How Does a Person Become a Missionary Member Care Provider?
Short & Simple Summary
There is no short and simple answer to this question. Missionary member care is so new that no generally accepted route has been developed for interested people to follow. The following topics are things that help one prepare for providing member care.
Call
Reading
Training
Model/Mentor
Conferences
Missionary Experience
Formal Education
Final Comments
If you want more detail and links to other sources, read on.
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Because such a great variety of people provide missionary member care, there is no simple answer to this question. On the one hand, people who want to pray for missionaries, or send birthday cards, or email encouragement just do it with no particular preparation. On the other hand people who want to provide psychiatric member care to missionaries have to go to college, have to go to medical school, and have to serve several years in a psychiatry residency before they can do so.
Two groups have produced documents about guidelines, standards, or codes for giving member care. The first was the “Code of Best Practice in Member Care” developed by the
Evangelical Fellowship of Canada at the turn of the century. Although it was written for Canadian organizations, it is a good model for others around the world. This eight-page document did not deal with the preparation of people serving in member care, but people serving in member care would find it valuable. Copies of it are available at:
Nearly a decade later the Member Care Forum of Global Connections produced “Guidelines for Good Practice in Member Care,” a 27-page document organized around 11 core values. Each of these core values is followed by more detailed guidelines to help put the values into practice. These guidelines were developed for missionaries from the United Kingdom, but are certainly good models for others as well.
Core value 11 (Member care providers) states, “Member care is provided by people with appropriate skills and experience, who receive adequate training and experience.” The guidelines are divided into two parts. The first part, “appropriate framework for providers,” deals with ethics, accountability, supervision, and so forth.
The second part, “training for providers,” is divided into the following three statements (page 23),
· “Ensuring member care providers have appropriate training, for example in listening skills, pastoral care, child protection, and when to recommend professional treatment.
· “Ensuring member care providers have access to regular ongoing training such as conferences and learning from others in the mission or humanitarian sector.
· “Ensuring professional member care providers maintain their registration/accreditation and Continuing Professional Development” (Guidelines for Good Practice in Member Care, page 23).
Copies of the full document are available from Global Connections at
Since there is no specific path to becoming a missionary member care provider, I will switch to the first person for the rest of this chapter and share the things that have been most helpful to me.
Call
One of the most important things for anyone in missions is a sense of the call of God to service. Bonnie (my wife) and I had always supported missionaries through prayer and contributing money. Our call to member care gradually developed over several years.
· Our first short-term mission trip in 1989, for our 25th wedding anniversary, resulted in our feeling a general call to some kind of missionary service (I was 47 years old).
· We began contacting mission agencies, but none of them were interested in me. My PhD was in experimental psychology, specifically in rat learning. However, those agencies did say they needed counselors.
· In 1992, at the age of 50, I entered a respecialization program in counseling psychology. While in that program, I discovered research showing that missionaries with overseas service preferred counselors from outside the agency, so we quit contacting sending agencies.
· In 1996, while studying for the national exam for licensure in counseling psychology, I discovered research showing that paraprofessionals were just as effective as those with licenses. Though I passed the test, I did not pursue licensure or certification.
· I took several more practicums to get a variety of experiences, and in 1997, at age 55, we took our first member care trip to help settle a conflict.
· In 1998 I wrote my first brochure in the “What Missionaries Ought to Know…” series.
Although my call became more and more specific over those first eight years, it has remained the same ever since. Such a call is important not only to a person but also to his or her spouse as well. Bonnie went back to teaching to get a lifetime teaching certificate and her membership in ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International) so she could be the “child” specialist of our team.
Such a call is also needed when it comes to raising support, especially funding. It also resulted in our quitting our jobs by age 60 to devote full time to member care. For more information about a call, see http://www.missionarycare.com/dbListArticles.asp?TOPICID=17
Reading
Reading existing literature is also an important part of becoming a missionary member care provider. At 50 years of age, I knew my memory was not nearly as good as it was when I earned my PhD in my twenties. However, by my 50s personal computers were available with databases that could supplement my memory. I learned the basics of Microsoft Access and entered information about every item I read whether it was a magazine or journal article, a book, or a chapter in an edited book.
That “memory supplement” database is online at http://www.missionarycare.com/database.htm where it has been helpful to many students who are writing papers, theses, and dissertations. Not everyone preparing for missionary member care needs to create a database, but all such people do need to read and “store” that information in a way they can retrieve it.
Training
The “Guidelines for Good Practice in Member Care” specified that member care providers have appropriate training in such areas as listening skills, pastoral care, child protection, and when to recommend professional treatment http://www.globalconnections.co.uk/resources/codesandstandards/membercareguidelines/section11.htm. In 1992 I began at the University of Kentucky in a respecialization program in counseling psychology approved by the American Psychological Association. I also got a minor in marriage and family at Asbury Theological Seminary as part of that program. I took practicums at a Christian college, a theological seminary, a state university, and at a private secular behavioral health center. To make sure I had adequate training, in 1996 I passed the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology, the national exam necessary for licensure.
Of course, each individual interested in preparing for missionary member care would not take these same steps, but each one should make sure that they are getting appropriate training. Today with much education available online, some of the programs do not adequately give “hands-on” experience in such areas as listening skills, pastoral care, child protection, and when to recommend professional treatment. Taking courses taught me the “book learning” part, but the practicums with supervision were priceless in exposing me to things not written in books.
Model/Mentor
In April 1995 one of my colleagues at Asbury College returned from a conference and said, “Ron, I met someone at a conference last weekend that is doing exactly what you have been talking about with missionaries.” At the time, I had never heard of missionary member care and did not know that anyone else was involved. I got contact information immediately, and that evening Bonnie and I were on the phone talking with a couple who had been involved in it for 15 years.
They were about ten years older than we were, and they were in the process of retiring from another college. We spent about an hour talking and they opened up the world of member care to us, inviting us to attend a conference (Mental Health and Missions) in November. They became our models, and we later asked them to mentor us to help us get from where we were (still employed) to where they were (retired and serving missionaries full time). They were available through email and telephone any time, and we met annually at the conference to talk face-to-face. Their contributions to our lives were invaluable.
Conferences
In November 1995 I attended the annual conference on Mental Health and Missions in Angola, IN. This was a very exciting time for me to find so many people who were interested in missionary member care. After the very first meeting of the conference I called Bonnie and said, “I want you to come with me next year. These are our kind of people.” I met in person the people who had written the articles and books I had been reading. I was able to eat meals with them and get acquainted with them personally. This conference encourages university or seminary students to attend as part of their preparation. Bonnie and I have not missed an MHM conference since then.
Of course, people in other areas would not attend this conference. Other similar conferences, such as the PTM (Pastors to Missionaries) conference, are also held annually. Attending such a conference lets a person learn from the presentations as well as network with other individuals involved in missionary member care. For a list of such conferences see Chapter 14.
Missionary Experience
One thing that I did not get was long-term missionary experience. Although I took short-term trips, I never experienced language learning and living several years in a host country as a missionary. I had taken many courses in Greek and a year of German as an undergraduate, and I had passed the French exam as part of my PhD. However, when I took a quarter of Spanish nearing the age of 50, I realized that I could not learn nearly as fast as I had 30 years earlier.
In addition, by the time I had completed respecializing in counseling and completed four practicums, I was 55 years old and realized that I might spend the rest of my life preparing for missionary member care and never actually do any of it. Though such experience would have helped me better understand and empathize as well as giving me more credibility with missionaries, I decided not to get it.
Formal Education
When I was preparing to serve in missionary member care, there was no formal education available in it. However, since then some programs in member care are being offered at various institutions
Columbia International University offers a degree in member care at http://www.ciu.edu/academic-programs/doctor-ministry-program. Prerequisites for admission to this Doctor of Ministry in Member Care program are a Master of Divinity degree (with a 3.0 GPA) and at least three years of active ministry after that degree.
Also, Redcliffe College offers an MA in Member care at http://www.redcliffe.org/Study/PostgraduateCourses/MemberCare . This degree is completed in three to four years of part-time study with three-week summer school residential intensives and self-study with email support. This postgraduate MA in member care is validated by the University of Gloucestershire.
Final Comments
People who feel called to serve in missionary member care with a particular agency would be wise to contact that agency to find out what it requires. Some agencies want people with particular academic degrees. Other agencies want people who are certified or licensed in some particular profession. Still others do not care about degrees or certifications, but they want someone who has specific characteristics or experience.
Other people feel called to serve in some particular capacity such as a physician, psychiatrist, counselor, psychologist, or pastoral counselor. These individuals need to contact professional associations to see what is needed to be licensed in these areas. They also need to contact professional associations in the states and/or nations in which they will be practicing to find out what is required there.
Our experience has been that most missionaries themselves are not very concerned about such requirements as long as they can talk in confidence to someone who really cares about them, someone who will listen empathically.
Finally, “Training and using member care workers” by Richard Gardner and Laura Mae Gardner is available as Chapter 23 in Missionary Care: Counting the Cost for World Evangelization at https://sites.google.com/site/membercaravan/test/mc-counting-the-cost-book-. This chapter has further suggestions for training.
Note to the reader: If you have suggestions about other things that would better answer this chapter’s question, please email those to me at ron@missionarycare.com. In that email please tell me three things: (1) what you believe needs to be included, (2) links to relevant websites if available, and (3) how it better answers the question “How does one become a missionary member care provider?” I plan to periodically update and expand the book with these suggestions.