In our report Pathways to Mission, we asked our mission partners about who or what inspired them to consider going overseas. Their answers were incredibly moving!

Meeting or hearing from existing mission partners was cited more often than any other factor as the inspiration for going overseas. This highlights the importance of UK churches ensuring they give current mission partners significant and regular airtime so that future generations can be inspired to follow in their footsteps. They also cited talking with friends, older and wiser Christians, church leaders and the impact of specific sermons or conferences. We can’t do justice to their answers by summarising so we thought we would include them here.

What inspired you to go overseas?

  • A Venn diagram that I carried in my pocket for months thinking about the future. It had three questions: what gives me life / where have I seen fruit / what are the gifts that others see in me?

Parents

  • Growing up seeing my parents working in Africa
  • A combination of my parents’ example as mission partners with Wycliffe Bible Translators and being convinced of the need for the lost to hear the news of Jesus, through sermons at church whilst at university.

The need

  • Seeing the massive need for Bible training in India and elsewhere
  • I saw the need for clear Bible teaching in a country where evangelical churches are a tiny minority
  • It was a gradual burden for a particular country that I believe God placed on my heart
  • Understanding the needs / opportunities through short-term experiences

Church

  • My home church which is very mission focused
  • The preaching of our local church and national conferences convinced me of the need
  • A mission-minded prayer group

Other mission partners

  • Helen Roseveare at a UCCF conference in about 1981
  • My inspiration came from mission partners who visited the church where I grew up, missionary books and stories
  • Seeing that mission partners were actually just normal families, not superheroes. Just people trying to plod along loving Jesus and loving others.
  • Seeing a missionary family on the ground in Naples was a real inspiration to us

Cross-cultural mission in the UK

  • Immersion in inter-cultural church in South London led to a love for cross-cultural gospel work
  • Experience of cross-cultural mission in the UK

Our mission partners were also massively helped by reading missionary biographies and books on mission. Here is a list of some of the most influential books:

  • Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies and Methods — Eckhard J. Schnabel
  • No Shortcut to Success: A Manifesto for Modern Missions — Matt Rhodes (foreword by Mark Dever)
  • Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will — Kevin DeYoung
  • My Heart in His Hands — Ann Hasseltine Judson
  • The Unquenchable Flame — Michael Reeves
  • On Being a Missionary — Thomas Hale
  • Radical Discipleship — Roger Steer (about Hudson Taylor)
  • Mission Matters — Tim Chester
  • Funding the Family Business — Myles Wilson
  • Let the Nations Be Glad! — John Piper
  • Foreign to Familiar: A Guide to Understanding Hot- and Cold-Climate Cultures — Sarah A. Lanier
  • Missions (9Marks Building Healthy Churches series) — Andy Johnson
  • Cross-Cultural Connections — Duane Elmer
  • Cross-Cultural Servanthood — Duane Elmer
  • Ministering Cross-Culturally — Sherwood G. Lingenfelter (later editions co-authored with Marvin K. Mayers)

To find out more about the typical pathways to overseas mission as well as the barriers and fears faced by our mission partners, download our new report, Pathways to Mission.