One of my favorite ways to help Sunday school children grasp the location of our country of service is to ask for a globe and two volunteers. I help one child put his finger on where we are in the USA. We all give clues to help the other child find the small nation of Cambodia in Southeast Asia. Then we work together to make observations.
“It’s on the opposite side of the earth!”
“Yes, it’s as far away from here as you can get.”
I ask, “What about when the sun shines over here?”
Shouts of “it’s nighttime over there!”
We move on to strange aspects of culture and language differences. The kids are riveted.
Several dynamics make the world’s American missionaries serving in Cambodia and other countries in the Eastern hemisphere uniquely distant from their support system of churches. Two of these dynamics are geographical, and one is more cultural. Together they form hindrances to effective Great Commission co-laboring between sending churches and their missionaries on the “other side.”
Higher Travel Investment
The first and perhaps the most obvious is the cost and time investment for travel to the opposite side of the globe. The effects of this distance are many, but we see missionaries here experiencing more isolation from their support network both because they receive fewer visitors and because they take fewer trips back to visit the States than do their counterparts in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Supporting pastors are less likely to visit a field that takes a couple days of travel on both ends of the trip, and many churches struggle to justify the expense of sending their pastor or a mission team for the limited time they could take to be in the country itself.
Communication Complexities
The second dynamic is the time difference related to geographical distance and how this affects real-time communication. Missionaries of the past were accustomed to gaps in their communication due to the time it took for letters to be carried to and from the field. Today many missionaries receive messages and emails almost immediately, but our colleagues in this Eastern Hemisphere experience a disconnect from real-time communication. Because it is night here while it is day back in the States, we have a narrow window to make connections that are expected in this day and age. Sometimes we are just inconveniently a step behind receiving news. Other times we may receive news in uncomfortable ways, like hearing about an accident or death on social media before receiving that personal call.
More disturbing are the times when communication lines cross or an important notice is overlooked until it’s too late. Parents of college-age children feel the trials of children who are not just far away, but often can’t reach their parents in a timely way when they have a problem. Missionaries in this hemisphere will tend to have more distant relationships with family, friends, and supporting pastors as their time lengthens on these distant fields, in part because they cannot participate fully in these real-time communication platforms.
Hard to Reach Peoples, Languages and Cultures
The third dynamic that tends to make missionaries here more detached is the cultural extremes that many experience. Because of the way Christianity has spread, most missionaries on the Eastern side of the globe are taking the Gospel to places that have never embraced it. Animism, Eastern religions (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism), Islam, and atheism are the norm. Even in places that claim Christianity as a majority religion, such as the Philippines or Papua New Guinea, Christianity has typically been syncretized with pagan practices.
Missionaries may spend years assimilating languages that are far removed from the language family of their own mother tongue. They grapple with cultural understanding for even longer, as the West clashes with the East in every part of life. As they grow and adjust over time, these diligent culture-assimilators can become more like outsiders to the culture back in America. Sometimes awkwardness or misunderstanding with supporters and even family members results.
Battle Fatigue
The great darkness of millions around them is often oppressive. Missionaries may labor much with little visible fruit while hearing about many coming to Christ on some other harvest field. These factors can combine to cause an immense loneliness and weariness, which will either (a) drive the gospel laborers into the arms of Jesus for comfort and strength to soldier on or (b) lead them to become a statistic of sinful failure and attrition.
May we follow Paul’s exhortation to Timothy, “always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:5, ESV).
We can all strive to provide better, more effective support. It helps to understand the trials and obstacles your “sent ones” may be facing. Realize no two fields are the same, just like no two missionaries are the same. My husband and I have spent many decades ministering to missionaries on the field. He currently represents GFA as the regional director for Asia, Australia, and Oceania. Learning some of these common factors has made a huge difference for us as we fulfill our role in “serving the servants” on these fields.