Missionary Member Care
In a world that is becoming increasingly more hostile to those making disciples of all the nations, it is perhaps not surprising to find a number of troubling statistics about missionary attrition:
- An estimated 12,000 missionaries leave the field each year—most (71 percent) leave for preventable reasons.
- It costs approximately $350,000 to successfully launch a missionary family of four.
- Almost half of all missionaries (47 percent) leave the field within the first five years.
Member Care seeks to combat these sobering numbers by providing pastoral care for global workers sent out through World Outreach. Our goal is to help our workers not just survive, but thrive! We do this in a number of ways:
Prayer
We pray for their needs, as expressed in emails, prayer letters, the Missionary Prayer Network, and other means of getting this information to us. Feel free to communicate any and all World Outreach global worker needs to us that need prayer!
Communication
Thanks to technology, we are able to communicate almost instantaneously with missionaries all over the world, using email, Skype, WhatsApp, FaceBook, and phones. Isolation is a major challange for global workers, and the ability to reach out and touch them in a personal way is a powerful assurance that they are not forgotten.
Encouragement
We encourage them through visits on the field. We hope to see each global worker sometime during their first term, or as needs may dictate. When we travel, we try to see others in the same general “neighborhood” just to encourage them. Each worker is important to World Outreach, and we want to communicate that by our visit. Part of our ministy is a mini “spiritual retreat” to workers when we are with them, to refresh them in the Lord.
Hospitality
We host workers and their families in our home. We have a very comfortable “missionary apartment” prepared especially to give these servants a place of respite.
Training
We trail church leaders to care for those they send out and support. Let us know if you would like some training for your mission team.
