c. 1997 Religion News Service

ROCKVILLE, Va. _ Sixteen Southern Baptist missionaries sat in a simple classroom tucked away from the outside world and learned of the challenges _ and risks _ that lay ahead of them.

If they get kidnapped, their denomination won’t pay ransom. If they get Japanese B encephalitis _ a disease with a 60 percent mortality rate _ and survive, they’ll likely spend the rest of their lives being tube-fed in a nursing home.

But hearing these things just weeks before boarding their flights abroad prompted no seat-squirming or second thoughts. Like their predecessors through the centuries, their sense of calling to spread the Christian faith outweighs the risks.”The risks are 1 or 2 or 3 percent,”said Tony Laffoon, the 37-year-old son of medical missionaries, who will be working in North Africa.”And you have to ask yourself this question: Do you face a tropical disease or do you want to face God and say, `I didn’t do what you told me to do?'” Even as these new missionaries venture abroad with the same impulse as their predecessors, they represent a major change in foreign missions.

Missionaries today, for example, are more sensitive about the cultures they seek to influence. No longer are most missionaries preachers and teachers, but workers with a wide array of skills. And visitors to the mission field, such as Laffoon and his 15 colleagues, are often just that _ visitors, short-term missionaries rather than longtime residents.

At the Missionary Learning Center, a cluster of red-roofed buildings on 238-acres of donated land just outside Richmond, missionaries appointed by the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board are trained in strategy, church planting, world religions and”field realities.” Corella Ricketson, who has taught more than 70 groups of outgoing missionaries, focuses on the cultural transitions her pupils will make.”They go from a newcomer to an acceptable outsider,”she said.”The ugly American is an unacceptable outsider. We will never be insiders.” Ricketson, who spent 18 years as a missionary in Taiwan and now turns her bacon with chopsticks, said the sense of mission was just beginning to change when she was appointed a Southern Baptist missionary in the 1960s.”We stepped into Southern Baptist missions at a time when we were examining for the first time the colonial aspect of mission,”she said.”I’m very excited about where we are now as Baptists. We are recognizing other evangelical Christians across the globe. … We’ve got partners out there. I don’t think you’d find anybody (who) feels we have to build a red brick church with white pillars.” The Baptists are not alone in forging a new kind of mission, according to mission executives across the denominational spectrum.”One of the things we say about mission now is it should always be mutual,”said Sister Rosanne Rustemeyer, executive director of the U.S. Catholic Mission Association.”It shouldn’t just be, `Here we are. We have the answer and we’ll teach you.’ It should always be mutual. … I guess that we’re talking that mission is a two-way street.” One aspect of these evolving partnerships is the request from overseas church leaders for missionaries with a variety of expertise.

Missionaries trained at the United Methodist Mission Resource Center in Atlanta, for example, are sent abroad to meet specific requests from overseas churches.”We respond to those needs by recruiting the kinds of people they want, whether they are doctors, agriculturalists, engineers, nurses, teachers,”said the Rev. F. Allan Kirton, director of the Methodist center.”Increasingly, certain countries of the world are saying we don’t need preachers. We want to do our own evangelism.” Some missions agencies are forging what they call a wholistic view of mission.”We see evangelism in a broader perspective,”said Julia Brown Karimu, executive for mission personnel of the joint Global Ministries Board of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ.”I think the change is because of our maturing of understanding of what mission and evangelism is all about.” In some cases, a country’s gates may be closed to missionaries whose only aim is evangelism. Mission work _ at least on the surface _ is then done through other means. But many missions directors say the goal is still sharing the faith, even if done one-on-one rather than from a pulpit to a congregation.

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For other agencies, however, the major focus remains the traditional spreading of the faith.”Of course, we want to bind up the wounds of people and feed the hungry and clothe the naked but at the same time we feel the priority in doing that is to present the gospel message to that person,”said Cary Tidwell of the Assemblies of God’s Division of Foreign Missions.”Every dentist, every orthodontist, every ophthalmologist, anyone who goes at some point … to share the message of Jesus Christ.” Tidwell said there has been a growing number of specialized missionaries, more in the last decade than ever before.

The range of those specialized missionaries amazes Elaine Joiner, a 69-year-old missionary-in-residence at the Baptist center who spent 38 years in Ecuador.”When we were appointed in 1950, then you had to be either a preacher, a teacher or a medical person,”she said.”Now, there’s an opening for everything,”including computer experts, sports specialists, aviators and secretaries.

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The growth of short-term missionaries is another trend.

Short-term U.S. Protestant missionaries _ those who travel outside North America for periods of two weeks to four years _ are growing dramatically, said John Siewert, editor of”Mission Handbook: Guide to U.S. and Canadian Christian Ministries Overseas.” In 1976, for example, there were 5,658 short-termers compared to 30,040 long-term missionaries, he said. In 1992, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were 32,634 long-term missionaries and 44,083 short-termers.

Among missions experts there is debate about the value of short-term assignments.”Some people see it as … in a sense, selfish. It’s what this experience can do for us as North Americans,”Karimu said.”Hopefully, they (short-termers) will have a greater interest in overseas missions and be willing to support the church’s wider mission.” In some cases, short-term work leads to longer trips overseas. Rustemeyer said young college graduates who volunteer for a year of mission work will sometimes return later to the mission field for several years.”That taste doesn’t leave them,”he said.

Patrick Johnstone, the London-based director of research at WEC (Worldwide Evangelization for Christ) International, sees pros and cons to the short-term mission.”It’s positive because it often exposes people to the need overseas. … The negative is there are many churches and organizations that seem to imply that (in) a short-term stint, you’re going to evangelize the world, which is a huge misconception. If you’re going to learn a culture and a language, that doesn’t happen on a three-month summer trip. That happens when you’re there for … five, seven, 10 (or) more years.” But those in the missionary-sending business don’t see the change from long-term to short-term leading to a time when there will be no need for missionaries.”People say, well, missionaries aren’t needed any more,”said Joiner, the missionary-in-residence at the Baptist center.”They really are. … There are new jobs and new places, new frontiers always.”

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