Missionaries

Every missionary serving through CWM is a visible expression of God's calling to every Christian to be sent out as a witness to the risen Christ.

Missionaries' work is to seek ways to share the Gospel with all people, to be a living link within the fellowship of CWM, to identify and be in solidarity with those with whom they live and work, to assist in bringing about a challenge in mission and to help the receiving church in training others.

CWM's guidelines on missionary service state that missionaries are called to “bear witness in all they say or do and are to God’s love in Christ and to the salvation accomplished through His living, dying and rising from the dead.”

Lalliansangi, a missionary from India teaches in Tuvalu

Missionaries look forward to exciting contact with new cultures, seeing new places and world travel. But missionary service also involves facing difficulties far from home without the immediate support and help of friends and family.

Part of each missionary’s experience is coping in situations where misunderstandings can easily arise. This is especially the case before the missionary understands the local language sufficiently to be able to communicate with those who may be trying to help him/her settle in.

So missionaries face huge challenges. This is why they cannot possibly meet these challenges and live faithful to their calling without prayer support and encouragement.

Please pray for the newer missionaries as they try to adjust to their new situations, learn to cope and settle quickly and as they reach out to make friends and try to put down some roots. They need sincerity, sensitivity, care and concern to build relationships and they need persistence and patience for language learning. Pray too that they may be able to cope with culture shock.

Living and working with people of different cultures challenges the way in which Christian faith is understood and practised. Pray that the missionaries may have continuous growth in their own faith, be open and willing to share in regular worship with other Christians – even when they are still struggling to understand the language – and be enabled to work, worship and grow in faith together with people from different churches and religious traditions.

Pray too for other qualities which missionaries need such as wisdom, humility and a sense of humour and for ability to cope with the many practical difficulties which may arise with travel and transport, suitable food, health concerns.

Please pray for the missionaries serving through CWM with understanding and imagination, so that through your prayer support they may be strengthened, enabled and empowered by the Holy Spirit to be ambassadors for Christ as they share with God in God’s mission worldwide.