A friend of mine shared on Facebook a post expressing concern that many foreign missionaries are not actively involved in local churches– that is, local churches in the area where they serve. He expressed it in terms of missionaries actively planting local churches should feel driven to “plant themselves” in local churches.

In general I agree. That being said, I would like to give my own nuance based on my own experience. I would also note, not that it matters, that not all missionaries are interested in, or involved in, church planting. I have been involved in church planting, but have never felt that it was my calling, or my primary role in missions. I might even go further and say that in some countries, like the Philippines, church planting is often not a particularly needed role for missionaries. In some places, it might even become a bit of a vanity project— slapping a name on a building to give photo ops for ones’ supporters. However, that is a trivial point, especially since the wording was probably more of a rhetorical device not a statement about the ideal role of a missionary. The questions still remains: missionaries— regardless of their role, should be actively involved in a local church, or not?

In my 20 years in the Philippines, my family and I have been involved with numerous churches:

Church	Time	Denomination	Preaching/Teaching?	Leadership Roles?	Notes
Church A	2004-2007	My denomination	Preach occasionally, Teaching regularly	Director of Missions, Church council	Field Education church of my wife and I
Church Plant #1	2007-2010	Independent	Preaching on rotation, teaching regularly	Elder in church	Linked to our children’s outreach program
Church B	2010-2015	My denomination	Preaching on rotation, teaching on occasion	On church council. Considered part of the pastoral staff
Church C	2015-2017	Independent	Preaching on occasion, no teaching	Was asked to apply for role as pastor. I declined.	This was our “resting time”
Church plant #2	2017-2022	Independent	Preaching and teaching fairly regularly	Part of the pastoral staff. Served as senior pastor for a portion of that.
No consistent involvement	2022-2024	N/A	N/A	N/A	During this time, spending half of our time in US.

Looking above, of the 20 years we have (so far) served in the Philippines, 18 years we have been active in local churches, 16 years have been VERY active, and 8 years involved in a church planting effort.

Based on this, what are my insights (if that is the right term)?

A. For missionaries whose primary ministry is NOT set in the local church, being actively involved in the activities of the local church is HARD. Over the 20 years, our primary work, even when involved in church planting, was always something else. Whether it was medical missions, children’s Saturday outreach, disaster response, pastoral counseling and training, and seminary teaching, our primary ministry was always with NGOs.

True story. When I was at Church A, both myself and Celia, we both told the pastor that we would like to join his church but he had to understand that our primary ministry was outside the church so we had to limit our involvement. And for the first couple of years we did. However, after he left, we started becoming more involved in the preaching, leadership, and the politics of the church. Still, we TRIED to maintain some boundaries. However, because I was a missionary (and a guy— that denomination doesn’t use this designation for women), they would call me pastor, and would always identify me as part of the small pastoral team. I asked the church council to actively discourage this. My argument is that Celia and I really cannot be fully invested in the life of the church. Sometimes, we may not be able to do much more than be there Sunday mornings. We felt that if a person in the church is called “pastor” and yet is not deeply investing time in the church regularly, that might encourage a similar lack of investment by the church members. In the end, the church leadership would not make that adjustment for me, so we left.

B. Local churches often have a LOT of politics and love to draw missionaries into those politics. The missionaries in the generation before me, especially those whose primary role was teaching in seminary, often kept their relationship with a local church at arm’s length. That is, they would be part of a local church, but avoided roles that would draw them into the politics. I tend to think that often that is a good thing. Missionaries can often be a bit quick to embrace a leadership role, creating a passive and dependent church. I will also note that I have seen missionaries get involved in church and denominational politics, and often in my (perhaps biased) they were on the wrong side of the battle. But even if they were on the right side, is their input necessary?

C. The other side is that there are downsides of not being involved enough in the local church. First, it can be all too easy for missionaries to become “cloistered”— with other missionaries and expatriates— or in other ways lose track of those they are meant to serve. This is especially true if one is involved in ministries that are not directly involved with the majority of locals, such as Bible translation, Bible school teaching, training material production, and so forth. Such cloistering can create missionaries who are out of touch and not integrated into the local culture.

I suppose the end thing is that it is important for missionaries to be involved in local churches. The fact that I not right now is tied to two things. First, we got rather worn out from our involvement in a recent church planting effort. Second, from 2021 to 2024 we have been spent half of our time in the US. As such, we have been actively building our connections with our sending church. We expect that we will become involved in a local church in the near future as we go towards spending more time in the Philippines again. However, we will have to do it with strict boundaries.