Mobilization: then and now

Anyone who has ever participated in a karaoke gathering soon learns one cardinal rule: not everyone should be given a microphone and encouraged to sing. Bad things can happen. Painful memories and inerasable sounds in such circumstances have the potential to linger forever. Bad karaoke is often used as a topic for comedy skits, but if you have actually endured such a musical travesty, it is not an experience you would readily choose to repeat.

Sadly, the same can be said for some well-intended people who are encouraged to become missionaries. Those who have considerable experience on both the receiving and sending side of this equation have painfully learned that not everyone should be given a microphone. Not everyone should become a missionary.

I don’t say that to sound unkind or arrogant. It is a known reality that not everyone sings well, but they may have plenty of other skills and giftings that are manifested in different avenues and useful for God’s kingdom work. Likewise, there are a myriad of reasons why some people shouldn’t become missionaries. They include unsuitable temperament, poor health, lack of education, inadequate ministry experience, dysfunctional relationships, improper motivation, addictive behaviors, discordant people skills, character deficiencies, and incompatible ministry objectives. If they are given a mic and placed on a stage, bad things can happen.

Like a person lacking vocal abilities, shortcomings may not be readily apparent, so it can be hard to know when or if to extend a microphone to a potential missionary. There is no scientific, one-size-fits-all process for determining such matters. Therefore, mobilization and screening procedures continue to evolve as one generation gives way to another, shaped by differing values, circumstances, and objectives.

Nowhere is this more evident than how home side and field side mobilization responsibilities have changed. The lines between these two major facets of mission organization used to be much clearer and fixed. Just a few decades ago, it was primarily the home side’s responsibility to mobilize and screen new missionaries, and the field’s responsibility was to train and deploy these new workers in meaningful ministries. However, these once sharply drawn lines have become much fuzzier.

An ever-shrinking world

This blurring of mobilization lines probably began with the availability of cheaper and faster forms of travel and advances in communication that have served to shrink the world. Unlike our missionary forebearers who needed months to travel to the mission field or waited months for letters bearing important information to arrive, our current context is radically different. Such previous gaps in time are now reduced to hours in travel and seconds in communication. As a consequence, the traditional home-side/field-side delegation of roles became clunky and, increasingly, inadequate to serve rapidly changing circumstances. One of the main objectives in mobilization for missions has traditionally been to identify and send out qualified workers for God’s harvest, and this remains relatively unchanged. However, the means for accomplishing this goal has gone through a number of transitions.

Increase in short-term ministry

The intentional implementation of short-term ministry opportunities was a key factor in escalating these changes. At first, such trips seemed incidental and somewhat an aberration to existing strategies, but at some point, they became a significant means to recruit, identify, and train potential long-term workers.

As a result, mission organizations started to devote more resources to this form of mobilization, which was accompanied by an increase in communication with field leaders to maximize the efforts of these new ministry and mobilization paradigms. It soon became a rarity for someone to become a career missionary without some kind of prior short-term ministry experience. This change enhanced the challenging process of screening potential new workers and in addition, it prompted others to consider a missionary career through an initial limited commitment.

Discernment in screening

This evolvement in mobilization took another giant leap forward with the many advances in communication forms and the rise of social media platforms. The internet, email, Skype, websites, Facebook, Instagram, and now Zoom virtual meetings have shrunk the world even further and, in turn, have involved the field in mobilization to an even greater degree.

Although much has changed in our methodologies of mobilization, the screening of potential individual candidates continues to involve a lot of hands-on work, demanding significant time investment and a great deal of discernment from mobilizers on both the home and field side.

All of this has been going on in the background while Japan, in recent years, has become the cool, trendy destination spot for many considering the call of missions. For many of these people, their interest in Japan began somewhat shallowly with a love for anime or other cultural singularities. While these may serve as a valid starting point for many missionary prospects, it is insufficient for the many demands placed upon future gospel workers. Who should be given a mic is a difficult question I wrestle with daily in my present role of mobilizing the next generation of missionaries for the land and people I have grown to love.

Trusting God with the mic

Faced with this question, I try to bear in mind that someone once handed me, an unknown quantity, a microphone. This happened literally on a stage near Hakodate at a Rotary Club meeting in 1996, and somehow, members of that ill-fated audience survived my musical debut in Japan. But I was also entrusted with a different kind of microphone several years earlier when my family stepped out in faith to answer God’s call as missionaries. What did those people see in me forty years ago that gave them the confidence to encourage me to “sing for Jesus” in Japan? Was it character? A particular set of ministry experiences? Educational background? Of course these are matters that I will not ever know with certainty, but I suspect it was these and several other factors that led the leaders at that time to trust me with a microphone.

It is good to keep these lessons in mind as others are now waiting in the wings to serve God’s purposes in Japan. We were all designed by our Creator to sing his song of salvation to the nations, but we don’t all sing from the same playlist in the same way on the same stage. May God grant us all much wisdom and grace for these eternal matters.