Apart from the inherent difficulties in missionary communication, not everyone who is a missionary is a naturally great communicator (including myself). Most of those who can communicate well have learned the art of communication through necessity and experience. There is no widely accepted standard by which effective missionary communication is measured. When it comes to communicating, missionaries for the most part are on their own.

Missionary culture adds an extra dimension to the communication environment. In an attempt to adapt and function in diverse circumstances, missionaries create their own unique sub-cultures, blended from parts and pieces of their home culture, their foreign culture, and the culture of their sending agency or church. The end result, of course, is that their new little sub-culture ends up being a patchwork that doesn’t really fit in anywhere. There are an enormous array of interactions that occur between these cultures. Add to that the overriding sense of mission that a missionary feels (whether to share the Gospel, heal the sick, or whatever), and the transcendent tenets of Christianity, and you have a culture soup, a subject on which libraries of books have been written.

These communication barriers can lead to logistical problems, as missionaries go to work in areas where other missionaries may also be working. At best, this can lead to duplication of work, as each missionary may proceed unaware of the other’s work. At worst, it can lead to conflict if missionaries happen to have divergent agendas. All this complexity and diversity leads to a monumental incongruity between what needs to happen (missionaries need to communicate with many people at once) and what actually happens (missionary work invariably comes with huge information gaps). With the recent population explosion and the current trend toward missionaries of every national and cultural origin, all purportedly with the same agenda (to spread the Gospel), the current way of communicating leaves gaps that need to be filled to be really effective.

And yet, within this complex environment, missionaries must get their message across. They must share news, stories, and needs with supporters, home church, and/or agency, communicate with local and national leaders, coordinate with other missionaries, and ultimately share the message of the Gospel with the people they are there to serve. A functional communication system is needed to tie this work together. It is not enough to simply publish a website or a blog and hope that people will find it on Google. For such a system to be truly useful, it needs to consolidate information into one place where it can be accessed by the people who need it. Because Christian missionaries use similar processes, subscribe to a common set of ideals, and share mutual visions and goals, it is not an acceptable situation for missionaries to continue working separately on such a large scale. Missionaries could, and should, continually strive for greater interdependence.

Back to Part 1 | Continued in Part 3