Mending God’s Lonely Warriors

MISSIONS

Ed and Kathy Moroney were completing their first term as urban church planters in the densely populated island of Taiwan when they decided they needed counseling. With stresses from work and poor communication pulling them apart, Kathy put her foot down. “I told Ed we get counseling or else.”

Ed and Kathy are not alone. Because of a growing dropout rate among missionaries, counseling centers have become an integral part of missions.

“We are disturbed with the high dropout rate of missionaries and want to help minimize that rate as much as we can,” said Ken Royer, pastor to missionaries at Link Care in Fresno, California.

According to Jim Reapsome, director of the Evangelical Missions Information Service, that dropout rate can be devastating. “While it varies from board to board,” Reapsome says, “in some cases the dropout rate for missionaries is as high as 30 percent.”

Marriage And Missions

The need for ministries for troubled missionaries is great. Last year, Link Care counseled 116 missionaries from 29 mission boards, sending 70 percent back to the field. The organization’s counselors help missionaries with marital problems, cross-cultural stress, conflicts with mission boards, and an inability to work with nationals.

According to Royer, the most common struggle for missionaries is marriage, particularly a couple’s inability to communicate.

“With a lack in communication between the couple, things such as tropical weather, cross-cultural pressures, language barriers, and overwork or burnout intensify, making the relationship very stressful,” says Royer.

It was that kind of stress that sent the Moroneys to Link Care. They admit they “won’t go back perfect and all fixed up.” But they are going back.

Link Care, founded 25 years ago, is one of several centers ministering to the special needs of missionaries. Marble Retreat in Marble, Colorado, offers a two-week program for missionary couples. Louis McBurney and his wife, Melissa, lead therapy sessions for ministry leaders dealing with burnout.

“We offer a spiritual approach to psychology,” says McBurney. “We started this ministry at the suggestion of various mission boards who found their missionaries were needing help with relational problems and marital or family struggles.”

Mission boards are also addressing emotional needs of missionaries and the subsequent high dropout rate. Many have established counseling programs of their own.

Wycliffe Bible Translators and their Summer Institute of Linguistics, which oversees 6,000 missionary adults and 4,000 missionary children, currently has 20 members who are trained as counselors and therapists, seven of whom counsel full-time.

Laura May Gardner, international coordinator of counseling ministries at Wycliffe, says marital stress, isolation, fatigue, and language or cultural barriers sometimes develop to the point where a missionary’s career is in jeopardy. When that happens, Gardner generally recommends counseling at one of Wycliffe’s regional centers.

Wycliffe’s counseling program was created when field administrators requested counselors with mission-field experience. “Although nonfield-experienced counselors can be of significant help, it was felt that those who had experienced field stress would be in a better position to understand the field-related problems of their colleagues,” said Gardner.

Merv Heebner, personnel director of OMS International, said his organization plans to add two full-time counselors to minister to the 527 missionaries on Asian fields. Said Heebner, “The needs are definitely there, and we want to be sensitive to them.”

Meanwhile, the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s assistant vice-president of overseas ministries, Arnie Shareski, said his denomination handles missionary burnout in two ways. The board may send a stateside pastor to the field to offer counseling and resources to help the family. If warranted, the pastor may also encourage the missionary to take an early furlough and get longer-term, professional counseling at a place such as Link Care.

Concerning Link Care’s popularity with several mission boards, Royer added, “The reason a lot of mission boards use Link Care is because we are independent, and missionaries have a feeling of anonymity. They can be very honest and not jeopardize their standing with a mission board.”

By Jeff Williams.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.