My seat in the mission world allows me to scrutinize what I call the mission triangle: the sending church, the missionary, and the mission agency. Some members of each are doing quite well; others function in ways that are unhealthy. This article spotlights some of the dysfunction—adventures resembling the escapades in Three Blind Mice, a moral tale written in 1900. Then I will also share what I believe are “wiser way” solutions.

My first years as a missions pastor could have been titled, “Discovering Three Blind Spots in Our Mission.” They caused regrettable and expensive trouble that you can avoid by heeding the lessons I learned the hard way. Good intentions and determination are not enough. Only very clear vision will spare you.

So let’s look at common scenarios that arise from poor vision inside the mission triangle. I will mask identities to guard privacy.

Blind Spot #1: Seeing our Great Commission mandate through a keyhole instead of a big picture window

A generous Oklahoma congregation operated like an automatic teller machine. I’ll call it ATM Church. With high-sounding ambitions, it sent four missionaries to build and run a seminary in a bedroom community of Lima, Peru.

By the time the missionaries gave up five years later, it was obvious that ATM Church had not understood its role within the context of God’s larger work. And looking back, it was clear that ATM church, the agency partner, and the field contacts had been out of alignment from the start. Yet everything had sounded so wonderful when they began. What happened?

The lead missionary was a capable engineer who chose the field without the cultural insight to understand the context. He prayed and then claimed to feel God’s leading, yet he hadn’t considered that the town had a much higher cost of living than the neighboring communities and was not a strategic location for a long-term work. The mission agency didn’t know the community either. In addition, nobody had required a field survey to ascertain whom the Bible school would serve or where to find students.

Blame could be laid at each corner of the mission triangle, but I attribute the primary responsibility to ATM Church because their “keyhole perspective” on missions meant they were satisfied to move ahead on the basis of one individual’s limited view of the on-the-ground reality. As a result, their generosity powered a losing cause.

A Wiser Way

Follow a systematic process to discern what God is calling your church or agency to adopt among all the Great Commission possibilities. First, get a clear sense of the global state of Christian mission and its opportunities and needs. Second, find God’s role for your organization. Settle on a specific emphasis that fits your group’s focus—for example, church planting or a mercy ministry such as orphans.

Avoid the mistake I see every week in mission: overreach! Churches and agencies alike set unrealistic goals with the best of intentions. When we notice how many churches are doing so little in mission, it’s easy to think we have to make up the difference. So we attempt too much. But overreach robs everyone involved of the success God intended.

Your uniqueness surfaces out of a careful assessment of the sympathies and interests of your congregation or agency. Align them with the opportunities that “have your name on them.” This dual awareness—of mission context, and your assets and sympathies—is vital to a healthy mission triangle. It also honors your national partners. Global Focus is one organization that helps churches in this area.

Blind Spot #2: Allowing missionary candidates to see the Great Commission as their private calling

For potential global workers, their faith journey, career, and church experience can intertwine to seemingly point in a particular ministry direction. More than a few aspiring missionaries have come to me with a vision revolving mostly around themselves rather than around God’s mission that includes His church both here and beyond.

One example: Bill was a young, single parent struggling to provide for his family of three. Yet somehow he managed to go on a short-term mission. Soon afterward he announced he was going to Burma to follow God’s call to serve orphans. He outsourced his children to someone else. He created his own website complete with a PayPal donation button. And without permission he used the logo and endorsement from a church he had casually attended.

Before this local church even knew about the misappropriation of their graphics and supposed endorsement, Bill was in Burma looking to do his thing for orphans. This example is extreme, but less radical cases are rooted in the same narrow understanding of God’s guidance and of the partnership which the local church and the mission agency must have with the missionary.

A Wiser Way

As church and agency, we are responsible for protecting the mission field from unprepared missionaries, as well as protecting our missionaries from being harmed or emotionally devastated on the field. Therefore, the sending church should serve and develop its missionaries at many points along the mission highway.

Prospective workers and many current missionaries need training in how to approach their home church or potential supporting church with a partnership mindset. Rather than focusing on how much churches will pledge, they need to be taught how to ask significant questions and build partnership, trusting the right amount of dollars will follow. We must help missionaries behave like the partner they want the supporting church to be.

When prospective workers and a church both discern that they share a vested interest in the same mission, the missionary is focused beyond finances and into the church’s heart and mind. That’s where they should want to be before taking a dollar of support from a church.

Missionaries also need coaching from their sending church on how to find the best fit in an agency partner. Rather than merely look for an agency “that will take me,” prospective missionaries should be helped to search for the one whose particular niche best fits their gifts and anticipated ministry.

A mismatch results in a trail of anguish for all concerned. A more careful search for an agency that involves the home church and prospective missionary improves the entire mission triangle. Conscientious agencies welcome front-end church engagement.

As churches and agencies consider partnership, they look for alignment of goals and purpose. Partners seek long-term relationships built on trust and clear pathways of cooperation. They talk honestly about return on investment—are the people and dollars likely to produce the desired goal? They evaluate the chosen mission, the entry plan, and the required team players. They ask hard questions like, “Is there a clear ‘mission-accomplished’ point at which we will know we’ve fulfilled the call?”

Other questions they pursue: What church contribution (besides money and prayer) is needed by the missionary to ensure adequate resources to proceed? Who will be this missionary’s “go to” advocate within the church—a pastor, elder, deacon, or a mission-council member?

Wherever you are in the mission triangle, think like a Kingdom-of-God partner rather than a private Christian entity. Learn when to walk away from dollars that don’t flow from true partnership. It takes faith, but ask yourself: “When the inevitable crisis or unforeseen trauma hits and I need help, do I want to have to call a ‘donor’ or will I need a real ‘partner’?”

I’ve seen missionaries treat my congregation only as a donor and then expect us to support like a partner. Most of the time we’ve tried to oblige. However, we’ve learned to ask them hard questions up front, and now we have much greater influence on the front end of their mission because we seek partnerships.

Blind Spot #3: Agencies own the Great Commission exclusively instead of seeing it as the shared task of local church, agency, and national church

Voicing this blind spot will not make me popular with mission agency staff, but I’m one of them. I’m on staff at one agency and on the board of a few others. So I’m talking to myself too. In 15 years as a missions pastor, I’ve worked directly with 18 global mission agencies and with four times as many local ones.

The most common blind spot I’ve experienced with agencies is the assumption that “the church just needs to give us the money, missionaries, and volunteers, and we can take it from there.” Of course agency leaders would never say that out loud. We don’t have to; our actions say it well enough.

To be fair, many pastors and mission councils are comfortable with a similar view: “Hey, they’re the experts. We just need to send them support and good people and stay out of the way.” But defaulting to this arrangement is unnecessary, and such a hands-off approach is dangerous. Superficial involvement can be fleeting. I’ve watched many worthy missionaries and agencies get dropped like a hot potato after a new pastor or missions leader arrives, clears the deck, and brings his or her “own” mission to the organization.

A Wiser Way

Nobody in the mission triangle is perfect. Healthy churches, missionaries, and agencies are persistent learners and faithful to core values rooted in Scripture and best practice. Early in my journey as mission pastor, a staff member of an agency headquartered in my city became a trusted small-group brother. He gave me an inside look at one of the best-in-kind Christian agencies in global mission today.

That agency felt different to work with. Its posture toward churches was rooted in a theology and organizational culture that I knew I had to experience. Other agencies have reached the same level of effectiveness, but many more could. Those that don’t are usually the ones that don’t have a church-relations staff. Partnership is relationship, and relationship takes face-to-face time.

I still have a missionary with this leading agency, and I find the staff to be a joy and pleasure. They invested time, training, and relationship with me. They made my people a better church and made me a better mission pastor. They did it graciously, without expectations or strings. They’ve moved our entire mission work to a level we would never have gotten to without their kingdom investment in us. They saw their mission as one role contributing to God’s greater work.

The Mission Triangle

The theme running through the three blind spots can be reduced to this: Most of us need to learn to partner much better than we currently do. Let’s find guidance in exemplary churches, missionaries, and agencies that demonstrate outstanding partnership.

Only by taking partnership very seriously will we improve our missionaries’ experience and also help our national partners feel the best possible impact from the North American arm of the global church. That means learning to partner with each other here at home. My favorite mission resource is Phill Butler’s book, Well Connected. His 15 principles of partnership are proven around the world today.

As pastor of mission partnerships at Crossroads Fellowship in Raleigh, NC, N. Doug Gamble teaches leaders how to form partnerships that meet long-term needs in their communities. He is author of The Heart Attack That Saved My Life and Ministry.