I am an American evangelical missionary serving in the balkans. I am working with a national pastor in a small church.
I have encountered a bit of an issue in which I would value some input. I have tried explaining things, but I can’t seem to explain it adequately enough to the pastor. Can I give a bit of background about the situation and perhaps someone could share any thoughts they have regarding the situation?
My wife and I have three teenage children ages 13, 15, and 17. Over the years, we have encouraged and tried to integrate our kids into our host culture as much as possible. They have made strides in this area, but they feel most comfortable with other MKs and TCKs.
Our kids attend an English speaking Christian school that is comprised mostly of MKs and TCKs. All three of our kids attend either a Bible study or youth ministry event every Friday night that is sponsored by the school. Their community and activities mainly center around the school, with many of the teachers being surrogate spiritual mentors and disciplers in the absence of what would be a normal church experience for them. All three of our children are believers in Christ Jesus and have been baptized of their own initiative.
My wife and I have worked hard at developing a healthy understanding and involvement in “church” with our kids. This has been a challenging task and not at all unique to us, but a lot of missionary families struggle in this area. We minister and attend a church that is not in our language or culture, and our two youngest do not understand or speak enough Albanian to understand sermons, Bible studies, or conversations. We have had many discussions about why they need to go to this local church when they don’t understand anything! When we are in the United States, we are often at a different church every Sunday. So even though they understand the sermon, they do not have consistent community, accountability, or a means of being involved regularly in the church.
What we have settled on is piecing together all the components of “church” with some overlap. Three separate efforts help our children grow in their faith in a church experience - our local Albanian church, our children’s school, and our family church time. At the local church, they have a place of service in helping with children’s church and set-up/clean-up; they have multi-generational fellowship and care; they have a place to give tithes and to financially help others in need; and they have accountability in consistency. At the school, our children have Bible teaching; they have accountability with their peers in their daily lives; they have community and deeper fellowship for encouragement and growth; and they have spiritual mentors and youth pastors that come alongside them. In our family church time, we have worship and preaching from the Bible in English through the online services of a church in the US; we pray together and discuss the sermon and its application in our lives. We are careful to explain that normally a healthy church involvement would have all these components in one community, but we realize that this doesn’t happen on the mission field for our kids. I explain all this to underscore that church is very important to our family, but also complicated to explain to those that are not missionaries.
With this background in mind, here is the issue that has surfaced recently. Our local church has started a youth meeting which meets twice a month on Friday nights. Our children have been and continue to be invited to this church youth meeting, but it is on the same night that our kids have a Bible study/youth event through the school. The kids don’t relate as well to the church group compared to their MK and TCK peer group. We have talked with our kids about the church youth meeting, but they still do not have much of an interest in attending.
I am under pressure by our pastor to have our kids not go to the ministry events that they are a part of (and have been for years) and instead go to the church youth group meeting. Our kids don’t want to go to it. I have recently been told that it is an expectation that our kids would attend the church meeting. I don’t know what would happen if our kids still don’t go to it. I suppose the most extreme possibility would be revoking their membership of the church or asking us to leave our ministry with the church.
Everything that I read and believe to be good parenting given our context tells me not to force our kids to go to the church meeting when they don’t feel comfortable there, especially when they are growing spiritually and being ministered to at the youth ministry that is with their peers and in their heart language.
Am I off base here in saying, “Thanks for the invitation but our kids already have a ministry event that they go to.” Even if the church meeting was moved to a different night, I don’t think they would want to go. Not because they don’t like the people in the church, but because they feel so uncomfortable and are already having their needs met through the school’s ministry.
I was told by the pastor that as a missionary and elder of the church, it sets a poor example if my kids don’t go. And the expectation is that they would be there.
I want to say this situation is not that big of a deal, but I have seen missionaries ousted from national partnership for some pretty little things.
Does anyone have any thoughts regarding this situation?
