Missionaries have long been known as spiritual giants of the faith. Even as recent efforts have been to minimize this branding and as more and more organizations commit to incorporating missionary care into their programs, there are still remnants of this stigma. Stigma is a really negative word and I use it here, not because being called a spiritual giant is bad per se, but because the ramifications of that label are exceedingly negative.
At face value, being called a spiritual giant seems like a compliment. But the result is the assumption that they don’t need care. For so long, missionaries have been left to fend for themselves. Even as we recognize the err of that line of thinking and have begun reaching out to missionaries, there are nooks and crannies of that which often go overlooked. And hiding in one corner is the MK.
We make assumptions about missionary kids.
- We assume that they have good relationships with their parents.
- We assume that they like being missionary kids.
- We assume that their parents know how to share the gospel with their own children.
- We assume that making friends and learning language comes easy to them.
But when we unpack these assumptions, we realize that maybe MKs are in great need of ministry.
MKs relationship with their parents
The title “Spiritual Giant” comes with a lot of weight, including being the perfect parent. Gentle but authoritative, commanding of respect but never exasperates their children, and all of this during the stressors of living on the field, transitioning between locations, and having little to no network or community from a common cultural background to help with parenting. When we allow missionaries to be fallible humans, we have to accept that their relationship with their kids could have some tension. And if there’s tension, where does that MK turn?
The contexts for missionaries varies across the board, but regretfully very few MKs report having as rich of a community as they could have hoped for.
MKs who don’t like being MKs
Most often, missionary kids find themselves along for a ride they didn’t sign up for. While parents hope they can cultivate a life their children love, sometimes passports end up slipped in random trashcans on the way to the international gate. There are a multitude of reasons MKs might be struggling with their parent’s career choice, from the number of good-byes, to the lack of opportunities, to resentment of the fishbowl life.
The unevangelised MK
This one may seem weird. Why wouldn’t a missionary be able to share the gospel with their own children? For one thing, not all missionaries are evangelists. People may be on the field to do finance, technical services, publications. They didn’t necessarily sign up to be a missionary because they felt gifted at telling people about Jesus. Even missionaries who do the work of evangelising have been trained to do that for a specific audience, and their own children were probably not covered in that training.
If an MK hasn’t had the gospel shared with them, it’s probably because their parents didn’t know how. Stateside, a lot of Christian parents outsource the evangelism of their kids to the church, so intentionally reaching their own children was probably never modeled for them. They may have overlooked the need for intentionality in this and assume their kids would just pick it up.
MKs struggle learning language and making friends
The gospel isn’t the only thing assumed that kids will pick up. Kids may be quicker in general to learn language and make friends, but a lot of that depends on context and personality. Kids who are shy or experience social anxiety (very common in MKs) may be reluctant to step out and make friends, especially with language and culture barriers present. This results in lonely kids who long for community but have trouble achieving it.
As much as living in exotic locations doing the Lord’s work sounds like a very lucky way to live, it comes with it’s own hardships even in the best of circumstances. Over 80% of Third Culture Kids (which includes MKs) experience depression and anxiety in college. This status quo is unacceptable and we need to make proactive changes instead of assumptions to protect the mental health of our kids.
