1/20 Wait Seven Years to Evaluate Your Calling

by Nolan on September 1, 2021

“Don’t even question whether you are called to be here until seven years have passed.”

Larry Thompson, who led our region in Cru for many years, used to welcome new international missionaries by doing an intimate three day orientation with him. It was intimidating to meet with the man who at that point oversaw over 700 field workers, and challenging to navigate with a small baby. I found one piece of advice he gave very helpful. He simply told us, three new missionary couples who had just returned to the area for the beginning of our indefinite commitment as field workers, not to even think about whether we were called to be here until at seven years had gone by. Then we should reevaluate.

For most missionaries, there is a dark valley after a year or two in the field that virtually every cross cultural worker must face. You find out that the job description you were recruited for is not exactly, or really anything like, what you imagined it to be. Something similar happened to me in my first job at Hewlett-Packard, but the job I was given was not so dramatically different that it frustrated me. And I knew if I kept at it for a couple years other opportunities would emerge. In the missionary field you might find that what you hoped to do when you arrived is just not possible.

Also, you find that your own suitability to the calling is often not what you thought it was. Very few people can accurately predict how good they will be at learning an unknown language. With Slavic languages there is usually a point of despair once you start to realize how much there is to learn and how slowly you are able to master cases and declensions. You also find that you’re not really the same person out of your own home culture and language. People do not respond to you the way you would like. You discover that huge parts of your identity are contingent on operating inside of the habits and culture in which you previously lived. It strips you down as a person.

Your relationship with God is also likely to start to feel very dry. The way we experience our relationship with God is deeply tied to worshipping in a style we prefer, with people who “get” us, and surrounded by certain prompts and rituals with which we are comfortable. 

If your calling is an open question in your mind during these tough early years, it is incredibly difficult to hear from God correctly. If you let it, everything will feel like a sign God wants you to move back. Only if you have previously been through extreme difficulty or put yourself under incredibly strict discipline are you likely to be familiar with following God through this kind of valley. The process will become unbearable if every challenge and setback is not by default just a part of the learning process. If you start looking around for signs that God is calling you home, you will find them everywhere.

On top of that, you will find dynamics you did not expect with your family. There is no way to know what kind of journey your spouse and kids (if you have them) will go on, or what might happen to extended relatives back home. (This is the true wildcard and probably the exception to the seven year rule. If a force outside of yourself intervenes, it’s possible you might make a change.)

But otherwise, your own heart is likely to be your biggest enemy in all of this. You’ve chosen the most noble path, one you probably have dreamt about for years, and a year or two in it. just. sucks. But, the exact same things that feel awful at that point will change. In years three, four, and five you’ll find yourself handling many situations with ease that exhausted you previously. It does get better. After seven years you’ve reached one level in your journey. At that point it’s fair to take stock, go away for a time of intense prayer, and ask God what He’s calling you to do. Seven years is a good rhythm for such discernment. 

Another point I have seen influencing a lot of missionaries are their kids schooling journey. Especially if you kids are in national schools or a system very different from that in your home country, it is good to take a deep breath and reflect before your oldest child enters high school – from the time the first one enters until the last one leaves, it is really helpful if you can avoid an international move.

But put bluntly, put your hand to the plow, put your expectations aside, go for it, take it all in stride, be willing to change, and wait until you’ve been there for seven years to stop back and evaluate.

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20 lessons from 20 years overseas

by Nolan on September 1, 2021

Twenty years. 1040 weeks. That’s how long it’s been since Sandra and I packed our stuff into a storage unit and got on a plane to come to Croatia. We arrived August 31, 2001. I was 27. We had been married for two years. We had considered various ways to live in Croatia. Because of a consistent sense God was calling me into vocational ministry, and a lot of circumstances that helped guide us into which particular way to go, I put my career as an electrical engineer on hold. We came on a one year “Short term international” stint with Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) to work with alumni of our student ministry and, more broadly, reach out to young professionals in Croatia. Over 20 years we’ve done many things, but they’ve always been somehow connected to that.

20 years feels like a good prompt to reflect on 20 topics that have formed my experience as a missionary and helped me survive – and sometimes thrive – as a cross cultural gospel worker. They represent a lot of the “aha” moments that shifted my thinking over the years. A lot of them may seem more heady than practical, at least at first blush, but I think that one of the key missionary challenges for long-term fruit is learning to make massive changes in your understanding without losing sight of the gospel you entrusted yourself to when you first set out.

This 20 years lines up almost exactly with 20 years of deeply eroded American confidence as a world power. 9/11 happened while we were at a briefing in Budapest for short-term missionaries. I’m writing this after weeping at the unbelievable images of Afghanis clinging to jets leaving Kandahar as the Taliban takes over the city. My understanding of myself as an American has been deeply changed by my time overseas; in parallel America’s understanding of itself is more fragile than I ever imagined it could become when we left.

A word on what this business about being a missionary in a country like Croatia is even about. Croatia is one of the most devoutly Roman Catholic countries in Europe and the world. Catechism class is a part of the school curriculum here, and until the end of 8th grade it is opt-out, not opt-in. So how could one be a Christian missionary in such a country? (It is worth pointing out that the objection is somewhat unfair. Almost every registered Croatian missionary priest, monk, or nun themselves serves in a Roman Catholic country, so being a missionary in a Christian country is by no means unheard of in the Croatian experience.)

First, I grew up as a devout Episcopalian for whom the ultimate significance of the death and resurrection of Christ was very unclear. Until I was challenged with some very basic questions my faith was incredibly incomplete. So the gospel challenges every nation, even those with long and deep Christian traditions. Some of my favorite (and most challenging) experiences are in honest, wide-ranging conversations about the good news with well informed Roman Catholics in Croatia. There has been a huge amount of growth and movement among renewal movements inside of the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia, and I spend a lot of time interacting with such leaders.

Second, the evangelical church in Croatia is one of the tiniest in Europe, both in terms of absolute size and percentage of the population. I am committed to helping see it grow, especially in terms of evangelism towards unbelievers and those whom for some reason (often interethnic heritage or marriage) have an excruciatingly hard time fitting in the Roman Catholic Church.

Third, while respecting other Christian traditions, I am a part of mine because I am convinced it most consistently preaches and recontextualizes the gospel as preached in the 1st century church. It has something to offer that everyone needs to hear. Croats with evangelical convictions also need good resources for rooting themselves in a well contextualized version of the global evangelical tradition, and I have loved being able to be a part of that.

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Consideration of group rights from a wider perspective

by Nolan on May 16, 2011

In Bethel Seminary’s “Culture and Ministry” class we’ve been reading books like The Multicultural Leader and In Living Color. One striking part of both books is their unapologetic advocacy of group rights in specifically Christian efforts for reconciliation and cross- or multi-cultural ministry.  This would mean, in the extreme, that Christians would directly support legally sanctioning separate structures for minority communities (p. 22 in The Multicultural Leader.) It was striking for me, then, to come across an article in The Economist entitled “Me, Myself, and Them,” discussing this very phenomenon and how it is most extensively practiced in Canada.  (It is noteworthy that Dan Sheffield, the author of The Multicultural Leader, is Canadian.)

The Economist takes a predictably but thoughtfully libertarian approach to the issue. They point out that the “Arab Spring” is a reminder of “the role of brave individuals who fight old-fashioned oppression in the name of universal rights, not identity politics.”  It seems Amnesty International has also been wrestling with the issue and rejects a “false dichotomy” between group and individual rights.

For me the upshot of this article is awareness that there is a vibrant discussion of group vs individual rights going on among serious-minded people in the world.  However, evangelicals who engage this important issue seem to come down completely on one side or the other and declare their view universal and biblical.

I wish that our evangelical conversation played fairly to the complexity of this and other important issues and to the way they vary across the globe.  Instead we so often get whole-sale endorsements of one side or the other, with the conversation-ending tag of “biblical” slapped on.

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Evangelicals in Croatia

by Nolan on February 28, 2011

An interesting source of hard data on evangelical Christians in Croatia comes from the European Values Survey.  1269 people answered the question “which religious denomination do you belong to?”  In that sample they came across one Lutheran (“The Evangelic Church”), one Pentecostal (“The evangelical Church in Croatia (Pentecostal)”), and not one Baptist.

This seems consistent with our own impression that about 1 in 1000 people in Croatia belong to an evangelical Protestant church. At crazytimegame.com casino online we offer our patrons the option of playing for enjoyable or you’ve got the choice of taking part in for actual cash and getting thrilling casino deposit bonuses. The joys of casinos when they are online casinos is extra than just successful cash.

To get to this result, you have to navigate the tree view available on zacat.gesis.org.  Go to “European Values Survey”, then “EVS 2008 – fourth wave”, then “ZA4775: EVS 2008: Croatia,” then “Variable Description,” then “Religion and Morale,” then “v106_cs: which religious denomination do  you belong to (Q23a).” Phew!

There are all sorts of very interesting survey questions there on values, work, faith, and family.

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Americans shouting from rooftops

by Nolan on October 11, 2010

It is a wonderful thing to live in a cosmopolitan part of the United States and have friends from all over the world (as I did in the Bay Area).  You learn all sorts of things about different cultures.  It’s a lot of fun to compare one to another and wonder why certain things are in common but others are not.  (I find it fascinating that both Eastern Europeans and Jamaicans have told me that they were told as children not to go outside with wet hair lest they get sick.  Jamaicans?  Isn’t it always warm there?)

There are pitfalls to this kind of cross-cultural knowledge, however.  Since the comparison is happening on American soil, in English, among people who share an American experience, American cultural norms are the invisible yardstick by which the other cultures are measured.  Knowing that America is a huge, diverse country with so many different cultural influences, it is easy for us to resist any kinds of generalizations about our own culture.  If someone claims “Americans have a cowboy culture,” the answer is likely to be, “That’s not fair, I don’t know any cowboys…”  Cultural generalizations about America are so often also political claims about its posture in the world, which throws up a lot of dust into otherwise focused conversations.

So it is fun to come across insightful, fair reflections on American culture from outside sources.  The Economist had one such observation in an article about temporary hiring becoming popular even for management positions.  Evidently this has been a common, if rarely mentioned, practice in Europe.  The article includes the priceless sentence, “Now the practice has reached the United States, and Americans are doing what they do naturally: shouting about it from the rooftops.”

This is an incisive, specific observation of American culture – we like to loudly promote new trends and call them ‘tranformational.’  We have a whole battery of both positive and negative classically American idioms in this area – think of “the hottest thing since sliced bread,” “there’s a sucker born every minute,” “all hat and no cattle.”  Because English is the language of international business, terms like “transformational value proposition” come out of mouths all over the world.  But it’s hard to imagine them originating from anywhere but an American.

Non-Americans are often first taken by, then repulsed by, our tendency to promote new ideas.  We just move too fast for a lot of the cultures of the world.  In Christian circles I have often seen non-Americans stiffen when hearing an American claim something will change their lives or unleash the potential of their whatever.  (I think we are often just expressing enthusiasm when others think we are being unrealistic.)

America encompasses a huge cultural range while still having a very specific set of cultural values (not just political or religious ones.)  Getting the mind around both of these things is tricky, but really important for those of us who would like to engage other cultures thoughtfully.

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