A GUIDE FOR CHURCHES AND MISSION PARTNERS
When Your Mission Partner Comes Home For A Visit
YOUR MISSION PARTNER is about to return home from their service for God overseas. All sorts of arrangements need to be put in place. Whose responsibility is it to ensure these arrangements are made? Is it something the mission partner should sort out? Or should their family or sending church take care of it?
Very often, church leaders will assume that the mission partner and their family will sort it out between them. However experience has shown that this is not a valid or reasonable assumption! If commendation by the local church is the wholehearted commitment it ought to be, the responsibility for mission partners’ return should not be left to their family. It may be that family members will be the best and most able to provide the help and assistance needed, but the commending church leadership should accept the prime responsibility to ensure all the issues are covered.
We encourage you to work with your mission partner on the matters raised in this guide. You may also need to liaise with the mission agency your mission partner is associated with.
There is no fixed answer to “who does what?” but we know that the best outcomes occur when everyone works together and the matters we raise here are properly planned, well in advance of your mission partner’s arrival. Please contact us if we can be of assistance.
Michael Hanson
Executive Director