Solving Scalability and Stability: Missionaries
Why We Appoint Missionaries.
This past weekend, we completed orientation sessions for our incoming cohort of missionaries—always a highlight of the year. These sessions mark the beginning of an intentional journey of training and formation. Our missionaries form the core of LIFT’s bi-vocational family of disciple-makers.
We introduced the missionary appointment five years ago to address several key challenges we faced as we scaled.
Rethinking Responsibility and Authority
In many churches, spiritual authority and accountability are tied to team roles, or more concerning, their staff position. When people stop serving or switch teams, they often drift, losing clear responsibilities, relationships, and accountability. In our observation, if someone’s engagement was only tied to position on a team, it made long-term leadership development difficult to sustain as people navigate life transitions. We needed a way to root someone’s place in the church in their identity and calling, not just their position.
The missionary appointment provided that anchor. It clarified that authority and responsibility in our church flow from someone’s identity in Christ, shaped through training and equipping. As a result, people can step in and out of specific roles without losing their core responsibility: to multiply disciples.
Creating Stability in a Transient Community
Our context—primarily among university students—is highly transient. This mobility opens incredible doors for the gospel, but it also creates relational instability. The constant coming and going wears down disciple-makers, who often feel they’re rebuilding community from scratch every year.
This transience is one reason professional campus ministry is often short-lived, typically less than five years. But it’s not a campus-only problem. Every community experiences change and the relational confusion that comes with it.
By establishing a missionary cohort, we clarified who was part of our covenant family for the long term. That clarity created stability for those committed to ongoing discipleship, even as others came and went.
Moving from One-to-One to Mesh Discipleship
Eventually, disciple-making must shift from a one-to-one approach to a mesh approach. It takes the strength of a whole community to form a mature disciple.
Our missionaries function as a peer community, encouraging, supporting, and walking with each other. While many were originally mentored by older missionaries, over time these relationships mature into something more fraternal than hierarchical.
The missionary call creates a context for deep friendships shaped by shared values, vision, and mission.
Slow Growth, Deep Roots
We’ve always believed the whole church is called to make disciples who make disciples. But shifting an entire community toward a countercultural vision like missional disciple-making isn’t fast or easy.
The missionary appointment allowed us to slow the process down, focusing on a smaller group of qualified individuals instead of trying to move everyone at once. This slow, patient development has enabled us to build a large, resilient missionary community.
It also gave us a clearly defined pool of individuals and teams from which to raise up new church planters. These missionaries deeply understand and embody our culture. We pray that if any were commissioned to a new city, they could start a new family of Jesus followers who reproduce disciples.
Becoming a Missionary
To be appointed as a missionary at LIFT, a person must:
Complete an undergraduate degree and/or have a reasonable prospect of long-term employment (in other words, be a stable individual).
Complete the Simple Church Apprenticeship, our foundational discipleship training.
Be a covenanted member of our church.
Summer Training Overview
Our missionary training this summer includes three components:
1. Personal Formation Readings
The Gospel Comes with a House Key - Fantastic book on hospitality.
The Bait of Satan - Every leader experiences conflict/bitterness, this simple book is tremendously helpful to framing healthy approaches to conflict.
Everyone Sent - My book that outlines our approach to disciple-making and church planting.
We cycle in/out other books
2. Self-Directed Video Courses (via Engage Spaces)
Hermeneutics
Gospel as Worldview (Critical Theory, Sexuality, Justice)
Christology
3. Cohorts
Gender-specific coaching groups led by deployed missionaries to discuss and review self-directed study as well as receive personal mentorship.
4. In-Person Classes
In-person training focused on missionary lifestyle, theology, discipleship, and leadership.
Why Do We Call Them Missionaries?
Isn’t the word “missionary” a bit colonial or imperialistic?
This isn’t the space for a full treatment of colonial missionary history, but a comment is warranted.
I don’t subscribe to the blanket condemnation of colonialism that is so common in contemporary discourse.
Were all missionary efforts during the colonial era good or honouring to Christ? Of course not. Like all human endeavours, they were susceptible to corruption.
Yet the legacy of missionaries across the centuries is inspiring. It’s a legacy of courage, cultural engagement, and sacrificial love that we can—and should—learn from. One of the theologians who has most shaped my thinking was himself a colonial-era missionary: Lesslie Newbigin, who served in India under British rule.
Ultimately, I believe the Church must rediscover a vibrant, global vision of missions—local, national, and international. The missionary appointment is one small part of how we’re responding to that call.