Crisis in Missions
Over the past 20 years, there have been an increasing number of people leaving the field for reasons that could potentially have been prevented or avoided! Over a 10-year period, the average U.S. Mission agency is losing nearly half of its people. The low retention agency is losing two thirds of its people, and more than half of these are coming home sooner than expected for reasons that potentially could have been avoided.
The 4 Consequences
David Seaton, retired best practices manager for Shell Oil Products, gave four consequences of unnecessary, avoidable turnover:
- Added Costs for the recruitment and training of replacements.
- Loss of Synergy, relationships and momentum, which will take at least 3 to 5 years to regain.
- Loss of Souls coming to Christ until a replacement is recruited, trained and “up to speed.”
- Detriment to the Reputation of Agency, impacting its ability to recruit replacements and new missionaries.
Best Practices
From 2002 to 2004, the Mission Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance coordinated and sponsored a 22-nation study on missionary retention, the ability of a mission agency to keep its people. Based on a study of 65 mission agencies in the United States alone and representing 14,000+ US missionaries, seven best practices were identified which high retention agencies are doing. They have resulted in increased retention of their personnel in comparison with low and average retention agencies.
Of the 7 Practices for mission organizations, “Good Leadership Practices” was identified as perhaps the most significant in relation to retention. Even secular studies show that personnel retention is directly related to the way people are treated by their supervisor. Supervision that follows through, proactively supports in problem solving and gives feedback is extremely important in keeping missionaries on the field.
Two Conclusions
Conclusion No.1 - It is more cost effective to increase the time and budget allotted for the support and care of the existing missionary.
Conclusion No.2 – Implement Good Leadership Practices, Support and Ongoing Development.
CMI: Multiplying Mission Impact
At Coaching Mission International we believe that one of the most powerful ways to increase mission effectiveness is to invest in leaders who are already on the front lines, reaching the nations for Jesus. CMI provides leaders with the development, proactive support and feedback they need to stay on the field; factors which too often mission organizations are unable to adequately provide. In addition, we can provide training to equip a mission’s leaders with coaching skills themselves, as well as raise up coaches within their organization. In such ways CMI both helps support leaders personally and multiplies their impact.
Making Coaching Available & Affordable
QUESTION: How can CMI make high-quality, professional level coaching available and affordable to front-line missionary leaders with limited resources?
Partnering for Mission
CMI was founded to come along side missions agencies with professional coaching expertise. In fact, CMI was born as a result of an invitation by Youth with a Mission (YWAM) to bring coaching to their leaders in
As a result, CMI put the required infrastructure in place and gathered excellent, professionally-trained coaches with cross-cultural experience in order to put them to work coaching YWAM Asia’s top 100 missionary leaders. The first phase of this project focused on leaders serving in South Asia. These leaders oversee 2000 thousand field staff engaged in every kind of frontline ministry among the unreached. The initial evaluation of this first phase produced astonishing results. You can read a summary here:
You can see from the Summary that as a result of this first phase, YWAM has asked CMI to expand the program with the objective that coaching will eventually be available to all their frontline missionaries, not just the leaders. This is how partnering can work! We seek to serve the needs within the organizational, geographical and cultural context of the partnering organization.
A core objective in all we do is to build a strong base for sustainable internal coaching for partnering organizations so that the benefits of effective, transformational coaching support will be available to every frontline missionary. In other words, we are trying to empower our partners and work ourselves out of a job!
Other partnerships have formed. If you would like to know more about how CMI can partner with your organization to bring the benefits of professional coaching, contact us today.
