Nate Saint was discharged from the Army in February of 1946, and, since it was too late to enter the spring semester of college, he returned home to Pennsylvania. Nate did not spend these months idly waiting to enter Bible college in the fall. Rather, he purchased a second-hand plane and built up flying hours at a nearby airport. As a result, he obtained both his commercial pilot and instructor’s rating. It was during this time that CAMF (MAF) contacted Nate and urged him “to accept the call to serve as a mechanic in the proposed new missionary aviation program that Wycliffe and CAMF expected to launch co-operatively in Peru. Nate considered the invitation prayerfully, but decided he should get at least two years of college training before proceeding with his proposed missionary career.” 1
However, an emergency request came from the head of CAMF asking Nate to make a hasty trip to Mexico to undertake a repair operation for the lone CAMF plane that had crashed. While the occupants were not injured, the broken plane threatened to derail the fledgling efforts of the new missionary aviation organization. Realizing that accepting this assignment would probably mean postponing his college training, Nate accepted the request and headed to Mexico for six months.
Arriving in Mexico, he found the airplane in worse shape than expected. He had been told that “the Waco clipped a small building, damaging both left wings, the propeller, and landing gear,” but what he found was the remains of the two wings (it was a biplane) “in a bushel basket” and pieces of the wing struts and landing gear stacked in the corner like junk. He set to work right away, improvising and fabricating the needed parts out of what was available. After several months of hard work and setbacks, the plane was repaired and returned to service.
In this Mexican interlude, Nate had entered into the hard day-to-day problems of missionary effort. He had survived the rats and the bats, the scorpion bites and the dysentery, the bad food and the heat. He had learned firsthand about the hardships and had no illusions of what it could mean to be a missionary. He had learned something about the need for undertaking a difficult, thankless task under unpleasant circumstances. But most of all he had learned something of the discipline of patience.
These were all important lessons for an Army veteran turned missionary soldier, and this Mexican experience established a new milestone in missionary aviation.
Nate demonstrated in Mexico his unique mechanical ability in making repairs to a plane that would have been difficult enough in a completely equipped hangar in the States. But it was more than a personal victory for Nate.
His experiences pointed up the fact that more than flying ability was needed in missionary aviation. Nate and his CAMF colleagues were convinced that henceforth missionary aviation demanded pilots with mechanical training or qualified mechanics who had learned to fly. Missionary flying was for specialists who would serve missionaries, not for missionaries who could make flying a side line. …
En route home [from Mexico], Nate stopped in Los Angeles to make a personal report to the CAMF board and shared his plans with them for the future.
“It’s a God-given privilege to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ anywhere. He has called me to people who have never heard of His love. That is why I feel led to get additional schooling — so that I might first be a witness of His saving grace and then an airman.”
He never abandoned this concept.
Jungle Pilot, Chapter 9, p. 125-126
Nate Saint was not one to waste time or resources. He prepared for ministry with a purpose and dedication that was fueled by an understanding of the seriousness of the ministry to which God was leading him. Although presented with an opportunity to go right to the mission field as a mechanic on the front lines of the new CAMF missions aviation program, he declined, recognizing that God wanted him to be a witness for Him first, and then an airman second. Understanding his personal responsibility in fulfilling the Great Commission, Nate recognized that he needed Bible college training in order to fulfill God’s plan for his life.
This perspective is a reminder of both the wisdom of adequately preparing for the ministry to which God has called you and the foolishness of shortcutting that preparation. One of the tendencies that I have noticed in some missionaries, especially young ones right out of Bible college, is that in their zeal to get to the field as quickly as possible, they shortcut adequate preparation, which, in turn, hurts their ability to effectively minister in the long term. God expects every minister of His to be a good steward of the ministry with which He entrusts them. Part of that stewardship requires taking the long approach to ministry and taking the time to adequately prepare for the place and ministry to which God leads you.
Let me share two very practical ways in which I have observed missionaries shortcut their preparation and hinder their long-term effectiveness on the field.
Shortcut #1 — Going to the field without adequate financial support
It is no secret that one of the most challenging aspects of serving as an independent Baptist missionary is raising support from like-minded churches. According to a recent survey of 47 independent Baptist mission boards by Ben Sinclair, the average missionary family requires $6209.01 per month of financial support. This amount includes both personal and ministry expenses. 2 A missionary will visit an average of 168 churches during deputation and receive regular financial support from approximately 62 of those churches. 3 Most missionaries will spend an average of 2.5 to 3 years on deputation to raise their needed financial support. To put it bluntly, it is a long process; and the longer one is on deputation, the greater the temptation is to shortcut the process and go to the field with less than adequate financial support. While it may sound spiritual to say, “We’re going on faith!”, the reality of going under-supported is that it is a serious hindrance to effectively ministering on a foreign field.
There are two ways that inadequate financial support hinders the ministry:
- It forces you to put more energy and focus into just surviving on the field instead of ministering to people. When there is a substantial monthly deficit, your energy goes into making every dollar stretch and trying to figure out ways to provide what is needed for your family. Consequently, you have less time and energy for the ministry and the people to whom God has called you. You spend so much time simply trying to live, that there is little left for the actual work of the ministry. In short, you are robbing God and your supporters by failing to adequately prepare financially for life on the mission field.
- It forces you to return from the field sooner than expected in order to raise more support. A financial deficit is sustainable for only so long. There comes a point when you are forced to return to your home country to try to secure more financial support from partnering churches. However, because the missionary has already started a ministry in his field of service, he is hesitant to be gone from it for too long. Thus, he does not allow enough time to raise adequate support before returning to the field — still with a deficit (albeit a smaller one, hopefully). Once again, the missionary is forced to spend an inordinate amount of time and resources simply trying to live and survive; and once again he is forced to return to try to raise more support after just a short time on the field. This constant coming and going prevents any meaningful progress in ministry on the field and portrays a lack of stability and dedication to the people you are trying to win.
In making these observations, let me be clear that I am not saying that a missionary should never have financial hardships. Most missionaries typically receive only 90 percent of their promised support each month, and even that amount fluctuates greatly based on the frequency of the giving (some churches give quarterly and some give annually). Missionaries know how to be flexible and adapt to low-support months. But there is a big difference between purposefully going under-supported versus adapting to fluctuating income levels. One is preventable. The other is the nature of living on missionary support.
Shortcut #2 — Failing to spend adequate time learning the language
While shortcutting deputation is one of the biggest temptations before a missionary gets to the field, shortcutting the language learning is one of the biggest temptations after getting to the field. However, of all the preparation a missionary can do, learning the language is of the utmost importance. God has called missionaries to spread the Gospel — to tell others of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross for their sins. How can this be accomplished without learning the heart language of the people to whom God has led you?
Romans 10:14
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
If a preacher is to communicate the message of the Gospel, he must be able to communicate it in the language of the people. Yet, sometimes missionaries learn just enough of the language to “get by”, and as a result, their witness is hindered because they cannot clearly express the saving truths of the Gospel in language that is understood. Language learning will be a lifelong process, but there is no substitute for taking the time for concentrated studies to learn the nuances of the grammar and vocabulary of the target language. A few months or even a few years of focused language study prepares you for long-term effectiveness more than “jumping in with both feet” and stumbling your way through conversations and witnessing.
Conclusion
A common objection to taking time to do both of these things is often something like, “People are dying in their sins! We need to get there as quickly as possible to share the Gospel with them! We can’t wait!” I understand that there is an urgency to the need. Even when Jesus was on this earth He told his disciples to “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” The urgency was the same in Jesus’s day; yet even then, Jesus took the time to teach and train His disciples for lifelong service.
In both of our fields of service I have observed one or both of these shortcuts taken, and the results have always been detrimental to the ministry. Don’t let the tyranny of the urgent rob you of your long-term effectiveness for the Lord. It is an incredibly shortsighted view of ministry to see adequate preparation as a “waste of time.” Prepare with longevity in mind and leave the timing and the results to the Lord.
