If you think that when you move overseas, you leave the dysfunction and unhealth of your church behind, think again.
My categories for what a healthy church is have grown and changed over the years. In the beginning all I cared about was a church’s confession of faith. Later, I primarily cared about whether it had gospel-centered teaching and a heart for missions. And so when my husband and I landed in a church that was very Christ-centered in its teaching, we felt settled.
A few months after we landed there, I started to sense yellow flags. At the time I don’t think I had the category to trust that that could be my God-given intuition, the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking. I sensed it as fear. And again, I didn’t realize that there is a fear, a sense of unsafety, that shouldn’t be present in our spiritual community. That it is not a yellow, but a red, flag that we need to pay attention to.
My concerns kept growing. I worried about the preaching – too academic and out of reach for the congregation. I felt uncomfortable under the leadership of our church. There was dissonance between the desire to keep the gospel central and the way that counseling was handled – where it seemed there was a disordered emphasis on performance and on sin-hunting rather than truly understanding a person’s story and their suffering. More and more I felt like it wasn’t a church I wanted to bring unbelieving or unchurched friends to.
The leadership didn’t model what it was like to be a work in progress. They were rather untouchable and out of touch with the people. There seemed to be a glass ceiling, and the feedback of the congregation wasn’t usually taken seriously. The leadership didn’t play well with members when they brought up ideas. In fact, they didn’t play well with other churches. They became more and more isolated from the network of churches in our area with very likeminded theology and practice.
At different times I mentioned to my husband that maybe we needed to bring things up, but at that point we were in a process to be equipped and commissioned to be sent out. He felt like it didn’t make sense to bring it up since we would be leaving anyway.
But what happened was that the dysfunction followed us overseas. Being sent out by low-trust leadership was like having a cloud hovering all the time, shaking our sense of confidence in the Spirit’s leading. We felt like we couldn’t fully adult in ministry, because we didn’t feel affirmed by our pastor, nor were we encouraged to pay attention to how we might need to pivot in light of what we were learning.
The pastor over our ministry hadn’t really bought in on our vision; he had his own vision for who we needed to be and what we needed to become overseas. And so even if that wasn’t a shared vision, we didn’t have the freedom to pursue what we needed to flourish. We needed to stay under authority.
Almost every time my husband connected with the pastor regarding our overseas gospel work, he had to remind him where we were, what we were doing, and how long we had been there. He would normally end those calls feeling defeated and destabilized. He didn’t think he was ever doing enough to meet this pastor’s approval.
Finally, over a decade after we arrived in that church, an event occurred that broke our trust in the leadership’s capacity to partner well with us. We had been experiencing significant difficulty overseas. We then experienced betrayal of trust from our church back home when they dropped a pretty big proverbial ball and hardly cared about the impact it had on us. That was the last push we needed to quietly leave.
We met with our pastors over several weeks and really wrestled with the Lord in prayer and seeking advice from close friends. We realized how deeply trust had been eroded over the years we had been gone and that we couldn’t really stay. We needed better support as we continued to serve in a very difficult and dark place. We were able to preserve relationships and affirm the ways that the church had blessed us, and then we were free to find another faith family that could partner in our ministry.
God was so kind to provide for us through another church that we had a pretty long relationship with. They took us under their wings and carefully sought to build trust with us. It was such a breath of fresh air! Over the following year as we continued the process of switching our membership to this new body and interacted with one of their pastors every couple of weeks, we were blown away by the contrast. Every time he said something that showed he trusted us, we were surprised to experience how healing that was. I don’t think we fully realized how hard it had been not to have trust until we had it and realized how empowering and encouraging it was.
Low-trust, high-control environments breed so much discouragement, and we could see how much we had been tempted to lose heart on the field because of what we had at home.
I think it may have been William Carey who talked about those that stay, about those who “hold the ropes.” It turns out that the mental, emotional, and spiritual health of those who hold the ropes really matters. The people holding the ropes need to believe in you and what you are doing. They need to understand that holding the ropes is vital for you to persevere in the work of going down a deep dark mine to rescue those in the pit. Ideally, they will be able to take feedback, so that when you say, “I need you to hold the rope this way for us to be able to do the work down here,” they will trust your perspective.
Mutual trust is vital in the type of partnership needed for gospel work. You need to trust they will hold the rope well, and they need to trust that while you are down in the pit, you are faithfully doing what you were entrusted to do. Emotionally healthy spiritual leadership is vitally needed both in those who go and those who send.
Chatting with one of our ministry coaches, I was struck by his statement, “Emotionally unhealthy spiritual leaders are one of the most destructive forces on the planet.” I found myself nodding emphatically. Leaders need to know their Bible, yes, and know and love sound teaching. But there is a kind of emotional health that impacts humility and vulnerability, that enables leaders to be safe for their people and that creates the kind of environment where people flourish and thrive – even those who are not geographically close but still impacted by their decisions and capacity to care thousands of miles away.
Healthy leaders stay human-sized. They neither overpower nor domineer, nor do they shrink in fear or flatter instead of speak the truth. Healthy leaders remain connected to themselves, to God, and to others. They relax in the presence and love of the Father; they embody Jesus and practice resurrection; and they live by the power of the Spirit. As they live and lead that way, those they lead are also able to do the same – staying human-sized, connected to themselves, God, and others, and present to God in the life they have been given, flourishing and rooted.
I don’t know what your specific situation might be and what hard questions you are asking and facing. I know that working out difficult issues and conflict with your sending church may feel scary. But don’t downplay the impact of oppression and dysfunction in your ability to live with hope and confidence on the field.
So name your needs, face your capacity honestly, and chase the ability to live in the freedom Christ bought for you. The Spirit meets you right where you are, not where you wish you were. Come to Him with your perplexity about what to do and how to navigate confusing relationships, and dare to hope He actually cares enough to walk with you every step toward deeper rescue and deeper freedom.
