A Missionary Call is for the Whole Family
One of the internal debates in the world of evangelical missions is whether the missionary call extends to the whole family or to just the parents. I’ve written previously on why both husband and wife (and not just the husband) must be committed to mission work, so in this post I want to think a bit about the kids. Does the missionary call extend to them as well?
If I were living in my home country, and I answered a call to pastor a church there, my wife would need to be supportive, but the pastoral call would be to me, not to her. Likewise, the pastoral call would not be to my kids, but to me. Hopefully my kids would be okay with their dad being a pastor but whether I were a pastor or a carpenter or a salesman, our family could largely carry on with our regular activities and patterns of life that we were accustomed to. We’d be using the same language and living in the same culture that we had been. If we had to move to a different part of the country, that would obviously be difficult for the kids in terms of moving house, leaving friends, and more. I don’t want to ignore the fact that domestic moves come with heartache too but when compared to moving overseas, there is a lot more that changes for kids.
When dad and mom decide to move to the mission field, the kids don’t have much of a choice because the whole family needs to go. Depending upon the age of the kids, it may be necessary to discuss the decision with them before a final decision is made, but at the end of the day, the kids don’t decide. The parents do. If the kids are young, they may not really understand what is happening or what that means for them. If you have very young kids, it is physically more difficult to move (i.e. dragging stroller and car seats through multiple airports), but emotionally it may be easier because the kids barely understand where they are going or where they have been. As long as they have mom and dad, food, and toys, they are good to go anywhere. That is probably an oversimplification but I think there is much truth to it. When kids get to be teenagers, they can actually carry their own luggage, manage themselves on the airplane, help you move furniture, make food for themselves, etc. Moving and getting settled in a new place with older kids is physically much easier. But when they are older, it is harder for the kids emotionally because they are starting to have opinions and convictions about what they want and what they don’t want, including the pluses and minuses of moving. Leaving behind friends, pets, and favorite activities can be difficult and traumatic. It is tough to move from a context where they know the culture and can express themselves (and understand others) easily in their native language. Teens are just starting to get their feet under them and become confident in their ability to interact with the world outside the home as they head towards adulthood. Moving overseas often bumps them back down to the level of a young child in terms of their ability to do things for themselves and communicate with people outside the home.
Kids are still growing and changing physically, emotionally, and spiritually and it is too much to expect that kids of missionary parents will have the same conviction and commitment to sharing the Gospel as their parents do. Part of discipling your kids is helping them to understand the “what” and “why” of sharing Christ with others as they understand what it means for them personally to follow Christ. And some kids of Christian parents, in all walks of life, go through periods where they are not interested in spiritual things. Some come out of that and become young adults with a firm faith in Christ. Some don’t.
With these realities in mind, does a missionary call extend to the whole family, including the kids? They answer is both yes and no. Let me explain. If we mean that the kids are expected to be little evangelists just like the parents, I would say no. We can hope and pray that they would want to share Christ with others as they understand and embrace Christ as their Lord and Savior, but we should not expect more of them spiritually than we would if dad and mom were doing some other profession in their home country. But because cross-cultural missions usually involves the whole family uprooting and moving into an area with a different language and culture, I would say yes. The family is a unit and it moves together to the mission field. If God has placed a call upon the parents to cross-cultural service, then that includes the kids because everyone has to move and adjust. This involves both blessings and heartaches for everyone in the family, whether it be parents or kids. Parents should be able to say to their kids, “God has called our family to the mission field” as a way of helping them understand that God views the family as a unit that sticks together, moves together, and helps one another. Parents need to do all they can to raise their children to trust and follow God (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Proverbs 22:6, Psalm 78:1-4) and to be sensitive to their particular needs (Ephesians 6:4), but the kids also need to honor and respect the parents authority (Deuteronomy 5:6, Ephesians 6:1-3) as they try to obey God as best they know how.
The call to missions does not look the same for the parents as it does for the kids but the missionary family is all in it together as they live, study, work, and play in a foreign culture with a different language. There are joys but also heartaches as families work through together what it looks like to live and thrive in the place that God has put them. If you know a missionary family with kids, pray for them today.
