Missionary Care Podcast Episodes

We just want to encourage the church that we have seen as churches have stepped in and engaged with missionaries in a deep way, in a long-standing way across their entire life cycle, it’s a powerful act of worship to God. It is an act of obedience in supporting our brothers and sisters and the blessings are mutual. It goes all the way around. It’s a strong encouragement for the church.  

Welcome everyone to today’s episode on Breaking Bread. I’m excited to have you along and excited to introduce to you Kirk Plattner. Welcome. Thank you. It’s good to be here. It’s great to have you here. Kirk is Outreach Manager for HarvestCall which is probably a household name among most of our listeners. 

You’ll have a chance to explain what that means, Kirk, we look forward to that. Amber Miller is with us as well. Amber needs no introduction. Welcome, Amber. Thanks for having me back. So, the topic is really this wonderful intersection of the church and missions. And in that intersection, we have missionary care, what does it mean to be a missionary? 

And we’re delighted and feel very fortunate, Kirk, for HarvestCall’s effort and the ground that they are plowing in the space of missions. I’d love for you to bring us up to speed, share a little bit about HarvestCall, a little bit about what you do. So, the history of HarvestCall, obviously it’s a fairly new organization in the sense that it’s been about two years now that HarvestCall has been up and running. As regards all of the DNA of HarvestCall, it is a combination of World Relief and the Mission Committee and 50 plus years of efforts of those organizations and the work that they’ve been doing. 

And HarvestCall was just a merger of those organizations. And so, if you were to crystallize the heartbeat of HarvestCall, what’s its purpose or its vision? Yeah, so it’s a mission arm of the Apostolic Christian Church. As such, the purpose statement reads, it’s to enable the brotherhood to proclaim Christ and serve others beyond the capacity of the local church. 

And so enabling the brotherhood to provide an avenue or a method for our brotherhood to engage in outreach is the heartbeat of HarvestCall and help facilitating that and allowing that to happen. Yes, for sure. In wonderful ways. And particularly as an outreach manager, what does that entail? 

Well, all that really means is the role is developed to help care for our missionaries and those who are serving through HarvestCall. So, from a HarvestCall perspective, as we’ve grown in our ability, our desire to care for our brothers and sisters, there have been certain capacities and certain needs within our missionaries that we’ve seen and realized from our perspective, that we’re just unable to handle. 

Over the past five years, HarvestCall has grown in our relationship with ACCFS and our utilization of them and their services specifically around mental health, around some of the training, some of the tools that they have access to in relational and spiritual health. 

In each of these areas we’ve really partnered together in some interesting and very close ways in caring for our missionaries and their families. Amber, you’re alongside here today because out of this office, you intersect in this world of missionary care as well. And that’s really what we want to talk about today. 

This is a wonderfully growing opportunity that we as a brotherhood have in supporting and caring for missionaries, and we want to iron some of that out today. So Amber, your intersection in all of this is what? It’s been good to be a part of this as HarvestCall gets more and more into educating the church about what it looks like to care for missionaries. 

And certainly, ACCFS plays a role in providing different clinical care and also training before people go on field. And so, there’s a lot of relationship building that occurs throughout the course of a missionary’s time on the field. But one thing that’s really impactful and neat about missionary care is that it can extend beyond just us. 

Beyond just Kirk and I, and there’s the whole church that should be getting behind a missionary and providing that support. Certainly, this missionary space is a wonderfully unique space to step into. And before we get into some of those deeper waters, Kirk, what are some numbers? How many boots on the ground do we have? 

Sure. Yeah, it’s been interesting. So as most people know, 10 years ago, the number of missionaries that would have been on the field would have been fairly small. And over these past years, it’s been a growing heartbeat of our church and has really grown a lot to today. We have 31 families on the field. 

We say families meaning that a couple would be a family, and a single would be a family. So, 31 families are approximately 50 brothers and sisters in the field. And then you add children into that, and you have significant numbers. So yeah, it’s been a big piece of growth. And how many of our churches are represented? 

I think it’s about 22 right now. So, it’s been around that number, which is really neat to think about the number of churches engaged in supporting the missionaries. It touches the entire brotherhood. Absolutely. Which then raises this concept of what does it mean to care for a missionary? 

We have sent them and to further on care for them. Yeah, absolutely. And I think this would be a unique perspective of HarvestCall to say that it’s not HarvestCall that’s going to care for the missionaries. And so, a second ago, Amber positioned it that it really is beyond us to care for the missionaries. 

The church is the one who’s caring for the missionaries, and we are going to help supplement and facilitate that and encourage that. And so, as an outreach manager you are somewhat at the helm of making sure that happens. Just a coordinator. As a coordinator, but certainly not able to equip in and of yourself to do that. 

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why a podcast like today is being aired. Sure. Let’s first start with the term missionary. Right. Missionary has many connotations to many people. Our minds go different ways when we hear missionary. Certainly, you both have thought a lot about what it means to be a missionary. 

Let’s start and needle in with a definition. Yes, missionary is a unique word because when we think about missionary, often we think about the Great Commission. And so, when you think about those words at the end of Matthew 28, we see those as words for the entire church and for each individual believer. 

And so, it’s go ye into all the world. So, if that’s the definition of missionary, is everybody a missionary? And so, we understand that, but at the same time, we have chosen to use that definition of the word missionary, and not to minimize the common call for all of us in that, but for the sake of HarvestCall, just so we have language to speak to it, we do use the word missionary and use it uniquely to think about those who are going across cultures. 

I think sometimes there can almost be a super humanness about that, and it can seem very special. Yeah. And yet, like Kirk said, what does that actually look like in fulfilling the Great Commission? I think that’s an important comment just to simply make, and Kirk, you were going down that road in terms of saying, all right, there is uniqueness. This word does mean something. It doesn’t nullify the work that all of us are called to as equally important and certainly called by God. But if we don’t have a word reserved for it, then what is it that we’re talking about? And so, you said going across culture in the service of God. 

We really like to preserve those words, proclaim Christ and serve others. Because we feel like they capture the heartbeat of HarvestCall. Uniquely to our history of having World Relief being primarily more of a humanitarian organization and Mission Committee primarily being more of aa outreach organization, gospel oriented. Then HarvestCall, in trying to preserve the uniqueness of HarvestCall being a perfect marriage of those two, we really like to make sure we capture both perspectives. And with that slogan. Proclaim and serve. Absolutely. It encapsulates both of those. So that really is quite defining in the heartbeat of HarvestCall. 

Right. So, all of our missionaries that we send are commissioned to do both of those things. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and that’s going to be a process, right? And to continue to view it in that sense. I think it’s pretty easy to fall closer to one side or the other and yet it really is the marriage of those two things that is important as we do this work. 

So, let’s go into the missionary care. I’m sure it’s multifaceted. In these next couple minutes, let’s try to help the church see what that looks like. This is simply about caring for our brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s no different than any other relationship that we have with any other brother and sister in the fact that they are a brother and sister. 

And as the body of Christ, we care for each member. And so missionary care in its most simplistic form is caring for brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s one of those things that I don’t think you ever fully understand the need of until you’re in that spot where you need someone to reach out to and talk to about something really challenging that’s happened. 

Yeah, I mean, we know from transitions that you go through in life, depending on ramifications of one’s environment, issues are teed up that need to be cared for. And I would have to believe that the missionary places themselves in these high-stake environments whereby help is going to be welcome. 

Yeah, I think just the nature of doing cross cultural service sets you up for some of those things. Whether that is dealing with different stressors, whether that is just the pressure or exhaustion that comes from serving in places where the needs are never ending, or just trauma that certainly can happen to anyone in any context but seem to be present when you’re serving somewhere different. 

And those are largely external. That’s not to mention all the internal things that we’ve created for ourselves. Internal pressures of expectation of what our perceptions are about how we think this should be, how we had hoped this would go. Yeah. Those are really critical. What information, or what helps, would you provide or what’s on your heart to share with the church to say, hey, here is what our role is, even after they’ve left. 

So, from a HarvestCall perspective, we’ve broken down support into really three primary functions. Early on in the development of HarvestCall’s perspective on this, we looked through Paul’s missionary journeys and said, what are these things that Paul was asking for as he was out? And certainly, spiritual support would be number one. 

There are a number of places where he’s asking for prayers and asking for accountability. Second, remember those places where he says, hey, send my love, here’s some information, or please gather some information from that church for connection. So, we call that fellowship support or relational support. 

And then the third one is logistical. We call it physical support. Bring me my books or a number of places clarified his right to financial support. And so those are the three primary areas we look to as far as asking a church saying, would you please have these in mind regarding caring for your missionaries, their spiritual well-being, their relational or fellowship connectedness, and then their physical needs. And how is that facilitated? Do you facilitate that within local sending churches on what that looks like? Or is that up for the missionary to ask at the right times and for the right things? What does that look like? The model we’ve set up for that is we will ask a sending church and communicate to them that this is their responsibility collectively. 

We task some individuals with accountability for actually making it happen. And so, for their spiritual support, every missionary who goes has a mentor. And that mentor is tasked with the responsibility of keeping the spiritual pulse of the missionary and keeping a connection between that church and the missionary in a spiritual sense, and making sure they have a sense for how that missionary is doing day in and day out. 

And so, their responsibility is to stay consistently connected to that missionary on a spiritual level. And then we have another role that is sometimes filled by a single person and sometimes fulfilled by a group. And we call that an advocate or a prayer team or a support team might also be called that. 

And their task is largely keeping that missionary relationally or in fellowship with the church at large. So that might be tapping the missionary on the shoulder and saying, hey, it’s time to get some information back to the church about what’s been going on recently, or maybe they could be a mouthpiece for them in the local church or tapping the people, brothers and sisters in the local church saying, hey, would you mind just reaching out and seeing how they’re doing and staying relationally connected. 

What are some practical ways that you’ve seen churches do this? Yeah, it’s a great question, Matt, because in reality, it’s far less complicated than what we make it. This is still about relationships. It’s back where we started. These are just our brothers and sisters, and we care for them. 

It can be rather simple in its application and just thinking, what’s a connection point? And so, from the time I experienced overseas, there were times where it would have been as meaningful for somebody to contact me and have a normal conversation about what was happening in life. In Jamaica, we didn’t have a sense for when the planting season was. 

So, that was always something in Illinois, you see there’s planters in the field or there’s combines in the field. You have a sense for that. Well, in another place where that’s still meaningful to me but in reality, it could have entirely passed without me even thinking about it. 

So, we mowed our lawn for the first time or even in church circles, it could be as simple as, yeah, making sure that the kids birthdays are on the birthday list on the calendar or making sure Christmas card pictures still get sent the same way they would have if you were somewhere else or really simple, but consistent ways. 

That’s why the thing that I usually stress more than anything else is that it’s still a part of the consistent heartbeat of the church to be connected to that brother and sister. Not this one big thing once a year where it’s a really a significant event, but just a regular heartbeat and flow of that church Almost integrating that into your life, so it doesn’t feel out of the normal. But whether that’s through prayer, through sending the cards or making phone calls. It just becomes part of what you do when you have a brother and sister on the field. So, you’re saying just the simple things like, hey this is what’s happening at home. And I’m still plugged in to the rhythmic motions of home. Yes, you’ve probably been away on a trip, maybe a longer trip than you normally take. 

Can you come back into your normal community? Our perceptions are that we might have missed a lot while we were gone. I come back and I feel like, well, maybe things are different than I happen to have missed. Multiply those times the time that somebody’s on the field. And it’s generally true that the perceived gap, relational gap, develops stronger and faster than we think. 

When we’re a part of the community, for those that are outside of it, we have to remind ourselves that they are likely feeling more disconnected than what we think. And so that’s why these simple little touch points and simple, consistent touch points are so important. That’s very true. 

There’s a reason that we have the saying, out of sight, out of mind. I mean, it’s really easy to start falling into that. And I think there’s also a misbelief that missionaries are so busy. And that’s true. There’s a lot going on, but I think we can talk ourselves out of doing very practical care things for people because we think, oh, the technology is not that great, or they don’t have time or whatever it may be. 

And so, it’s really easy to come up with excuses why care doesn’t just naturally flow. And I sometimes challenge people to say, well, the missionary may be too busy. They may think they’re too busy. But when it comes to our actual need for fellowship and our need for connection, they may need it more than they think they do. 

Yeah. And so, go ahead and reach out. And maybe that’s part of the message that I’m sure you supply on the missionary end. That you need to lean into that relational space, even though you’re out of the loop now, and so you’ll pull away. From either the church perspective or the missionary perspective, the returns might not feel as real and as quick as you think they should. 

And so, there are times when the church will make a relational investment with the missionary and say, well, it seems like they’re kind of holding me at arm’s length right here. What do I do? The bottom line is you keep investing. And from the missionary perspective as well, in the sense that I reached out to the church, but that relationship didn’t feel quite right there. 

So, what do I do? The bottom line is we’re brothers and sisters. Again, back to this body analogy where we need each other, and we have to keep investing. I think there’s an underlying mentality that we must have as well. And that is, again, we are members of one another. Though we have different callings, we share in one another’s callings. 

I think that’s the underlying pylon here. Even though I wasn’t called to go there, and brother and sister so and so were, I am still in there. Just as they weren’t called to stay home as I was, but they are still here. Do you see where that is? It requires, it seems like to me, a pretty spiritual perspective on calling and what it means to be a member one of another even if that person’s not in my calling if that makes sense.  

Absolutely. I mean you can think of the army war analogy, right which Scripture calls out. Yeah, is the medic back at the hospital not part of the army and is he not a critical piece of that? Yeah, just think of the whole supply chain. Sure, and is it only the infantrymen that are really valuable and you say, no, they’re obviously all equally critical. I Corinthians 16, verse 15 talks about these people that have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints. 

And how wonderful to think of that as a calling to not only those who are sent have a calling, but those of us who are back here also may have a calling. We may have an addiction. I love the Scripture that uses that word to care for those who are on the field. Philippians 4, the end of that really is a missionary support letter of all capturing back saying, when I first left this church, you guys really supported me when I was on my missionary journey. 

And it captures this thought. He says this is in verse 17, not that I desire a gift, but I desire that fruit may abound to your account. But I have all and abound. I am full, having received of Epaphroditus, the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God. 

You see this mutual blessing, you see this shared blessing of you bless me and it was a blessing to you and the Lord provided for all of our needs, almost see it as that savor, a sweet smell as an act of worship. We just want to encourage the church that we really have seen that as the churches have stepped in and engaged with the missionary in a deep way, in a long-standing way across their entire life cycle, it’s a really powerful act of worship to God, an act of obedience in supporting our brother and sister, and the blessings are mutual. It goes all the way around. It’s a strong encouragement for the church. And that Paul very much saw the church as a part of the blessing of ministry and missionary work. 

It’s back to that thought of an extension of the local home church. Yeah. Kirk, would you say a little bit about the Missions Conference that’s coming up in Tremont on July 21st? Yeah, absolutely. The Proclaim and Serve Conference is going to be an opportunity for the church at large to gather together around many of these topics. 

Topics of both awareness of what’s happening in certain missions, but also lots of teaching topics. Topics of how we can engage as brothers and sisters in outreach. Say a little bit more about the specifics, should one want to participate. Yeah, when you go to proclaimandserve.org and look at that schedule, you’re going to see some really unique opportunities. 

In the morning sessions, there’s some long form teaching. Several of those will be all morning long on one subject and have the opportunity to dig really deep in. And in the afternoon, you’re going to have some main session talks and then some breakouts and some discussion groups. Just a multi format where you really have the opportunity to dig in on some really important topics. 

What are they hoping to accomplish with such an event? We really hope this is a convergence of those who are interested, those who are engaged, just to be an encouragement to the body at large. And so, this year and into the future, we hope this is a time that missionaries will return for, specifically, to receive some teaching, to receive some fellowship. 

And we hope that for those who are engaged in different ministries, this is a time for them to come together and have fellowship together. We hope those who are just seeking to learn a little bit more will come also, and just to understand a little bit more. So, we really hope it is a convergence of the Brotherhood around many of these mission topics. 

Yeah, and one of the big motives of these conversations has been the importance of the body. And this event really captures that well, in the sense of, how do we proclaim and serve as a body, given whatever part of the body I am? I think it’s unquestionable that this will not be just about serving overseas, it’ll be applicable and relevant to your life and your ministry, the place that the Lord has you today. 

And I think with that, we’ll draw today’s episode to a close with much more left unsaid regarding missionary care. And so, we look forward to upcoming episodes with both Kirk and Amber weighing in on this important topic. Thanks to the both of you very much and thanks to our friends and our listeners for being along. 

We would encourage prayer to be top of mind for the church. What does that look like? When we talk about the missionary’s spiritual health or we’re talking about the church’s relationship with that missionary, prayer is a key on all fronts. And so, we would just strongly encourage as a body, again, for each other, interceding on behalf of our brothers and sisters. 

Missionary care is our topic. Kirk Plattner from HarvestCall and Amber Miller here from ACCFS are our guests. Welcome to Breaking Bread. Kirk, you mentioned these three buckets that came from Paul’s experience and his requests for spiritual and physical needs being met, and then this relational connection. And we’ve spoken a fair amount about the relational connection. 

Let’s move now to the spiritual one. I would imagine whenever you’re in a situation where you are pouring out continually, and as a missionary pours themselves out in the mission, and very often that’s spiritually, they need to be poured back into spiritually. You have to access all of the resources that you have from a spiritual support perspective all the time. 

And so, as we know in our walks, that’s on a large perspective, right? It’s about our intimacy with God. Foundationally, where we are at in regard to our relationship with God and who he is and what he’s provided for us and the grace sufficient that is there for us and tapping into that. If we go down that road, we can go into different spiritual disciplines, that we would apply that help provide spiritual life to our ministry. 

And so, I think we would start there and strongly encourage the missionaries to pursue that kind of intimacy and the vibrancy that can come from a relationship with Christ. Yeah. And as a mentor, someone that is caring on that level and just not being afraid to ask those hard questions, I think to challenge people to go deeper. 

Certainly, it would be the desire that missionaries would come off the field in a farther along spiritual sense than when they leave for the field. And what immediately comes to me is well, who am I to offer any spiritual help to this missionary who has made that their focus to do that for others. 

And we would love to push back against that as hard as we possibly can, because we are brothers and sisters in Christ. And this calling is not different from any other calling that anybody would have in the church towards any other opportunity. Yeah. And so uniquely, are the circumstances different? 

Sure. The circumstances are different. Does that sometimes require some of these systems be set up to help support them? Absolutely. And that’s why we’re doing that, but no pedestal here. They don’t want a pedestal. And when the church does that to them, it can really hurt. Yeah. Anything else spiritually again, from the church’s perspective, we stay connected with them as members of the body. 

There’s no question that’s it. And one of the other areas that we can encourage our missionaries about why they’re doing what they’re doing. What is their motivation? So that’s a piece that we can sometimes forget that strongly influences how that mission ends up being carried out. 

And when the motivation is not about the love of God, the glory and honor of God, then things start turning sideways quickly when it is about us achieving something, when it is about us becoming a savior in a certain situation, doing some kind of good noble act, then it will start eating away at our spiritual health. 

And so, it is about keeping the most foundational things and staying on top of those. So, what you’re saying, Kirk, to come alongside somebody and come alongside our missionaries and encourage them in that way would be doing some of that reminding of what true north looks like and reminding them of their calling. 

Is that what I’m hearing? Absolutely. And are there unique variables that come in from the cultures and things like that you may need to know. Sure, but you’ll learn those as you go along supporting a missionary. The bottom line is when it comes to the most critical things, brothers and sisters have them. 

It’s about staying true to those most foundational pieces. And if you’re going to talk to any of our missionaries out there and they say they’re going to go back to some of those most foundational things is the places where they get thrown off most easily. And so, it is about us encouraging our brothers and sisters in the most foundational aspects of their Christian Walk. 

Yeah, and when you start to lose sight of those first things first, you start to become more isolated. It’s harder to take counsel, advice, to see some of those things that are maybe just a few degrees off from where they should be. But those few degrees, if given room and time, and they’re not checked, become huge, huge gaps in where a person should be on the field. 

And so that can become really dangerous. I can imagine exhausted too. One of the mega themes of Scripture is rest. In all of our callings, whether it’s in a different culture or not, sometimes we can run ourselves ragged in this calling and lose sight of my yoke is easy. 

Isn’t that wonderful? That paradox is amazing. It requires so much stewardship in that inward spiritual life to maintain that degree of rest. I would imagine that would be particularly challenging on the mission field. It absolutely is, especially in situations in certain scenarios, the day of rest is actually not a day of rest. 

If I’m taking five kids to church and watching over them, on top of everything else that’s actually a part of my functional responsibilities, my Sunday is not going to be a Sabbath at that point. And so that’s in HarvestCall. That’s in those certain missions. That’s in CVE. That’s in Haiti, in any of our missions to provide accountability and support to encourage our missionaries to get the rest that they need. What does rest look like on the mission field? What is that place where from a spiritual sense you find full satisfaction and peace and rejuvenation? 

So spiritual, physical, and relational. We’ve spoken about the relational and the spiritual. How about the physical? I think the most obvious physical help is money. And we have something really unique. I want you to put your finger on the uniqueness of our brotherhood and the way we fund our missionaries because there is something special there. 

Both from the church side and the missionary side, we’d love to pretend that just doesn’t exist, that we don’t need to think about dollars and cents, but the reality is we do. It was in Paul’s time, and it is in ours. And so, we do have a unique system whereby the Servant Fund provides a place for us as a brotherhood, a national brotherhood, to all support our missionaries together. 

And so, our missionaries are not responsible for each individually going and raising the amount of funds it’s going to require for them to stay on the field, for them to be able to put food on their table, and to be able to provide for their family or their situation. Rather, in this picture again of this body, we come back, and we do this entirely together as a body. 

And so, the Servant Fund is the avenue that we have as brothers and sisters to support our missionaries financially and do it collectively as a brotherhood. So let me just be point blank. Is the Servant Fund being funded sufficiently? Over the past couple of years, we’ve struggled to have the Servant Fund be the sole funding source of our missionaries. 

Now granted, all of us have the opportunity to give to HarvestCall as just a general donation. And so, the Servant Fund has requested at times money from HarvestCall to be able to support our missionaries. And that’s fine. I think brothers and sisters give to the general fund to give to whatever the greatest need is. 

And there are times when HarvestCall turns and gives that dollar back to the Servant Fund because that’s where it’s needed. Yes. And so, the Servant Fund does need our consistent support. But the uniqueness of this allows our missionaries to fully devote themselves to that mission, as opposed to perhaps coming back for extended furloughs where they have to beat the bushes of financial aid. 

Absolutely. Just think of the time when the missionaries are home and think of the freedom it gives them to be able to focus on connecting with their family and their church. Yeah. And those are the things that we want them to be doing. And so, it does really provide that opportunity for missionaries. 

So that’s the big money one. I think that’s probably most obvious to us, but there’s certainly other physical ways I would imagine. When a church is preparing to send a missionary, we will say to that church, would you just please be aware of potential physical needs? And so, it’s been something as small as a missionary coming home on furlough and saying, do you have a vehicle to drive while you’re going to be back for those few weeks? 

Something simple, right? A place to stay. We’ve had churches where a missionary does have a place to stay, and they’ve filled the refrigerator. Something nice. So those are simple physical things that a church can do and just be aware of. How can we be sensitive to the missionary’s potential physical needs? 

Yeah. One unique encouragement I’d have for the church at large is to think about what it is to actually go and visit the missionary on the field. And think about what can happen. We’ve talked about spiritual support, relational support, and physical support. And when a brother or sister from their home church comes and visits them on the field, think about how each of those can happen uniquely as that brother or sister has the opportunity to engage with them on a spiritual level and encourage them through spiritual conversation, through a Bible study. 

Think about the relationship that’s built there, not only between the visitor and the missionary, but the church. Just that connection to that church at large, and then think about that brother or sister’s ability to actually see some of the physical needs and be in tune with those. And so, we strongly encourage brothers and sisters from the home church to go to the field and spend time with their missionary. 

I can just say for myself, it’s a whole lot better for me to have face to face time versus to when I’m down there, you get to see life just in a different way. You get to see their life in a unique way that is hard to capture for them. I would say trying to tell me over the phone what it’s like to be here or what it’s like to navigate traffic in Haiti or I’m sure you’re fearful about other things that would never have been on your radar had you not had those experiences. 

Exactly. History has shown that when people go, they become invested in that ministry and what you see is people going back to those same places and that’s a pretty special thing. And so all of a sudden you have people who say, hey, every December I go down and visit this one location or something like that. 

And so, you start to have that consistency again to provide people care. Yeah, a real, tangible, most impactful way for a church to stay connected to a missionary is to be praying for them and praying for them individually and together. I love the little booklet that HarvestCall put out. Why don’t you say a little bit about that? Where can people get that? I’m not even sure how I got mine.  

Yeah. So, we assembled packets. We call them missionary support cards. And so, we have all of our missionaries who are serving long term in a kind of a small bound package which has their picture, some of their contact information, and it’s all put together such that it can be an encouragement to pray. 

We encourage our brothers and sisters and church at large to use this as a prayer tool. And it can be obtained through them. And the support packs are only distributed through church reps. Kirk, would you say a little bit about the missions conference that’s coming up in Tremont on July 21st? 

Absolutely. Proclaim and Serve Conference is going to be an opportunity for the church at large to gather together around many of these topics. Topics of both awareness of what’s happening in certain missions, but also lots of teaching topics of how we can engage as brothers and sisters in outreach. 

Say a little bit more about the specifics. Should one want to participate? Yeah. When you go to proclaimandserve.org and look at the schedule, you’re going to see some really unique opportunities in the morning sessions. There’s some long form teaching. Several of those will be all morning long on one subject and have the opportunity to dig in really deep. 

And in the afternoon, you’re going to have some main session talks and then some breakouts and some discussion groups. Just a multi format where you have the opportunity to dig in on some really important topics. What are they hoping to accomplish with such an event? We really hope this is a convergence of those who are interested, those who are engaged, just to be an encouragement to the body at large. 

And so, this year and into the future, we hope this is a time that missionaries will return for, specifically, to receive some teaching, to receive some fellowship. And we hope that those who are engaged in different ministries, this is a time for them to come together and have fellowship together. We hope those who are just seeking to learn a little bit more will come also, and just to understand a little bit more. 

So, we really hope it is a convergence of the Brotherhood around many of these mission topics. Yeah. And one of the big motives of these conversations has been the importance of the body. And this event really captures that well, in the sense of, how do we proclaim and serve as a body, given whatever part of the body I am? 

I think it’s unquestionable that this will not be just about serving overseas, it’ll be applicable and relevant to your life and your ministry in the place that the Lord has you today. Okay, Kirk and Amber, this has been good. As we’ve been talking about just basic missionary care, again, bringing it onto our radar that missionaries need care. 

And in fact, you mentioned specifically they need care in three important ways. Spiritually, physically, and relationally they need care, and I think that’s been very helpful for me. I know as I’ve thought about this it gives me at least three lenses to think how am I reaching out and touching these people? 

Am I touching them in these three ways and how can I do that? We know that this topic is near and dear to many of you who are listening to this. You have loved ones on the mission field. You no doubt have dear brothers and sisters who are there. You are a part of those sending churches. We trust and pray that this episode is helpful in gathering all of our hearts together as a brotherhood, gathering our hearts and thoughts directed towards those who are serving in this capacity. 

Thanks for being along. 

From the perspective of the church, I think it’s important to be aware of what the ultimate goal is of a missionary returning to your church. And the ultimate goal is for them to be integrated back into your fellowship fully in the sense that they are incorporating all of their mission experience into whatever calling they’re stepping into within that local body. 

Welcome to Breaking Bread. Today, we’re going to air the final episode of our three-part series in missionary care. We are honored to have Kirk Plattner join us from HarvestCall and our own Amber Miller. Kirk, you had mentioned that it is the responsibility of the church to care for the entire life cycle of the missionary, and that would also include reentry. 

And so, we want to talk more about that. We know what the sending process looks like, and I would imagine there’s more documentation on the sending process than there is on the reentry process. As if to say, well, it’s easy, you go home. But Kirk, you’ve been on the mission field. Is it that easy? Go home? 

Yeah, you’ve just called us out because we do have more documentation on the sending process than the reentry process. But is it any different in the sense that it’s a huge transition and things have all shifted and have changed since you left? Absolutely. And so, it is a really significant time in a missionary’s life. 

And so, HarvestCall does care about the entire life cycle of a missionary from day one. The moment the Lord first lays it on their heart to potentially go to the time that they’re fully reintegrated back into their sending congregation. It all matters to us. And so, reentry is a big deal. One of the things that can make reentry hard too is that it’s not always planned either. 

So, it doesn’t seem quite as clean cut for some as it does for the sending process where it does seem like there is one chute to get there. And there are so many different scenarios or situations that can bring a missionary back from the field. And that in and of itself can make it really tricky to be a support as a church or a family member if you have someone that is coming back into your congregation after time on the field. 

Well, Amber, that’s exactly where I would like to go to the local church, right? That’s who we’re speaking to. We’re speaking to a great deal of folks who are receiving missionaries back from the mission field into their local churches. And I know for myself, I’ve often wondered as I meet them in the lunch hall, should I comment on that mission experience? 

Should I not comment on it? I don’t know what to say because I can see both as being the wrong thing to do. So, I hate to scare you in that, but I think they could both be the wrong thing to do. Not that you would ever purposely ignore a situation. 

And I assumed that they both could be the wrong thing to do. So, I’m hoping that there’s some deeper underlying principles or concepts to have in mind. Can you help us with that? Yeah, for sure. I think from the missionary and the church itself, I think it was referenced earlier, beginning with the end in mind is a really critical thought process to have. 

Because trying to play catch up and to be interested in their mission after they’ve been on the field for 10 years, and then you’re asking the first question at that point in that lunch hall and you’re trying to go deep. It’s probably not the right thing to do. Or if you’re really not interested in your asking, it’s probably not the right thing to do, because that’s happened a lot to them already, you could presume. 

And so, that’s why I love talking about reentry, because it really speaks back to the entire process. And it says if we’re challenging a church in regard to reentry, we say, your reentry is going to start from the moment you send them, because as that relationship is initiated long distance, that’s the thing that’s going to be the foundation of their reintegration back into your congregation, that relationship that’s been maintained over the long haul. 

So, what I’m hearing is healthy sending and healthy missionary care on the field is the best way to have healthy reintegration, or that’s part of the healthy reintegration part. Absolutely. And so, it is critical, not that there’s not some unique aspects to reentry, but we would 100 percent encourage you in that lunch hall to engage that missionary and be as normal and as relational as you can and engage them regarding their experience. 

It will be a mutual blessing. But to presume, that’s probably the thing we’re trying to address more than anything else in reentry is the fact that you can’t presume that everything is like you think it might be. It may not be the same as they’re just coming home so they should understand this, or they should be coming home so they should be happy, or they’re coming home so it should be normal or natural. 

The bottom line is, they’ve changed. Yeah. And likely you’ve maybe changed locally on some levels. And so, it’s not like they’re going to step right back in lockstep as it was before. And so that integration has to happen relationally. One of the things that I tell people before they leave is just that you need to be going with reentry in mind.  

What does that mean? Essentially, if you have that perspective that, hey, I’m going to be coming back to this place, or I’m going to be coming back into the States or to this church or whatever it may be, you’re going to put forth more effort. I would say more investment as you’re going through versus just saying, all right, well, that chapter is done. 

An analogy that I think of sometimes is like, if you are planning to retire at some point, it’s a lot more beneficial to be putting income away gradually. And as you’re going along and through life, it’s a lot harder to regain that ground, if you put in a bunch very close to retirement. And so, I think a lot of times we may have that mindset. 

Well, when I start thinking about reentry, then I’ll start reinvesting or it will happen, but you’ve lost a lot of ground just because of the interest that can build. And so that might be a way to think about it too, is that you want to be investing as you’re going through your time on the field. So, we have this picture that somebody gave us when we were preparing. It was really for our children as we were preparing to go on the mission field. And they said, if you’re in the States right now as a young child, you are blue play doh when you’re in the States. You’re going to a yellow world, right? And if you take play doh and you start pushing the blue into the yellow and then the yellow into the blue and the blue into the yellow, you’re going to end up with green play doh. 

And the reality is when you take that green play doh and you enter it back into that blue world where it left, it feels like it should be blue. You think, well, it’s going back to that blue world. It should be blue. The bottom line is it’s not. And so, there’s some struggle there in the sense of trying to capture how much of that yellowness has entered into my life and how does that fit into this blue world? 

And can it happen? And will it happen? It certainly can and will, and the Lord can bless that such that it’ll create a much richer color in the end as all the integration happens again, even if they don’t just come together where they fit lockstep. And Amber, I would like to turn to you because this isn’t altogether different than a person who has gone through a traumatic loss, for example. 

Right. Yeah. They have to reintegrate society with the new set of norms and such. Or many of the transitions we go through, and I’m not trying to say it’s all one and the same, but I’m trying to say that some of the same principles apply. The grieving lens is a really good one to use with reentry and to think about just the fact that there’s a range of emotions that a person feels, and it is to some sense, finding your feet again after you’ve been gone for a while. And so, as Kirk just mentioned, there’s a piece of identity that gets interwoven with that too. And so, you’re grieving and you’re also doing deeper heart work as well trying to figure out, hey, who am I and how do I integrate these experiences that I had in a meaningful way? Maybe I wish I didn’t have, but I did. And now I have to make sense of that in this new place. How does that help my interaction? I want to encourage people not to be afraid to engage or to have conversations. 

One of the things that happens if we don’t know what to say, we avoid, right? We’re not going to go up to that person because we’re like, oh, how can I connect? How could I? I don’t want to say the wrong thing. And so, I’m just not going to. And what happens is you basically just isolate that person further. 

And so again, I want to encourage people not to be so fearful of saying the wrong thing that they don’t make any contact whatsoever. But I think when you look at it through a grieving lens, and I think we’ve used a grieving lens in regard to missionary sending across the board whether it’s that initial transition, or whether it’s losses that happen on the field. I think it’s a helpful lens to acknowledge the losses. It’s a process that the missionaries go through. I think there’s some benefit in not being afraid just to acknowledge what those losses are. For some missionaries, they may feel like they peaked on the field spiritually, and they can’t imagine life back in the States where it’s so materialistic, or it’s just so wrapped up in things that feel so meaningless after being surrounded in poverty and just the deep sense of loss. 

With the deeper things in this world, it can be really hard to recognize that your better days are ahead of you. And so, even I think grieving that sense of spirituality that you had on the field or that sense of, hey, I liked who I was, maybe not all the time, but I liked that identity, or I liked the person that used to be on the mission field or was in Haiti or Mexico or wherever. 

And you can perhaps speak from experience to this, Kirk, but what are some mindsets that you needed to have to make reentry more conducive? What I often tell people is that it’s grace upon grace. And the reality is when you come back, you’re going to require lots of grace from those around you and provide yourself with lots of grace. 

And at the same time, you’re going to have to provide those that you’re going to be relating to lots of grace. And so, I think that needs to be the underlying foundation upon which reentry is built, grace all the way around. And so, some of the issues regarding materialism real that you’re feeling and some of that struggle that’s creating as you see the wealth and the ways that money is stewarded in the States versus how you were trying to live in that other country you were just in. 

Absolutely. But for you coming back on that soapbox, is that ultimately going to be the best way for you to reenter? Probably not. So, the reality is it’s going to require grace for you to work through that. And you’re going to be providing it for yourself and providing it for those around you. Grace and time as well, where it’s not something that you can just say, okay, I should be over this in a month or I should be back to quote unquote, normal in a few months. 

But rather as you think about the whole year, there are going to be different holidays and traditions that you maybe had on the mission field that aren’t going to be the same now back in the States and there’ll be different times when things hit you. And so, giving yourself time as well to allow yourself to grieve those things as they come. 

From the perspective of the church, I think it’s important to be aware of what the ultimate goal is as your missionary is returning to your church. And the ultimate goal is for them to be integrated back into your fellowship fully. And fully in the sense that they are incorporating all of their mission experience into whatever calling they’re stepping into within that local body. And so, there’s a tendency for missionaries as they come off the field to either isolate that situation and so they put it in a box, and they act like it never happened and they just go right back into where they were, and the missionary experience never happened. It is just five missing years of their life, or they never get out of it. 

You know, they’re only always a missionary even in their local context. You know, I was this or I was that. The bottom line is we’re hoping to integrate them into their service in the local church. And so that’s the ultimate goal. And I think it’s helpful for those who are encouraging a missionary, walking alongside them to understand that the goal is to utilize all of the experience and all the grace that the Lord’s provided through that experience into what the Lord has next to realize as God shapes all of us in all of our experiences and that he intends for it to have its effect on us.  

Absolutely. And as we step alongside these brothers and sisters to support that effect that the mission has had on them, knowing that God has had that effect for purpose, and now that purpose is going to be met and used in the local body, which is exciting. 

Amen. When we’re thinking of reentry, or really any place along the missionary journey, there’s this verse in 3 John that talks about providing hospitality to those who were sent or who really were coming to them actually in that case. But here, I think we can apply it also to those who go away from us. 

And it’s about providing that hospitality, and it says that we therefore ought to receive such. So again, in that case, they were receiving them. But in this case, I think we can receive them in the sense of maybe home on furlough or receive them in providing support for them that we might be fellow helpers to the truth. 

This speaks to that connection that we are in. We are fellow helpers. By providing that support to them, whether it’s physically, spiritually, or relationally, we are becoming fellow helpers to the truth on that mission with them. Wow. That Scripture says it so well. Why am I not surprised? Kirk, say a little bit about the upcoming Proclaim and Serve Missions Conference in Tremont on the 21st. 

Absolutely. The Proclaim and Serve Conference is going to be an opportunity for the church at large to gather together around many of these topics. Topics of both awareness of what’s happening in certain missions, but also lots of teaching topics of how we can engage as brothers and sisters in outreach. 

Thanks for that, Kirk. And thanks both, Kirk and Amber, for this very insightful conversation. I think our hearts and minds have been stirred in a way that’s going to be very helpful as we engage our brothers and sisters who have served on the mission field and are now integrating themselves back into the local church. 

And to our listeners, thanks for being along. If you want to find out more information on the work that HarvestCall does, go to HarvestCall.org and you will find a wonderful website that is quite informative about the many areas of service that our Brotherhood is engaged in. Thanks for being along. 

Goodbye.