Seeking NEW RESOURCES in post-pandemic missions

Bishop Dr Chong Chin Chung is the Bishop of The Methodist Church in Singapore. He loves local delights like char kuey teow, chai tow kway, prawn mee soup, gado gado, lontong, nasi lemak, etc. This is his last Harvest Force article and our new Bishop-elect, Rev Dr Gordon Wong, will be writing for the next issue onwards.

I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’

Acts 20:33-35 (ESV)

Missions needs resources including money, materials, talents (involving the missionaries, personnel, and professionals at both the frontline and backend). The circumstances of the mission fields and the sending countries are bound to change over time - slowly over a century or more quickly within decades. No one could have foreseen that the COVID-19 outbreak would become a pandemic in 2020, having a global impact in such an unprecedented way.

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed life in every sphere and at all levels, in particular with the implementation of lockdowns. Slowly, people began to adapt to staying home. Employers and employees became familiar and comfortable with the idea of the “home office”. As such, companies no longer fretted over providing suitable work spaces, thus cutting back on office floor area, and saving on furniture and other office paraphernalia which relieved some of the pressure of ever-increasing rents and business costs. Workers are also happy with the workfrom-home arrangements as this saves them travelling time, transport costs, from dressing up, and the costs of meals outside home. Working from home allows one to be with family, and to be more casual and relaxed. Most importantly, much of what used to require our physical presence such as training and meetings can now be done online. These practices will continue as the new normal after the COVID-19 pandemic is over. In fact, this will surely have a huge impact on our future missions strategy in ways we may not even fully understand yet.

During the pandemic, MMS requested all our missionaries to return home from the mission fields. It was an unexpected but absolutely crucial policy. The reasons are firstly, the ability of some countries to control the pandemic has been inadequate. Medicines and medical supplies were in short supply. The chances of infection were very high and missionaries and their families were in danger of being infected. Secondly, the cost for prevention and treatment was prohibitive. Most countries placed a priority on taking care of their own citizens while non-citizens are responsible for their own treatment costs without any forms of subsidy. Under such situations, even insurers may decline to accept premiums as they do not want to provide coverage. Thirdly and importantly, during the Circuit Breaker and lockdowns, the various governments stipulated that no activities, fellowship, or worship services would be allowed. The missionaries had to choose between staying indoors wand going back to their home countries. Many mission fields were without their foreign missionaries during this period.

As a result, MMS Home Office and the missionaries maintained the long-distance connections with their mission fields through video conferencing. All activities were adapted to the use of smartphones or laptops with communications technology for online meetings and pre-recorded videos for teaching, preaching, and training. Visitations and catching up were also done online.

We can thus envisage that in future, the missionary need not be at the mission field for the whole time in order to carry out certain activities. Those who provide training and instruction, evangelistic speakers, and preachers can in fact be in their own country and deploy video conferencing for exchanges and to connect with those in the mission fields. Unless there are other pressing reasons, some short term mission teams can consider connecting with new mission fields remotely instead of just going physically to the established ones. Such methods are not restricted by time and space, so there is no concern over visa restrictions. Of course, the results of reaching out at a distance are sometimes not as effective as when one is personally present on site. But we must seriously consider what to change in and how to change our future missions strategies.

To sum up, we affirm that missions involves the co-existence of the missionary and the missions entity. A life-influencing life has to be done in real life; not by means of virtual images. But we must accept that the new normal will displace many of our traditional work and methods in the mission field. We will not be able to just pick up the old ways after the pandemic. Instead, we must begin immediately to find new resources and reassess what is needed for effective electronic communications in the mission field. Conduct a fresh estimation of future missions expenses, and then approach the churches that are willing to support the missionaries and the missions work. I call upon the experts in these different fields, who are in our churches, to voluntarily come forward to help to bring the much-needed resources to the mission fields.