would tell us they were joining another shinier, more impressive team. “Sorry, it’s not you, it’s me!”

We trudged up to their apartment and had an hour and a half of small talk and catching up. Inside, I thought, “Just rip the bandaid off already and tell us you’re not joining!”

Finally, they said, “we have an early wedding present for you!” And brought out an enormous cardboard box that could have fit a person inside of it. As we tentatively opened it, there were more boxes and more newspaper wrapping. Finally, we opened the last box, and inside was a large soup terrine like the one in the picture below.

As I opened the soup terrine, there was a small folded up piece of paper with the text “เราอยู่ข้างใน” – of course I had no idea what this meant. And in 4 point size font in the bottom corner, the translation: _{(we’re in!!!!!!)}

Jenn immediately burst into tears as I gave a huge sigh of relief. We had new teammates! 

Funny enough, three years later, we found out the Thai was completely wrong, and translated more to something like “we’re inside [the box]” but that just makes it funnier. As we recruited more teammates or current teammates got married, the soup terrine was gifted to 5 more couples over the next 10 years! And of course, no one has any use for it and it refuses to fit in any normal cabinet. It’s simultaneously an annoyance and a heart-warming reminder of how God has blessed our team not only with great teammates, but life-long friends.

Recruiting is (kind of) Like Dating

When you’re looking for a new job in the for-profit world, many times there’s an application and one or two interviews before you start at a new job. That’s not very much to figure out if someone is a good fit at a new job. But there’s always the option of firing them if they don’t fit!

Recruiting someone to an overseas missions team is very different from hiring for a job. In many ways, it’s more akin to dating than hiring! Unlike marriage, being a part of a missions team isn’t “until death do us part.” But it takes a lot of momentum and cost for a new teammate to go through a process of preparing, selling everything, saying goodbyes, and transitioning to the field. And it takes the team leader and the team a lot of energy to welcome a new teammate and go through another round of Team Formation (forming-storming-norming-performing) with every new teammate. Just one teammate that is not well prepared, relationally difficult, or a bad fit can cause a ton of sideways energy on an otherwise healthy and effective team, or in the worst-case scenario, cause enough carnage to send the whole team home. We unfortunately know more than a few stories of friends that were on teams like these.

At the same time, it’s critical that a team leader knows how to identify, discern, and compellingly invite new teammates to the field. For one, there’s so much turnover and attrition on missions teams for various reasons like unstable visas, health emergencies, or unavoidable circumstances – though hopefully not for team conflict or character reasons if a team leader does a good job recruiting the right people. Secondly, the vision that God has given you should outpace your own ability to see it to completion! That requires recruiting leaders and teammates to either add to your team, or to help expand and multiply to start new teams that own a piece of that vision.

For those of you that are married or who have friends that are married, how many dates did it take to pop the question? Obviously, a recruiting process can’t be that robust. But we’d encourage team leaders to take recruiting as a process, and not just a one-and-done event.

In our time as team leaders, we’ve onboarded 20 new teammates, had 30+ go through our recruiting process, and had initial vision casting conversations with 75+ people. Below are some of the guidelines and lessons we’ve learned in the process of recruiting new teammates to overseas work.

Recruiting Guidelines

Always have a mindset of recruiting leaders.

If it wasn’t clear, this is a blog about leaders. In our experience, the greatest bottleneck of seeing expansion and health in your team and ministry is a lack of leaders. Our recommendation would be that every TL have someone on the team that they are developing to either replace themselves or to expand to a new team. Part of that is redundancy if you have to leave the field, but it is also the potential to grow into new opportunities that the Lord provides. Even if you feel that your team is “full,” always be willing and open to receive more leader-type people.

Connect with networks to recruit from.

In order to even begin recruiting and casting vision, you need a pool of potential goers to recruit from. Many times, being a part of a missions agency will provide that pool. Find local churches that are passionate about deploying goers, or keep an eye out for other missions-related networks like conferences or prayer groups. Having a home-side advocate keep an eye out for potential recruits can be a huge help.

Cast vision broadly and specifically.

Cast vision broadly to anyone who will hear, but also cast vision specifically to the audience you’re speaking to. When you meet potential goers that could join your team, cast vision broadly! As a leader, you should always be casting compelling vision for the need and opportunity in your ministry to anyone who will listen – they may end up being interested as a teammate, or a supporter or advocate.

Sometimes casting vision will be to a group of people, and other times it will be 1-on-1. Try to shape your vision casting to your audience. You want to be a “sniper” not a “shotgun” in your vision casting; cast vision to the desire you hear in them when they share (e.g. impact, purpose, community, etc.). What does the person you’re talking to value in a team or ministry opportunity?

In order to cast vision specifically, listen well and ask good questions:

• How did you come to start following Jesus?
• How did you get involved or feel a call to missions?
• Where have you felt God has been leading you recently?
• What types of spiritual gifts or strengths do you have?
• How has your experience been in preparing to go overseas?
• What passions do you feel like God has given you? (What makes you “pound the table?”)

Listen well to how they answer these types of questions, and craft your vision casting to their passions and values. Listening to what they value also helps you to discern their fit on your team.

Ways to Cast Vision

How do you cast vision? Here are a couple of methods:

From the Word.

It’s always good to have a few verses that are your key convictions for the vision God has given you for your ministry. Many times, these Scriptural convictions could be shared by the other person. Some of our go-to verses are Matthew 28:18-20, Revelation 7:9-10, Matthew 24:14, Acts 19:10, Psalm 2, and Isaiah 45 among many others.

Sharing About the Need of the People and Place.

Hudson Taylor would constantly write and speak about the need among China’s 350 million people without the gospel. In his 54 years of ministry in China, he ended up mobilizing nearly 800 long-term workers to China’s Millions and influencing countless others to go. Is recruiting important? Hudson Taylor seemed to think so. In that 54 years, he took 10 round trips from the West to China and back, totaling 11 years(!) on a ship, with his 11th and final trip at age 73, which ended up as a one-way trip as he died in China in 1905. 

For your ministry vision, how many people don’t have access to the gospel? What are the spiritual needs among your people (addiction, spiritual bondage, social issues)?

What is God doing among this people and place? Tell stories of God answering prayers, people coming to faith, critical events that open doors to the gospel.

Describing the Role You Envision Them Playing.

Many people can get easily excited about the need and opportunity in most places among the unreached, but what they really want to know is – what’s my role in it? How can I make an impact in that? Cast vision about the role you could see them playing on the team and in the ministry – how do their gifts and values align with what your team is doing and what God is doing? Again, this requires listening to them well first.

Lastly, let your own passion and conviction come out when you cast vision. God has called you to give your life to see the gospel go forward among the unreached. Whether it’s a verse, or a story, or an experience that moved your heart to say yes to God, let that come out! People are drawn to the passion and emotion that a leader expresses when sharing about their vision.

Now that you have a decent pool of potential recruits that are interested in your team, it’s time to focus on making sure they’re the right quality and fit for your team. More in part 2!