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Pastor Austin Gardner and VBM Director Jeff Bush finish the discussion on Vision Missions’s policies and procedures. In this last episode, they answer questions from missionaries about working under a veteran and about making the most of furloughs.
- Continuing on Policies and Procedures
- These are things that Pastor Gardner learned from being a missionary
- The goal of the mission board is to see the missionaries prosper and to give them tools to serve the Lord
- What does the first year look like for the husband and for the wife?
- Missionaries need experience just like for any other job
- You need to learn as much has you can in the first year
- Don’t learn the language before you go
- Learn the language from a national
- You need 2-3 months to get your house set up comfortably
- The husband and wife should have separate classes
- Having them together usually causes fight
- The minimum amount of work is four hours a day for five days a week
- You should be at the church every time the doors are open
- Then you need twenty hours practicing what you learned and getting corrected
- After language school, what should the husband and wife be doing?
- Pastor Gardner usually had lunch with his family right after class
- Then he would go out with a man in the church
- He spent multiple hours with him each week
- That man was his mentor who taught him more than even the language school did
- Pastor Gardner’s wife stayed home with the baby sitter who taught her more
- The pressure is much more on the man since he is going to be preaching soon
- How do you avoid getting caught up in routine life?
- Your wife should know how to drive in the country
- The first week or two, it’s okay to go to the store together
- Any time you spend with an English speaker, you aren’t learning the language
- You do need a break from the language, but only have you put your hours in
- If the wife is going to the bank, the husband needs to go somewhere else
- It’s better for the wife to be in a position to learn the language
- In the long run, if the wife can’t speak, drive, and get out of the house, she’ll be miserable
- The husband needs to help the wife
- If I need to do homework, where should I go?
- Be around native speakers
- Any time you can spend with a native speaker will hep you
- Stay around people all the time
- You can’t do ministry alone
- How much ministry should I be involved in?
- You are not involved in starting anything
- You are involved in the work that the veteran is doing
- You should listen and be quiet
- You should go to meetings that you don’t even understand
- You need to learn how to take!
- You can’t tell the veteran what to do or how to do it
- Go to every meeting
- Be involved in every ministry
- Pray as soon as you can in the church
- Get your prayer approved by the missionary and notional pastor
- Maybe the Sunday school teacher will let you teach for 1-2 minutes
- Get people who will correct the fire out of you
- Just cause you’re in language school doesn’t mean you don’t go to church
- How can I serve while I’m helping with my family in church?
- Train your kids so you don’t have to chase them around
- Discipline them so they’ll behave in church
- Whatever the missionary has, you ought to be doing that
- Don’t let your wife use the baby as a shield
- That will hurt her in the long run
- What if I don’t learn the language well enough to teach in a few years?
- That shouldn’t even be a question
- You need to be able to teach in the language
- The only reason you don’t learn the language is because you don’t talk enough
- Make language learning a social thing
- Get around people and talk with them
- You may not be able to read because of the characters, but you ought to be able to talk
- The only reason you can’t talk is because you’re hiding in your house too much
- If you aren’t comfortable to teach, get in a class and be a servant
- Stay around the people all the time, and you’ll pick it up
- Do not make excuses!
- If you make excuses, you won’t learn it
- God wouldn’t send you there for you to not be able to learn the language
- He has a plan and you can get it done
- We are buying to the the devil’s lie when we think we can’t
- What should the wife and husband have accomplished at the end of the first two years?
- They should have learned the language well enough to be comfortable
- You should read the LAMP book
- You should be at least at a level 3+ which the book talks about
- You should have practiced thousands of hours in the language during those two years
- Watch the news in the language
- Watch a tv program from the country so you can learn the language and culture
- You need to learn the culture
- Visit funerals
- Visit hospitals
- Visit different sporting events
- Go soul-winning
- You need to et involved so you can get accustomed to the culture
- You need to drive around and get comfortable with the city
- You need to take your language across town, then to another city, and then to another state
- Take a break and drive several hours to another part of the country
- That will help you adjust to different accents
- You need to be a language and culture student the rest of your life
- You need to have learned everything you could from the veteran
- You need to have lead someone to Christ and baptized them
- You need to have done as much ministry as possible
- If you do all of that for two years, you will be able to say that you really learned how to live in that other country
- You’ll be ready for a brief furlough and be ready to go back to start your ministry
- We ask our missionaries to take a brief furlough after the first two years
- Six months is the most you need
- Three to four months really is enough time
- Pastor Gardner wants the missionaries to be around the church so he can help them
- What was only theory as a student is now reality as a missionary
- You need to be going for a full four years
- If you spend two years learning the language out of the four years, you will only have two years to get a church started
- You need that language and culture experience, but you also need full four years to start a church
- VBM believes in starting churches and training leaders to take over the church
- When you are back on for the short furlough, you need to be around all that you can
- You need to ask all the questions that you can
- Let your wife and family refuel
- Find a good and stable place to live
- Visit your families briefly
- Now that you really now how to ask questions because of your experience, you need to ask as many of them as you can
- Furloughs are not just for relaxing
- Staying with your in-laws for a month is not a good idea
- You need a base
- A couple of weeks with your family is good enough
- If your’e going to prepare for the next step, you need to be around where you can learn and grow and get ready
- You need to got to your home church
- Learning the language is the next easiest step after raising support
- It’s not just easy-going from there
- Ministry is uphill throughout your life
- It’s hard work, and you need to be ready for it!
- Closing Remarks
- The World Evangelism Fellowship is in November
- We would love to have you come!
- Find more info about it and about Vision Baptist Missions at visionmissions.com
