The international mission movement has long been dominated by a Western approach to teamwork, leadership and family values. The Chinese mission movement takes their own approach to certain things, which is very different from what we have come to expect. One area of difference is the approach to marriage and family.
In the West, we have a long history of single missionaries, particularly women. They are highly valued for their dedication and their stable contribution to the work. After all, they don’t need to leave the field for pregnancy related issues and they are not distracted by the schooling and raising of children. Organisations that focus on the training of young people for the mission field, often actively discourage dating among their recruits. It is seen as a distraction to the work, to the point that those who do form relationships may get sent home.
The Chinese mission leaders take a very different approach to the issue. There is a strong preference for married couples over single missionaries, as they are considered to be more stable for long-term work. A single missionary may fall in love with a non-missionary and leave the field. When missionaries get married, they share the dedication. So, instead of discouraging dating in mission training schools, it is actively encouraged among trainees.
“We encourage them to fall in love and if they want to get married we will help them,” a mission leader from China explains. He shared that helping missionaries to find a mission spouse was one of his main concerns in training. “In the past we have lost a lot of our trained missionaries to marriage with a non-missionary.” He also noticed that those with a spouse serve longer, as they can help one another when hardship hits. And in the areas where these missionaries work, hardship is a given.
They do not only encourage marriage between single missionaries, but they are also prepared to help those who struggle to find a spouse. He shared how a single mission trainee in her thirties would be sent to a team which has a single brother in his thirties, in the hope that they will decide to form a family together. And arranged marriages are not uncommon, although the persons concerned may refuse the proposed relationship.
But the leadership does not only plan for the formation of families, but also for the retention of missionary children. “We believe families are called together, and that includes the children. We want to keep them on the field. They have amazing language skills and cultural understanding. We don’t want to loose them.” One way these leaders help children stay on the field is by providing suitable college education in Asia. “These young people cannot go back into the Chinese education system when they graduate highschool in the countries where they grew up. But we do not want to send them to Europe or America, because our experience is that they will stay there. We want to educate them in Asia, in a university where their unique gifts and calling are nourished.”
Now that the first generation of Chinese missionary children is aging into college, this becomes an urgent issue. There are discussions with a university in East Asia, where these Chinese missionary children can live in a dormitory with Christian dorm parents. There they can be both educated and grow in their calling, in the hope that they will return to the field where they grew up.
Rather than seeing marriage and family as a distraction to the work of God, they are seen as a vital part of the great commission. Spouses strengthen each other in service and raise children who can serve even more effectively in the future, because God works both through individuals and through generations.
Two can put ten thousand to flight.