What does a missionary do?
This is a question that we are often asked and we would like to take some time to give a good answer. We love our work and see a tremendous need for more people to become missionaries or at least more missions minded. Hopefully some of you will be inspired by what we write here and join us :)
Missionary work is changing
During the past 100 years missionary work has changed dramatically. In the past missionaries traveled to a distant country on a journey often taking several weeks by sail or steamship and then stayed in the country for 4 or more years. While they were there these missionaries focused on evangelism and traveled within the country preaching the gospel.
These early missionaries became leaders in the foreign church and often became their pastors and denomination leaders. The new christians were often taught N. American customs and modeled their churches/denominations after N. American churches/denominations.
Missionaries in the 21st century are very different from their ground breaking missionary fathers. Missionaries are now able to travel to the other side of the world in just 1 or 2 days. With modern technology missionaries often co-ordinate efforts in a certain part of the world and are able to react quickly to world events.
While visiting other countries, modern missionaries still focus on evangelism but they often do it by training and equipping local christians to do the work. This means that local Christians are put into places of leadership within the church and the church takes on a different form than churches in N. America. This often multiplies the missionaries efforts (instead of just one missionary it's all the people that he has trained) and allows the local people to worship God within their own culture instead of a foreign culture.
Another major change in missionary work the rise of "specialists." 100 years ago missionaries had to be preachers, teachers, advocates, doctors, politicians, and much more. Now missionaries often specialize in one area like community development, evangelism, relief work, or education. Combined with modern communications and travel, todays missionaries are able to do much more than their forefathers.
This discussion on missionary work is a very long one and many people have written books on the subject. This is the simplified version of the story. We would love to talk more about the subject next time you have us over for supper ;).
A "day in the life" of Adam and Kim
Depending on the time of year and what projects we are working on an average day can look very different. There are some things in our daily schedule that are fairly constant throughout the year so I will do my best to show you the average day for a YWAM missionary.
7:00 am - wake up feed kids, feed self, shower
8:00 - meet with the rest of the staff and students for prayer and worship
9:00 - devotional time / personal study
9:30 - class time (DTS)
12:30 - lunch
1:30 - staff meeting
3:00 - office work or "one-on-one" discussions with students
6:00 - supper
7:30 - class time or small group study(3 nights out the week)
10:00 - home for bed :)
DTS - Discipleship Training School
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. - Jesus
In the Great Commission Jesus asks us to make disciples and teach them to obey Him. At our missionary base in Blackfalds, AB we are Directors of something called a Discipleship Training School (DTS) which runs twice a year. This is a 5 month course where people are taught about being a follower of Jesus with a special emphasis on evangelism. At the end of the course the students are sent to another country for 8 weeks to practice their evangelism skills and put all of their training into use.
