# How to run a mission

While *every* Christian is technically a missionary in their community, cross-cultural missionaries have specialized needs.

Send cross-cultural missionaries as soon as you have the resources for it.

- Equip that missionary with as much moral support, [information](understanding.md), [prayer support](spiritual-exercises-prayer.md), and [finances](money-1_why.md) as they need.
- Missionaries receive support proportionally to how much you share that ministry with the congregation.

Focus on the most unreached portions of the world, not the most logistically convenient or affordable.

- At this point, most of the groups that haven't heard the Gospel are small, remote communities that require significant cost to send cross-cultural missionaries to.

A missionary's job is *very* challenging, and their support network is responsible to support them.

- Members often give support before the mission, but they must help as frequently as possible *during* the mission as well.
- Advertise what they're doing, and give members plenty of opportunity to personally correspond with them.

## Helping other cultures

Don't make impoverished people groups' situations worse.

- Our [sin nature](morality-sins.md) makes paternalism (doing what others *can* do for themselves) a constant threat.
- It's very easy to over-reach efforts and leave that culture worse than when your missionary workers showed up.

There are levels of foreign aid involvement:

1. **Community Initiated**
   - Agenda - locals make, then outsiders respond
   - Decisions - locals decide
   - Work - locals do it, outsiders give moral support
   - Resources - locals provide, outsiders occasionally help
2. **Co-Leading**
   - Agenda - locals and outsiders together
   - Decisions - locals and outsiders together
   - Work - locals and outsiders together
   - Resources - locals and outsiders together
3. **Cooperation**
   - Agenda - locals and outsiders together
   - Decisions - outsiders decide
   - Work - locals and outsiders together
   - Resources - locals and outsiders together
4. **Consultation**
   - Agenda - outsiders ask locals' opinions, then determine
   - Decisions - outsiders decide
   - Work - outsiders direct, with locals doing
   - Resources - outsiders control it
5. **Compliance**
   - Agenda - outsiders determine
   - Decisions - outsiders decide
   - Work - outsiders assign locals tasks, usually with incentives
   - Resources - outsiders control it
6. **Coercion**
   - Agenda - outsiders determine
   - Decisions - outsiders decide
   - Work - locals submit to outsiders
   - Resources - outsiders control it

Secular organizations tend to enable poor countries' citizens to stay poor:

- While secular organizations solve physical problems, they never address the [sin condition](morality-sins.md), the need for God to transform them, or how to give people [meaning](meaning.md) and [purpose](purpose.md).
- Many citizens stop farming or developing skills because they simply wait for the aid helicopter to drop supplies.
- Focus more on rehabilitation and development than giving relief.

Healthy boundaries *requires* outsiders never move beyond Co-Leading.

- Since work won't get done nearly as quickly, it can be *very* challenging to simply assist from the side.
- However, without their own people running things, they will slowly become a second-class participant of *your* project.
- At its most extreme, the [discrepancy in power](power-types.md) over time will devolve into a [slavery-like](slavery.md) condition.

Deeply involve the people group you're helping in every stage of assessing, designing, applying, tracking and evaluating systems:

1. Fully [understand](understanding.md) their situation, capabilities, skills, and resources.
   - As much as possible, look for resources and solutions inside the individual or community.
   - God has given poor people and communities many possibilities, so don't treat them as [victims](hardship-ptsd.md) merely because [they have less](power.md) than you.
2. After assessing everything available, make the appropriate response.
   - Only respond when the local people or organizations can't or won't meet pressing needs.
   - Don't give resources, spiritual guidance, knowledge, labor or management they can provide themselves.
3. Impartially prioritize assistance by vulnerability and need.
   - Aid workers must be qualified, have the right attitude and experienced enough to run the correct programs.
   - Bringing in too much or too early will sabotage everyone's ability or willingness.

## After the mission

Supporting missionaries does *not* only apply for when they're serving their tour.

- Across a mission, that worker will slowly adopt a "third culture" [identity](identity.md) where they merge their serving and home cultures.
- When a missionary returns home, formerly familiar objects become alien through their new perspective, so they require help reintegrating.

They will *not* be the same, so don't expect them to come back to the lifestyle they knew.

- They'll find offense at "normal" things they used to do, and will have problems with daily life.
- Their opinion on those [small social rules](people-rules.md) is *very* important, since it will show blind spots in the Body.
- However, expect their differing opinions to create [conflicts](conflicts-christian-1_why.md), especially among the more tradition-minded members.