Our needs change

Your agency may already have trained member care personnel living in Japan. Perhaps you have structures and systems in place that provide effective care for all your members from recruitment through to retirement. For those who don’t, I hope that sharing my experience over the last few years with WEC Japan will give you ideas that can be applied in your own context.

Starting a member care team

In WEC Japan, member care has traditionally been the job of the branch leader. When there were only 20 branch members, this model worked fairly well. But then, we grew. Some of that growth was fast: Post-Covid, the borders to Japan reopened and many who had been waiting years to arrive suddenly flooded in. WEC Japan grew to over 50 members. In preparation for the influx of new workers, we formed a member care team.

The joy of forming a new team is that you can choose what to focus on. But this is also the struggle—we couldn’t do everything straight away.

Our team began simply by trying to lighten the load the branch leader had been carrying. Who could do airport pickups? Who could help new workers find accommodation and start at language school? What about church placements? We also planned orientation events every six months, trying to provide community and teaching as well as a place to share the challenges and confusion of arriving in a new environment.

Helping new missionaries

Are you familiar with the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Scale, also known as “The Social Readjustment Rating Scale”?¹ It gives a list of life events, assigning a number to each one according to the level of stress associated with it. You mark any event on the list that has happened to you in the last year, then at the end, you add up your stress score. If your score is between 150 and 300, it suggests that you have a 50 percent chance of having health problems in the next two years. If your score is over 300, the odds rise to 80 percent. The list includes things like “Changing to a different line of work—36”, “Major change in living condition—25”, “Major changes in working hours or conditions—20”. For new workers, the points quickly add up.

Everything about their lives has changed. Consider their arrival in a new country, being surrounded by new people, new food, plus everything being in a foreign language . . . . This is a time when member care is very much needed. Having people to walk alongside them, people to pray with, people to ask when they don’t understand how to throw the trash out—it all makes a difference.

This is where WEC’s new member care team focused. It was the most urgent, pressing need for us at that time. But it’s been three years since the team was formed, and there is now space to think about the rest of the missionary life cycle.

Growing resilience

As workers finish a period of orientation and become more proficient in Japanese language, many begin full-time work with Japanese-led churches. Others become part of church planting teams or support ministries. They make another massive transition.

I wonder sometimes whether this transition from orientation to ministry is easier than the transition they made when they first arrived in Japan. I know that for me it wasn’t. At that point, the honeymoon period was over. I began to sit in long Japanese meetings where I struggled to grasp what was going on, let alone contribute. I began to dread the phrase “the Japanese do it this way.” And the workload! It took everything I had and more. Even having finished language school, my language ability wasn’t enough to feel “fed” in a church service, much less feed others.

How can we support our workers during these years? Perhaps it’s during this time that teaching resilience can be helpful—to share with our workers practices that will help them persevere.

The book Resilience in Life and Faith (by Horsfall and Hawker) contains the SPECS model of resilience. SPECS stands for Spiritual, Physical, Emotional, Cognitive, and Creative, and finally, Social and Systemic.

Spiritual resilience means not only looking at our relationship with God and how we grow in that, but also how we are doing with forgiveness and gratitude. Physical resilience involves not just regular exercise, but also our sleeping patterns, weight and diet, rest, and holidays. Learning to be emotionally resilient gives us strategies for managing stress and anxieties. It encourages us to seek resources from others who might know more, such as through spiritual direction or counselling. Cognitive and creative resilience includes looking at our theology of suffering as well as problem-solving techniques. Lastly, the social and systemic aspect is about our relationships—yes, with those closest to us, but also with our mission team and organisation.

If we can identify areas in our lives where we are less resilient, we have the chance to make changes. To not just avoid burnout but to thrive. Too many workers leave Japan around the time of their second term. I’d love to see that change. I believe it can.

Later in the missionary’s life cycle

I’ve been in this country for 14 years. If I was asked what member care I would like to receive now, it would be different from 14 years ago. Have you heard of the term “self-actualisation”? It means to realise one’s full potential and is at the top of the pyramid in psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. To reach the top, your basic needs must be met first: food, water, and shelter. You then need safety and security. Next, good community and a good sense of who you are. Now I am looking at my life with new awareness of the gifts and experiences God has given me, and I’m thinking, how does he want me to use these for the kingdom? What is he calling me to now that I wouldn’t have been able to do 14 years ago?

I am convinced that God is still saying, “Go into the world and make disciples.” But the way I do that as I grow will change. New doors will open, and it will be right to say no to some of the things I had been doing before. Member care providers can mentor our members through this stage, too, helping them to find a role that is best suited to the person God has made them to be.

This is as far as I can share from personal experience; maybe in a decade’s time, I can write more. I know there is much I have left out: home leave and reentry, team conflicts and relationships difficulties, family life, children’s education, empty nests, and helping grown children adjust to life elsewhere. Neither have I written about the specialist member care that may be needed for depression, anxiety, grief, or burnout.

Helping workers leave well

But there is one topic I will touch on before I finish. How can we help our workers leave well? Is it possible to stay too long in this country because we have become comfortable while God is asking us to do something different for him? Member care shouldn’t neglect our experienced workers and the retiring ones. They need someone to accompany and pray with them as they make the big decisions leading to retirement or relocation. It’s important they have the support of the community they have given their life to when they begin to leave it.

Member care is needed throughout the whole missionary life cycle. As the needs of our members change, so must the approach to member care. The care we give to new workers will be different to those approaching retirement. While we have to start somewhere—perhaps as WEC Japan’s team did by prioritising the needs of new workers—we must remember that each and every mission worker is important and sent here by God. As we care for our members, we have the chance to affirm them as his beloved children.

1. “Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory”, The American Institute of Stress, https://www.stress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Holmes-Rahe-Stress-inventory.pdf