2014 - Page 3 of 5 - TEAM Christian Missions Blog

13 Types of Missionary Newsletters We Should Stop Writing

Make sure your missionary newsletter isn’t getting buried in your supporter's inbox.

Jul 08 2014

This week, missions writer Amy Walters of SEND International shares tips on improving the venerable and ubiquitous missionary newsletter. I read a lot of missionary newsletters — about 100 every month. As part of my job, newsletters are some of my main sources of stories and information. I also serve on my church’s missions committee. So between the two, I’ve seen newsletters from all over the world and from a variety of missions organizations. Some of the newsletters I read are excellent. And some, well, not so much. Missionaries have incredible stories to share — they’re on the front lines…

Photo by Andy Olsen / TEAM

Jul 03 2014

This week, our blog got a little face lift. We love the new look and hope our readers will, too. We put a lot of thought into making the blog more engaging and user-friendly, as well as creating something that would do justice to TEAM’s beautiful photography. But most of all, we want to create a space for thoughtful dialogue. TEAM’s ministries are broad and diverse. On any given day, our hundreds of missionaries are serving in myriad contexts around the globe — urban and rural, churched and unchurched, Eastern and Western, advanced and primitive. This complex ministry mixture makes for…

Far from a political posture, caring for the earth was God's first command to man. Photo by Robert Johnson / TEAM

Jun 24 2014

Steve Dresselhaus, a senior director at TEAM, shares about the vision behind TEAM’s creation care initiatives. Whether or not he or she knows it, every missionary is an environmentalist. Perhaps not the tree-hugging, Gaia-worshiping, organic-brown-rice-eating style of environmentalist caricatured by the media, but a practicing one, nonetheless. Obviously, some of us are more specialized and intentional in creation care than others, and we could all do a bit better at it. But each of us is somewhere to be found on the caring-for-the planet continuum. Anyone who has fed a poor person, been involved in healthcare, helped in disaster relief,…

Young man learns how to prepare for missionary service.

Discover three simple ways to help you prepare for missionary service. Photo by TEAM

Jun 23 2014

Do you have your sights set on exploring that missionary calling you’ve been feeling? Do you want to start talking with some missions agencies and take the first steps toward missionary service? Or maybe you’ve just resolved to be a more globally-minded Christian? At TEAM, we meet a lot of people interested in missions. A lot. Some of them are truly prepared for overseas service. Others think they are but haven’t quite gotten there yet, And still others just want to know how they can best get involved in missions without leaving their “day jobs” as students, professionals, or stay-at-home…

Tool or burden? Does student debt have a place on the mission field?
Photo by Robert Johnson / TEAM

Jun 17 2014

Almost every missions mobilizer can tell this tale: They found the perfect would-be missionary, highly qualified and ready to ship all their belongings to the other side of the world, with one little problem. The candidate is drowning in debt. Debt is one of the biggest challenges of our time for North American missions and has been called “the greatest enemy other than Satan himself” to sending missionaries. This may be a slight overstatement, but there’s no doubt that personal debt is a huge obstacle for many young people who want to serve overseas (or domestically). Because missionaries tend to…

From Chick-fil-a cravings to aching loneliness, a missionary's first months on the field are full of surprises. Photo by Robert Johnson / TEAM

May 27 2014

It has been six months since my wife, Jenny, and I boarded a plane in Chicago and moved to Guatemala City. Our lives have changed dramatically since then. In the last year, we both stepped away from full-time jobs, liquidated everything we owned, and said good-bye to the place we called home for the seven years. We left behind the best friends we have ever made. And we did so while Jenny was six months pregnant. It’s been a wild ride. We’ve learned a lot of lessons in six months about missionary life. Here are some of them. And we…

Millennials are changing the missions landscape and taking on challenges in ways previous generations have not.

May 20 2014

The highways of online media are strewn with attempts to explain millennials, my hard-to-pin-down generation that’s currently somewhere between the ages of 14 and 34 — and even that range is a little squishy. Churches, marketers and, yes, missions agencies, would love to know exactly what makes millennials tick. But most attempts to put us in a box fall short. Millennials — even millennial Christians — are not monolithic. They defy unifying definitions, aside from superficial observations (“Those millennials and their iPhones!”) that often apply as much to other generations as they do to 20-somethings. There is little doubt, however,…

We believe missions agencies should work together with local churches and national believers to advance the kingdom of God. Photo by Robert Johnson / TEAM

May 15 2014

We usually aim to be more informative than self-promotional on this blog. But occasionally, we do both at once. This follow-up to a recent post about how to choose a missions agency explains a few things that we believe (in our humble opinion) make TEAM a special place to serve. Our mobilization team recently shared this with our U.S. staff. There are plenty of great missions agencies out there. We believe we’re all on the same side, working toward the same goals and serving the same God. For more than a century, TEAM has been placing passionate people on the…

Which way to go? With so many options for overseas service, asking yourself the questions below will help steer you in the right direction. Photo by Robert Johnson / TEAM

May 13 2014

Technology, accessible travel and global banking have made it easier than ever to pack up and move overseas. So it may seem like an easy choice to go abroad as an independent missionary without being attached to a missions agency. But while the freedom and flexibility of going it alone can be a benefit for some missionaries, the majority of missionaries find that the positives of journeying with an agency far outweigh any drawbacks. Whether you’re deciding between missions agencies, considering your church as your “agency,” or contemplating going out on your own, ask yourself these questions as you weigh…

Archive - 2014

13 Types of Missionary Newsletters We Should Stop Writing

New Look, Same Blog

Why All Missionaries Are Environmentalists (or Should Be)

Want to Do Missions? Begin Preparing Now.

The “D” Word in Missions

6 Lessons from a New Missionary

3 Ways Millennials See Missions Differently

What’s So Great About TEAM?

How To Choose A Missions Agency