Psychology of Missionary Adjustment
The Psychology of Missionary Adjustment is a must-read for every missionary and anyone who would like to be a missionary. As the book’s name suggests, this book talks about the psychology behind missionary adjustment to the field. At first, I thought that I would not like this book, but I enjoyed it after finishing it, and I learned several things that will help me on the mission field.
One of the hardest things about being on the mission field is knowing what my goal is. With the construction job that I had in the states, I knew what was expected of me. I knew when I had succeeded, and more importantly, I knew when I failed. We have long-term goals on the mission field and understand what should be accomplished but often hard to transfer to day-to-day tasks. We can question our decisions and what we do every day, and that can throw us for a loop. This problem is one of the difficulties of missionary psychology. To help us through this, we should know our goals and have older and wiser missionaries checking up on us and ensuring that we are staying on track.
After just talking to a very wise missionary, I want to add that I should know that I have at least four main tasks that I should always be working on, Evangelism, Discipleship, Training, and Preaching. If I am doing those things, I will be doing an essential part of my job.
Another thing that I thought was very good about this book was that it talked about the goldfish effect. It talked about how many times your life as a missionary is always under scrutiny. You will not have privacy, and you will feel like every part of your life is being watched. This problem can lead to missionaries setting up barriers to where the country’s people cannot look into every aspect of their lives. This problem causes the native people to feel like you are not allowing them in your life and they will feel rejected. I must not do this in my life if I want to have a ministry that will impact the lives of those around me!
This blog post is part of my book review series. If you would like to read an article about the best books for missionaries to read, you can click here.
