SYZYGY MISSIONS SUPPORT NETWORK

(with respectful acknowledgements to the AA)

Earlier this year I was at a conference where the speaker tried an icebreaker.  ‘If your organisation were an animal’, he asked, ‘what would sort of animal would it be?’ Everyone around my table was studiously avoiding eye contact, trying hard not to go first.  I was muttering to myself ‘I hate things like this.  I’m just not creative enough for this’ when he asked his second icebreaker: ‘If your organisation were a car, what sort of car would it be?’

And it instantly hit me – Syzygy is an AA van*.  We help broken down mission workers.  We fix the problem.  We get you where you’re going.  And though you might only see one person when you deal with Syzygy, there’s a whole team of experts behind him.

Within a matter of minutes I had refined this image further, to detail the types of services we provide:

Roadside assistance: We’re there for you when you break down.  Advice on stress, debriefing, mentoring and hospitality can help get you back on the road.

Relay: Wherever you’re going, we’ll help get you there!  We provide practical  support, from lending you a car to advice on preparing for re-entry, with online guides to missions on our website.

Homestart: When things start going wrong in the field, we can help by providing pastoral visits, problem solving, crisis management and relief staffing.

As a result of that revelation, we are changing our image.  We think that this imagery fully encapsulates our ethos of help, support and practical problem solving.  In future we’ll be using a photo of a flashing orange light as our logo, and we’ve adopted a new tagline:

THE SUPPORT SERVICE FOR MISSION WORKERS

I did think that ‘rescue service’ or ‘emergency service’ sounded more punchy, but on reflection we decided that this doesn’t accurately reflect the fact that much of what we do is not done in a crisis, but is about preventing a crisis happening.

A new image, but the same service – striving to keep mission workers in good physical, emotional and spiritual condition so that they are able to at carrying out their God-given mandate.  Our new flyer is out this week.  Click on the image to the left to read it.  If you’d like some copies to display at church or in your workplace, please email tim@syzygy.org.uk

*Other breakdown services are available.  Actually I should have chosen RAC because at least they’re orange like Syzygy.

Teamwork is something we all think we know about, but most of us work as part of teams which do not operate at peak capacity, or are at worst completely dysfunctional.  I’ve been part of them myself, so I know.  So how do we get to a place where we are happy with our team, get along with our colleagues, manage change effectively and cope well with the unexpected?

One way is to recognise that we have differences.  Not superficial ones like whether we prefer tea or coffee, or follow United or City, but fundamental ones like whether we can see the big picture or spot the tiny mistakes.  Failure to appreciate these significant differences can lead to serious misunderstandings between us that can hamper our ability to function effectively as a team.

These problems can be exacerbated by cross-cultural  issues.  I will say more about this on another occasion but it is always helpful to remember that others in our team may have fundamentally different  understandings of how we relate together, what we’re doing, and even how the common language we use works.

There are also simple personality differences which mean there are people we naturally relate to well and others we don’t hit it off with.  This is not necessarily a failure.  Someone once calculated that in any random group of 12 people there will be at least one whom you don’t like.  Liking is not the issue, but if we’re in the same team together we have to make it work.

In his excellent book Global Member Care: the Pearls and Perils of Good Practice (2011, William Carey Library, Pasadena CA, ISBN 978-0-87808-113-4) Dr Kelly O’Donnell points out that people in your team will fall into one of four groups: kindred spirit, collegial, enigmatic and irritating.  These are people you love to be with, and spend time out of work with, people you get along with ok, people you tend to avoid because you don’t really understand them, and the ones you really wish God would move somewhere else!

The first two groups are not an issue because you can work with them well.  The third you will have a tendency to misunderstand and the fourth you can frequently fall out with.  These last two groups are the ones that require most effort and emotional energy to deal with, but if we persist, can lead to fruitful working relationships even though we may never become friends.  The annoying people are probably sent by God to be the grain of sand which produces the pearl!

It is important to stress that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with finding a person annoying.  That may simply be a character clash, but it will be helpful to ponder whether contact with that person exposes a personality issue in you which needs to be worked on.  I have found in the past that persevering in developing a relationship with an annoying colleague has helped me to appreciate other less obvious qualities and has led to lasting friendship.

There is an American Indian proverb which says ‘Never judge a man till you have walked a mile in his moccasins.’ In order words, rather than complaining because people at work are difficult to get on with, try to understand why they are difficult.  Realising that there may be a reason why a colleague is hard to get along with may be the first step in learning to get along with him.

This ability to transcend personal dislikes for the sake of the team is what distinguishes excellence from mediocrity.  The United players may not actually like each other or their manager, but their teamwork is excellent.

Last October we featured OSCAR, an amazingly useful website with all sorts of resources and handy information for mission workers.  Another feature of Oscar which we didn’t discuss on that occasion is the OSCARactive interactive community.  The words ‘interactive community’ might speak dread to those of you who are reluctant users of the internet, but this social media tool is really easy to use and is a good resource for connecting mission workers.  There are over 300 people working all over the world in this community and it’s growing rapidly.  You might even be able to connect with someone you didn’t previously know working in the same town as you.  I have.

On one level it functions a bit like Facebook: you can connect with friends, message them, be prompted when it’s their birthday and send them ‘gifts’, but the added advantage is that the only people in this community are those actively involved in missions, so we’ve all got something in common right away.  Members are spread round the world, although you might easily bump into old friends from Bible college through this community.  There is also a live chat function for those whose work leaves them feeling a bit lonely, and online meetings are arranged.  You can uploads photos and videos too.  I’ve made new friends in missions through this community.

You can post any needs you have and people are able to help each other out with advice.  I often post the availability of the Syzygy car when nobody’s using it, and usually it’s booked out within days.  You can advertise your own events, or look at a comprehensive calendar of what’s on.  There are a large number of groups set up for those with particular interests, and I’m a member of several.   They include finance, mission-minded church leaders, ICT and Mentors for mission.  I’ve made some very strategic links with people through these.  You can also join a discussion – an open forum which gets started when one member asks a question, or makes a statement, and others support/critique/argue.  Recent subjects include Fair Trade: Think Again, Doing Mission With a Disability, Useful Apps, and Measuring the Success of Integral Mission.

I’ve not illustrated this article with screen dumps as the web pages have lots of photos of members on them, just like Facebook, and I don’t want to be responsible for inadvertently compromising anyone’s security.  But give the site a visit, you may make some good connections through it.  Go to http://oscaractive.ning.com/ or just click here:

My host for my week-long trip to Ndola was my good friend Lene Pedersen, who many will know following her speaking tour in Britain last year, and it was great to spend time with her, get to know her fiancé Dale, and help them prepare for their wedding next month.  Lene continues to be one of the three directors at Lifeline in Zambia – a ministry which we featured last August which provides home-based care and support for people suffering from AIDS/HIV.  LiZ continues to develop and it was an encouragement to visit premises which I had not been to before and see how well suited they are to managing the work and training the volunteers.  There is also a commitment to take on more highly qualified staff which is already having benefits for the work.

I returned for the first time in seven years to Kaniki Bible College, which trains church leaders for the Apostolic Church in Zambia.  There has been a lot of staff turnover since then, and only the Zambian workers whom I knew remain there.  All the overseas staff have changed, and the college is led by a new Zambian Principal supported by two other African faculty members.  There are currently 55 students and there is also a new BA course.  There are plans to build a new classroom block to meet the increased number of students.

Also on the Kaniki campus is African Quest, a missions training and discipleship programme for young people with which I have been involved since its beginning 15 years ago.  Many fine young people have been through this programme and gone on to be involved in missions in a variety of ways, and AQ is currently led by two of its former students, Tim & Gemma Mills.  This six month gap course is currently recruiting for next year and I will feature it in more detail later this summer.

I also spent some time with the new leaders of School Mission for Christ International This fantastic ministry employs Zambian pastors to go into schools and preach the gospel.  Thousands of students have met Jesus in this way, and teachers testify to the return of stolen property, decline in the use of drugs, and falling pregnancy rates as a result.  This powerful witness leads many teachers also to give their lives to Christ.  SMFCI is looking to expand both within Zambia and to neighbouring countries.

Near to Kaniki is Jabulani Children’s Village, where Tom & Ruth Dufke took over an abandoned farm 13 years ago with a view to developing a home for needy children.  There are currently 18 children living at the site, in small, ‘family’-type cottages.  With a view to maintaining financial independence, the village is partly funded by a huge sawmill operation, which now employs 65 local people, thereby keeping them out of poverty and providing food and education for their children.  There are also training facilities for the community on site, such as a sewing college, and there is a clinic to meet the needs of the local community.

While visiting these various ministries and catching up with old friends, I was able to spend a lot of time encouraging mission workers, helping them understand the causes of stress in their lives, and planning how Syzygy can help to support them.  Like many overseas mission workers, they have a number of challenges to face, and it was a joy to be able to help them find ways of dealing with them.

If you are involved with Christian work, there comes a time when it’s necessary to keep supporters up to date with what’s happening. Whilst modern technology provides various ways of communicating, it still means that most people send a regular form of newsletter. Whilst some have natural skills in writing, others struggle with this whole area of communication.

As the Alumni Co-ordinator for a Mission Training College, I have the privilege of receiving over 350 newsletters per year!  You can imagine that there is every conceivable type of newsletter that arrives on my desk, but the great thing is that each one is a reflection of the person who has sent it and a small window into each situation that they are living through.

It is not an easy job to be able to communicate all that you are living through onto one sheet of paper (or one brief email), choosing how to balance both the good things and the challenging aspects of life.  Communicating reality without being too negative or too positive is a skill that often develops over time.

Given that you send the newsletter to a diverse list of supporters, some of whom you know well and some who you don’t know very well, is a challenge in itself.  I don’t think there can be instructions for the ‘perfect’ newsletter but here are a few pointers that may help you communicate the things that you want to impart.

The Title – Having a letter that is clearly marked by some title is good, perhaps a memorable rhyme or phrase using the surname of the authors of the letter. One of the best examples I’ve seen was  ‘The Heintz Catch-up’ written by the Heintz family! It is also good to see a prominent indication of which organisation and country the writers are working with (this may be different for those who are in ‘sensitive’ situations … we will tackle this later).

The Body of the Letter – Most newsletters take up one or two sides of A4 at most. Some will fill every corner and have you reading the extra notes written in the margin all the way around the outside of the page. It’s good to write enough detail to involve the reader whilst also keeping it ‘readable’. Most folk include photos, which always brightens up the letter. It’s good to have one of the family occasionally, but perhaps not necessary every time.  I was very pleased to see that one family I write too added a photo of themselves in their newsletter recently as I had been writing to them for four years or more and I didn’t know what they or their children looked like.  Now I stand some chance of spotting them if they come to visit.  It also seems to help with praying for people if readers can picture them.

The Family’s Viewpoint – Some families get each member to write a paragraph or have a children’s section. This can be good as the view of life is often quite different for the job holder, as it is for the spouse or the 8 year old child.  It also means that readers remember the needs of the whole family and not just the work that they are there to do.

Situation ethics – Involving readers in your situations is good. There is one couple who have a section called ‘Going Deeper’ where they pose several questions asking ‘what would you do in this situation?’.  Most of the time there is no right or wrong answer but it allows readers to see some of the day to day dilemma’s that you are faced with and it gives them a good insight into living and working cross culturally, allowing them to pause and consider.

Living in a Sensitive Situation – Having a role which you can’t be so open about (e.g. because of security), provides challenges for communicating through newsletters. Some organisations give guidelines on what you should and shouldn’t write, along with instructions about using secure email. Some give very little. A few points of advice for sensitive situations is to never mention names (of places or people), to avoid using overtly Christian words or terms (like mission and evangelism) and to always think what the consequences might be if your newsletter got into the wrong hands. It’s good to explain to your readers that writing certain things might endanger your family or your work. The reader then knows to take a step back and read ‘between the lines’ in order to discern how things are really going. It is ironic that those who face the most difficulty in communicating their news due to their situation are often those folk who need the most support and prayer.

How Regularly? – Having a regular pattern to sending your newletters is good. The traditional stance has been to send a full letter 3 or 4 times per year. However, the ease of online communication means that you can send a brief update more often enabling your supporters to walk your journey with you, rather than only meet you at the staging posts along the way. Some people do this monthly, the keen ones weekly! Beware, however, that more often doesn’t always mean more interest. Some readers will be fatigued by the amount of communication if you send it too often.

Prayer Points – One of the main reasons of writing is to ask for prayer, and having a few ‘prayer points’ is a really helpful way of guiding the thoughts and prayers of supporters.  It is encouraging to see how God has answered previous prayers so having some points of thanksgiving is good too. This also helps the writer to stop and give thanks rather than just have a rolling ‘shopping list’ of prayer.

Whilst not comprehensive, maybe this has given you enough inspiration to get writing. Perhaps my final point would be to encourage you to remain true to yourself. Don’t try to dress it up too much but just write about what you are doing and what you are facing. That way your readers will get a true window into your situation and will feel privileged to join you on the ups and downs of your journey.

This article was written by Cheryl Frith and originally appeared on the Oscar website – http://www.oscar.org.uk.  It is reproduced with permission.

We believe that prayer is the number one need of every mission worker.  A regular feature of St Paul’s letters was a request for prayer that the gospel would spread through his ministry.  If he needed prayer as part of his missionary endeavours, how much more do we!  As J O Fraser observed when he realised that the breakthroughs in his ministry to the Lisu people of China were directly linked to the prayer of his supporters in the UK:

Solid, lasting missionary work is done on our knees.

So we’re committed to praying, and helping others to pray, for our mission partners worldwide.

For this reason, we’ve set up the Syzygy prayer network for mission workers with prayer needs.  If this is you, just email prayerrequests@syzygy.org.uk and your message will be automatically forwarded to everyone who’s in our prayer network.  Please don’t send us your regular prayer letters – just a short paragraph to cover your emergency needs.  Remember that we’ve got no control over what people do with it, so you might need to be discreet in what you say.  Those in CANs who are concerned about the security risk of being overtly linked to Syzygy might like to email our colleague Chris who will pass messages on to us.

If you’d like to join our prayer network and pray for world mission needs, just email pray@syzygy.org.uk and we’ll add you to the circulation list.  Please don’t forward emails or pin them on noticeboards as there may be security implications for the sender.  You can also find specific prayer needs on our homepage, particularly on the Featured Ministry entries.

For those of you who’d like to pray for particular countries or issues, we recommend the World Prayer Map.  It is updated regularly by a variety of mission partners across the world, and can be accessed by country or by topic.  Go to www.worldprayermap.co.uk to access it.

OSCAR is an online mission support service which has been in existence for over 10 years. Its broad remit is to provide information, advice and resources for all those involved or interested in world mission. This covers anyone who falls into the following categories:

• Missionaries and Christian workers on the field
• Prospective missionaries and Christian workers
• Missionaries and Christian workers recently returned from the field
• Christians open to the possibility of working cross-culturally
• Supporters of missionaries, Christian workers and world mission in general
• Non-UK Christians coming to the UK as missionaries or Christian workers
• Anyone responsible for ‘resourcing’ any of the above

OSCAR began when founder Mike Frith returned from the field having served with MAF as a pilot. In his time overseas meeting and serving missionaries, Mike was surprised by the lack of support that so many of them had … not just financial but in so many other different areas. Many of these areas boiled down to either poor information or communication. With the advent of the internet, Mike saw an opportunity to improve this by creating a central service that would encourage both information sharing and communication between all the parties involved in mission. Hence, OSCAR was born.

The OSCAR website has a vast amount of information across a 1000+ page website on almost any area you can think of related to mission. It also has its own mission-focused online social network, which gives the opportunity to interact and discuss with others in the community. Alongside all the activity online, OSCAR also provides mission advice and opportunities at various Christian events, including New Wine.

So … whatever you’re looking for in mission, ask OSCAR! www.oscar.org.uk

Welcome to the revamped Syzygy website and blog!  I’m Tim, and I’m one of the directors of Syzygy.  One way or another, I’ve been involved in supporting missionaries for 15 years, since I realised that too many of them are either coming home for entirely avoidable reasons, or heroically labouring on under difficult circumstances.  Syzygy is resolved to do what we can to  support such people, help them continue in their mission, and become more effective.  And more importantly, we hope to encourage their sending churches and organisations to get behind them to do in the long term what Syzygy’s doing in the short term.

I hope that through this blog we will be able to stimulate discussion around various issues concerning cross-cultural workers, and draw more people into our ever-expanding network of volunteer supporters.  Whether you go, pray, encourage, finance, or support, I hope you’ll find something here for you.

Syzygy’s directors all have first-hand missions experience, between us having served short-, medium- and long-term in four continents, and although we’re all now based in England, we all continue to be involved in our own ministries to support missions overseas.  Our mission draws its name from our belief that global mission is a task whose burden should not fall exclusively on those who go, but should be shared by the whole church.  The word Syzygy – Greek for “yoked together” – conveys the image of oxen ploughing together, and the more oxen there are in a team, the easier it gets.

Join us!

For information on how to get involved with us, go to the CONTACT US page.