WHEN YOU CROSS CULTURES - World Evangelical Alliance

88 WHEN YOU CROSS CULTURES
effectively over the long term. One important best practice involves the careful
assessment and selection of mission workers. Such assessment and selection
will determine which candidates are suitable to serve effectively as cross-cultural
career missionaries or as tentmakers. Candidate assessment will also ensure
that persons who are not qualified for cross-cultural assignments are not sent
out.
Two books are highly recommended regarding this issue on missionary
attrition and missionary retention. One explores the causes and cures of
missionary attrition1 while the other provides global perspectives on the best
practices for missionary retention. 2
There are major costs involved when missionaries have to return home.
What are some of these costs?
1. There are personal costs to the missionary and his family in terms of lost
years, readjustments to home, starting another assignment or finding a new
job. The missionary has also to deal with feelings of personal failure.
2. The field will have to bear some costs. The work suffers a setback as it will
take a few years to find a replacement. When one is found, it will take time for
him to adjust to the field. Sometimes, negative public relations caused by an
insensitive missionary may take years to heal. People who have been hurt need
restoration.
3. Leaders and co-workers at home and on the field will also suffer some costs.
It takes time and effort to counsel returning missionaries and to plan for a new
assignment.
4. There is a financial cost involved. Missionary sending is very costly and
the sending country will have to bear this.
Tentmakers, whether fully or partially self-supporting, also have their
share of loads and burdens. In recent years, I know of the following situations:
• An engineer, who was facing severe work adjustments on the field,
suffered from depression. His wife gave him needed emotional support,
but at a personal cost to herself. He would have succumbed to despair
were it not for her support.
• A single person, who was facing loneliness, fell in love and married on
the field. This resulted in major changes in his life.
• A single lady faced severe stresses but received minimal support from
co-labourers. She had to make special trips out in order to recuperate
with the help of a like-minded friend.
• A couple on the field experienced temporary separation because the
pregnant wife needed to return home to have her baby delivered.
Sadly, she suffered a miscarriage.
1 W D Taylor (1997), Too Valuable To Lose: Exploring the causes and cures of missionary attrition, Pasadena,
CA: William Carey Library.
2 Rob Hay, Valerie Lim, Detlef Blocher, Jaap Ketel and Sarah Hay (2007), Worth Keeping: Global Perspectives
on Best Practice in Missionary Retention, William Carey Library and World Evangelical Alliance.