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Most people are planning to stay, but willing to go. Why aren’t people planning to go, but willing to stay?” This challenge added urgency to my missionary preparations. After years of praying over maps, God confirmed my destination: “the unreached–via Orlando.” Only then did I understand why God never focused my attention on a specific people group. He wanted me to share his heart for the whole world, not just a part, as I communicate the needs and stories of forgotten peoples.

Marty Mosley, CEO of Dallas-based Priority One and Bluefish TV notes, “I believe mobilization deserves the same attention and budgeting as field ministry. There are young adults that God is calling to serve in mobilization for the next 20 years, just like God has called people to Kyrgyzstan. We need to elevate them to the same position as missionaries.”

Mosley’s perspective on recruiting workers for the harvest comes from his appreciation of team effort. He is quick to note that his own business is based not on the excellent service of a few members, such as the five-talent servants in Matthew 25, but on the combined effort of many two-talent people. Similarly, it takes the combined effort of servants at home and missionaries on the field to see new people groups receive the gospel and advance the Great Commission. Such team effort is fortified by those with a long-term vision for mobilization, rather than the short-term approach reflected in many of our mission agency staffing models.

Consider, for example, a young missionary with a heart for China. She is asked to delay leaving for two years to mobilize new workers stateside. The theory is that as college students meet with her at churches and on campuses, serving as a missionary becomes an accessible and exciting idea. She brings missions into the minds of potential candidates and later leaves for China with a healthier understanding of the teamwork it takes to keep a mission movement going. Another person with a heart for Europe comes to learn her role.

This turnover is intentional, but we lose vital expertise in the process. What field ministry would have lasting impact if it relied just on those who come and go? How, then, can we expect effective mobilization from a string of short-termers?

Notes Donnie Scearce, Pioneers-Canada director and missions mobilizer for the past 15 years: “It’s as though you’re asking boys to do a man’s job. Getting people to the ‘aha’ of the importance of missions is only the first part of the process. The real work of mobilization is walking with people as they determine God’s leading.”

Missionaries live Paul’s example of sharing not only the gospel, but also their lives (1 Thess. 2:8). This is true regardless of place or means of service. Those who support field personnel must do the same. This is difficult, however, if the mobilizers (or trainers or communicators) are on the move. Two-thirds of those who attend the annual Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association Personnel Workshop are new every three years. As Ralph Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission, once said, “They lost the vision and went to the field.”

Long-term mobilization ministry has historical precedence. In 1886, John Mott knew that his call to missionary service differed from others. When the Holy Spirit moved more than 200 students from Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, to become missionaries, they each recorded their country of service. Instead of one country, Mott wrote, “world.” Whether serving as an evangelist, organizational leader (YMCA, Student Volunteer Movement) or statesman, Mott kept Christ at the center, encouraging people to pursue Christ’s purposes above their own.

Apart from preaching Christ, the young leader’s first priority was to challenge people to become missionaries. If people sensed no calling to areas where Christ was not known, he encouraged them to be ministers or lay leaders with a world vision. He called those of any role to unity and cooperation in Christian endeavors. Mott believed that only then could our love–the demonstration of Christ’s power–be seen.

With the “world” as his ministry, Mott mobilized workers not only for the world, but also from the world. His speaking and relationships extended beyond North America to the universities of Europe and to YMCA contacts in China, Japan, India and other nations.

If Mott addressed missionary mobilizers today, he might give advice he gave in 1935: “Christ wills such larger and closer cooperation for his church in our day…Thus cooperation must be insisted upon, not on grounds of expediency, but on grounds of unshakable conviction that this is good, and is God’s will for his servants.”

We talk often about the cooperation–even partnership–of workers from sending and receiving countries, and of sending organizations, but are we cooperating between field teams and those who mobilize for them? We are if we respect and appreciate each other’s callings, rather than creating missions in our own image.

For more on John R. Mott, see the EMIS book, John Mott: That the World May Believe, available for $3.95 at www.emisdirect.com

Caryn Pederson directs Pioneers’ communications in Orlando, Florida.