COVID-19 Mental Health Response

At our Spring Retreat, associates working in the mental health sector shared a grim picture of their host country’s needs. Mental health care is slowly improving, but stigma and politics still get in the way. Many people cannot access help, especially outside first tier cities and in rural areas. Furthermore, the country needs not just more counselors but psychiatrists. There are only 2 psychiatrists per 100,000 people in a country of 1.4 billion, compared with 13 per 100,000 in the US.

In recent years, the Faith@Work movement has grown in momentum mainly in the parachurch space. But some churches are also helping their people integrate faith and work.

Family and work are the two major arenas of life where we live out our faith. Marriage and family ministries have come a long way since the 70’s, and we are familiar with the concept of the family altar. Why not the workplace altar?

Even as the U.S. and many countries cautiously reopen the economy, the fear of a second wave of infection is palpable. The road to recovery will be long and hard.

But we believe God is sovereign, purposeful, just and merciful. What would the Great Commandment and the Great Commission look like in the post-COVID world?

COVID-19 Mental Health Response

This is Gordon and his family’s 8th year in East Asia. He heads the mental health service of a large hospital. Like everybody else, he and his wife have to work online from home, help their young children with classes and homework online, run the house, and find creative solutions for the inconveniences of a lockdown. In the midst of all this, calls for help pour in from churches and the community.

Daniel and his parents are recovering from COVID-19 infection in Bethlehem, but still in quarantine. From his “cell”, he reflects on our call to share the hope of the resurrection first to ourselves, and to those around us.

As this story is posted, Daniel and his parents are still recovering from COVID-19 infection.

Tony and Gina have been stuck in the Midwest for two months now, unable to return to the field because of travel bans.

Arriving in his hometown late February, Tony found that information about the coronavirus was limited. People were unprepared. The entrepreneur in him sprang into action.

Is tentmaking missions just about being a self-supporting missionary like Paul, who financed his pioneering work at Corinth through his trade?  Is it just about having a work visa so you can stay and serve in a certain country? 

 In 2000, half of the world became city dwellers. In 2012, China’s urban population surpassed its rural counterpart. Economic migration is a global phenomenon. Over the last few decades, hundreds of millions in China have left the countryside for the cities with millions of Christians among them.

What constitutes a missionary call? A deep inner feeling? A burning bush experience? Something just for the spiritual elite? Popular but misguided notions can confuse and hinder your discernment for God’s call. Drawing from Rev. Mack Stiles’ message at the 2013 Cross Student Missions Conference, let us clarify the fundamentals, then illustrate them with Mitch and Zoe’s story

When we think of tentmaking missions, we think of bi-vocational men and women, who transplant themselves from the comfort of their home country and way of life to an alien land and culture in order to make Christ known. But wait! They don’t go alone. Many bring their children, who share the challenge of making the new language and culture their own too. They are the “Third Culture Kids.”

This fall, we organized an Entrepreneurship Workshop for students at a university in a Central Asian country. It was a great success.

The students’ English was better than expected so that translation was not necessary. One of our team members had taught at top Chinese universities and found the Muslim students even more engaging. Like young people in the West, they dream about becoming entrepreneurs. So our team brought them what they want.

Even though traditional missionaries cannot go into most of the 10/40 Window countries where the gospel is most needed today, tentmakers can.

Recently Lance and Donna were tagged in a photo from friends in the US that said, “We love spend- ing time with this family from East Asia”. After ten years abroad, it makes sense that they are seen as from Asia and not America. China is home. It is where they work, do life, and serve as missional professionals.

A Long But Rewarding Journey

By the time Dave and Elsie got married, they were certain about their call to bi-vocational missions.

During Dave’s post-doc years, he underwent additional training in a related field to broaden his career options. His mentor connected him to an opportunity to consult for an international organization on their China projects. Dave and Elsie began to pray for an overseas assignment with this organization. They were headed in the right direction, but there were many bureaucratic obstacles.

As we celebrate 30 years of ministry, it is time to revisit and reaffirm our mission. This is important in order to sharpen our objectives, develop new strategies, align our teams, and mobilize others to join us while staying focused and relevant in this rapidly evolving world scene that is changing the landscape of missions.

Despite suffering and chaos, spiritual revival spread among young people across China during WWII and the Civil War that followed.  Brave bands of evangelists felt called to reach the poverty-stricken Northwest. Without knowledge of each other, they went out from Shanghai, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong and Shaanxi.

China’s Back To Jerusalem (BTJ) missionaries in the 1940s were tentmakers by necessity, unaware perhaps of the legacy of tentmakers before them.