African Interests: Missionary Orientation

New missionaries and missionaries on furlough were called to a training session at our headquarters in Cleveland, TN, Sept 7th and 8th, 2011. I was honored to be invited to address them on the subject of their relationship with their "Field Director", a job which I retired from three years ago. It was great fun to see Don and Chrissy McBrayer, missionaries that we had met in Kenya in 1989. They are now working in Ecuador. I also saw many others that we know and worked with during our career. It was such a delightful thing for me. THANK YOU, to my former secretary (Vernice Blackaby) and my former Field Director colleague (Victor Pagan) who now serves as Assistant Director to the whole department.

The office of field director is there as a caring Pastor/Shepherd for the missionary. His office as CEO of his field area carries many and diverse responsibilities (i.e., nominations of all leaders and missionaries in his area, receiving and recording reports, liason to the American part of the church, represents the department before governments, institutions and local churches, signs all ministerial credentials in his area, etc) but his main function is to act as shepherd to those in his assigned area. Since the current field director for our Africa division is from Germany, I told them that they now have a German Shepherd as their director. That got a few smiles. But the main thing I tried to communicate to them is that they are responsible to let their field director know if they make any major changes in their area of ministry. He is the key person to contact before they go on vacation and/or before they leave their assignment. It was a very frustrating part of my work to be asked why a missionary was in the USA when I knew nothing about their being here. I sometimes think it should be a requirement that before a missionary goes to his assignment he/she should have served in the military. Somehow, they need to learn that they are under orders and are not free to come and go at will. People who support you expect you to be on the field. In the military they would learn about "chain of command" and about responsibility to be at their post of duty and not to go AWOL (Away With Out Leave)!