My wife and I are independent missionaries. By this I mean that we are not under a traditional mission agency. We were sent out by a single church… who serves as our primary accountability partner. We also serve in and with a seminary in the Philippines. Neither of these (nor the counseling center or accreditation organization that we cofounded and are a part of) operate at all like a traditional mission society or agency.

Today at seminary chapel, a colleague of mine (Korean missionary who could be described as independent to the same extent that I am) described his coming to the Philippines. He noted how he came all focused on evangelizing and church planting. However, as he had been here awhile, he realized a few things:

1. Filipinos can evangelize and church plant, and are normally better at it that foreign missionaries.
2. He and his wife, like most all of us, come over with very ethnocentric attitudes… feeling that they know what is best and are “better” in some sense than Filipinos in terms of what to value and how to do things.
3. He needed to be educated in the mission setting.
4. He needed to focus on what he, as a foreign missionary, could do better than what Filipinos (at this point in their ministerial history) could do.

Celia and I had a similar path a few years after them. We did not come to evangelize and church plant (primarily) but we started doing what Filipinos, frankly, could do as well or better than us (not because they lack potential, but because they may lack specific training, experience, or vision). We needed to be educated in the Philippines, and focus on what we could do based on our unique training (training chaplains, and missionaries).

As one reads this post up to this point, you can see a few things that are good about being an Independent Missionary.

A. Being an Independent Missionary allows one to make “audibles” or on site pivots in strategy. This is actually a big thing. When we were looking into going into missions, we approached a mission agency. We liked that agency (and still do). But when one read their vision and mission at the time, there were a few things that annoyed me. The third one I will list later. The first one is that they said they really only wanted missionary candidates who were really sold out on evangelism. In other words, they really wanted people who really wanted to evangelize. That sounds like it makes sense… but does it? In many parts of the world, other passions and competencies may be more important. Frankly, being a motivated evangelist in the Philippines as a foreign missionary is not particularly useful. There are far too many far better local evangelists. The second thing was they were, at the time, really putting all their efforts into church planting movements (CPMs). I have a bit of mixed feelings about CPMs. But ignoring that, the mission agency at the time was “gutting” its other ministries to put all of their efforts into CPMs. That was something that I have real problems with. Now perhaps they were right (but they weren’t), but at least for Celia and I, I don’t think that was what God had for us. Being independent allowed us to change directions two or three times until we found our long-term role. And I would say that the change of directions did not necessarily mean that we were going in the wrong direction. Perhaps it was just time for a change.

B. Independence allows one to choose one’s own partners. The mission agency we applied to had in its vision statement a strong emphasis on supporting the denomination linked to that agency. That wasn’t necessarily a problem… but perhaps for us it is a problem. We did not really want to limit ourselves. Missionaries really need to have a coalition of the willing, but some agencies really want to limit who one works with. Admittedly, there are times when such limits are beneficial (I told you, my support is ‘tepid’) but we have done well in have partnerships that definitely cross some major denominational barriers. Relatedly, a common reason (#5 if I remember right) for missionaries leaving the mission field is conflict with their fellow team members. As an Independent Missionary, one has at least some more control as to who your team members are.

C. Being an Independent Missionary allows one to decide when it is time to leave. I have seen mission agencies pull the rug out from under established agency missionaries. While there are advantages in terms of stability and platform being an agency missionary, often agencies can downsize very competent missionaries. While they can, in theory continue in the field as independent missionaries, most lack the experience of “going it alone.”

D. Independent Missionaries are more able to “go native” theologically. They can adjust to the culture in terms of missional practice and missional theology. For example, I come from a denomination in the US that does not allow women clergy. As an independent missionary, I don’t have to support that viewpoint… and can work with groups with a very different perspective. If I see value in aspects of liberation theology, or in critical race theory… I don’t have to worry (much) about what the board thinks about these back home. (Of course, most independent missionaries have accountability partners and financial supporters, so there are definitely limits on this freedom.)

I will stop here… and in Part 2, may add one or two more advantages, but also talk about the problems in being independent.