A full time missionary plays many roles throughout the course of their ministry.
They are evangelists, pastors, teachers, community leaders, doctors even – and many have an additional job to support their ministry and pave the way for more connections. As they enter the mission field, many missionaries are prepared for this ‘jack-of-all-trades’ position.
However, few expect earning an additional title: Entrepreneur. Innovator Extraordinaire.
Whether it’s church planting or creating a weekly Bible study, the very nature of missions work is innovative. Creativity is a given when it comes to sharing the gospel to resistant cultures or meeting the needs of a community. After all, discovering needs and coming up with solutions for those needs is the very definition of innovation.
Aside from the obvious examples of entrepreneurship on the part of missionaries – such as church planting or building a school – missions innovation boils down to three core principles. Though simplistic in nature, these three things ultimately fulfill the call of all missionaries – and ultimately, all Christians – to go into the world and preach the Gospel of salvation.
Missionaries React, Adapt, and Proclaim. These three areas fuel exciting innovation that furthers Christ’s kingdom to all corners of the map.
Part of sharing the love of Christ is meeting the needs of whatever community a missionary is called to. Whether they’re confronted with spiritual needs or sudden disasters, missionaries are constantly seeking creative solutions to big and small problems. Upon arriving to the Dominican Republic in 2018, full-time missionaries Jake and Fay Vincik stumbled upon a huge need for nourishment among the homeless community of Higuey. Upon seeing the need, they started a food ministry that provided weekly meals to those who didn’t have a reliable food source. They saw a need and reacted by creating an innovative solution to the problem.
Oftentimes, missionaries arrive at their final destination and immediately have to adapt their plans. Perhaps the community has different needs than they anticipated, or bigger problems have cropped up over time. A full-time missionary is constantly kept on their toes as they adapt to the changing needs of their community. A perfect example of this is Covid-19. Many missionaries have needed to change the way they do ministry due to Covid restrictions. Jake and Faye have adapted their food ministry from an open soup-kitchen style of delivery to pre-packaged meals. They continue to innovate to keep up with the changes constantly occurring around them.
Ultimately, a missionary works with the goal of glorifying Christ and telling everyone they meet of the hope that they’ve found in Him. This means that they must be creative with how, when, and where they present this message. Furthermore, the glory of God spurs innovation. Where He moves, creativity and new things follow close behind. Full-time missionaries proclaim the gospel and keep their eyes open for new opportunities that present themselves when God moves in their community.
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It was very interesting to think about how missionaries have to wear so many hats. Often times, I forget that missionaries typically had different, specific jobs prior to their time and service as a missionary. Once servicing as missionaries, it is crazy how much they have to adapt and innovate. I have a friend whose family is a missionary family and they were supposed to move to Haiti. However, they ran into issues and had to change their timeline and how they serviced that community before they arrived in person. Thank you for sharing your perspective!
Firstly, I very much liked the organization of this post. Very clean and to the point. Also, I found it very interesting to think of missionaries as being entrepreneurs, but as you explained, they are a sort of entrepreneur for Jesus and his Gospel. They journey out into an unknown place with problems, adapt to the situation, adapt their solution to the problems, and end up with a creative end. It is also important to be creative when more and more people are not necessarily open to what you have to say. You have to read your crowd and operate in a way that would ensure the best response.
These are very good ways to change how we do things in church with all of the COVID-19 stuff going on. The pre-packaged meals is wonderful idea for soup kitchens. Churches should be able to do very similar things with food donations in these trying times. I think it is also important to have the right mindset and always try to choice joy whenever possible.
I love this idea and the 3 characteristics that you pointed out in here! Mission work is super key to combining church and entrepreneurship and definitely is something that can rally people to really make a difference (not at the expense of serving those in your immediate community though). But I definitely agree with these three areas that you presented. It is important to sometimes not lose sight of being able to just take immediate action at a problem if it is needed and not always wait to plan it perfectly out when things may get substantially worse if you do so. Adapting and proclaiming as you said are just as big. Cus often even when you do have the time, the best laid plans still never go perfectly and adaptation is necessary. And ultimately all of it has to be done to glorify God and have every action that we take be proclaiming of Him
Great post!
-Collier