Essentials for People Care and Development: A Collection of Best Practices, Research, Reflections, and Strategies

by Geoff Whiteman, Heather Pubols (Editor)

Practical insights and activities to help your organization build a thriving culture. Finding, sending, and caring for missionaries has grown increasingly complex for mission leaders and staff. The mission world is more multicultural and global crises seem to be more frequent. And we can no longer make the same assumptions about shared values which can open the door for legal difficulties. We all want to see ministry staff thriving and serving the kingdom to their full potential, but how can we support that? In this book, you will be able to dig deeper into these fundamental issues and more. Member care workers collaborated with us to bring practical insights that will help you and your agencies. No matter where you fit on the spectrum of care – a concerned pastor, missionary colleague, or ministry leader all the way to a professional services provider – this book and its contents will help you implement improvements in caring for ministry staff.

Missio Nexus Improve Series Missio Nexus seeks to catalyze relationships, collaboration, and ideas within the Great Commission community. For over one hundred years, this association has strengthened mission agencies by providing opportunities for mission focused people to learn, meet, and engage together around critical issues and priorities for global evangelism and church planting. The Missio Nexus Improve Series includes books, toolkits, and resources to help leaders learn from leaders. It makes the theoretical practical and encourages growth and development in leaders’ lives. Take the opportunity to improve your knowledge, skill, and role execution today!

Genres: Nonfiction

222 pages, Paperback

Published September 12, 2023

Reviews

[Rosie]

This is a recent book speaking into the care of missionaries and Christian workers: a discipline known variously as "member care," "people care," or "staff care and wellbeing." I liked the description of one of the contributors, calling it "specialized care for global workers" - since member care is rightly done by trained professionals with experience of such work themselves, involving varying levels (depending on the individual's skills and the organizational set-up), of counseling, pastoral support, spiritual nurture, coaching, mentoring, HR, and practical help. I teach on an MA course in this, at All Nations Christian College. (My lectures are on theological and biblical foundations of care, spiritual formation for Christian workers, care of ministers'/missionaries' children, contextualized care, and care for workers with disabilities). This new book touches on many of these areas and as such it is fantastic to have such a recent and well-researched new source. The book is a product of a Missio Nexus missionary care conference, being a compilation of papers from contributors, edited by Geoff Whiteman and Heather Pubols.
A great strength of the book is the expertise of the contributors, and that many of the papers are based on field research among missionaries, as well as substantial experience on the part of the writers. Chapters cover a range of topics as mentioned, including Resilience, Trauma-informed care, Conflict, Missionary Attrition, the role of Supervision, Assessing family readiness for mission, taking Sabbaticals well - and more. A chapter on safe-guarding and liability is important and sobering, although rather tantalizing as it raises many all-too-real "worst-case-scenarios" without going into detail about steps to take if/when they actually happen! In summary, this is an informed and welcome contribution to the field of member care.

[Marti Wade]

Whether you serve in a sending agency, lead a ministry, or are a concerned pastor or care provider, you’ll find something in this book to help you care for global workers.

It’s a slim book but includes 14 articles from 15 authors serving in a variety of contexts, though most are in professional member-care roles. Each provides reflections and recommendations rooted in scripture and research. Footnotes and resource recommendations will help you go deeper if you like.

[Laura]

I picked this up as a resource to prepare myself and my husband for a member care visit for overseas missionaries. I found many of the essays helpful, with tips and anecdotes that are a good starting point for our visit. I like that there are multiple authors. I skimmed or skipped the few chapters that didn’t resonate with me (fluffy chapter on women in ministry and unhelpful chapter on trauma). Regardless, I’ll be using it as a guide for ministry at home too. Lots of great ideas!

[Matthew Wright]

An anthology of very useful essays on the topic of member care. This is a great resource for MC practitioners as well as senders!