Abstract: AW Emad points out several ways in which fear can lead missionaries to be unfaithful, even if unintentionally, to the mission Christ has given to the church. The fear of being sent home can lead them to neglect the church, refuse to evangelize, and avoid biblical discipleship. However, failing to carry out our mission faithfully is far worse than being sent home.
As a missionary laboring in a closed and hostile context, I understand the weight of living under watchful eyes. Conversations are monitored. The use of technology can be risky. Neighbors are suspicious, and authorities can make life difficult. The simplest task—visiting a friend, reading a Bible in public, or gathering with local believers—may be fraught with danger.
It’s like living under a permanent surveillance camera. We must guard our words in public, disguise our location online, be conscientious of our routines, and train our children to be discreet about what they say at school.
This isn’t paranoia. It’s what’s required in many places if you want to stay for any length of time and have the opportunity to share the gospel. However, in such circumstances, missionaries can easily give in to a growing sense of fear, a fear that can control their thoughts, words, and actions. And because of this fear—sometimes disguised as “wisdom”—missionaries are tempted to make decisions that unintentionally compromise their ministry. And that’s far worse than being sent home.
How Fear Affects the Mission
Consider several ways that fear affects the way some missionaries carry out the church’s mission.
Neglecting the Church
The New Testament knows nothing of faithful Christian living apart from the church, and Hebrews 10:25 exhorts us not to neglect meeting together. The gathering of the local church is where believers are nourished, protected, and equipped. That’s true for missionaries too. Missionaries aren’t some special class of Christians who have the freedom to neglect gathering with God’s people.
Yet missionaries can be tempted to avoid church involvement for security reasons. Some live for years in foreign contexts without committing to a local body of believers. They may argue that the churches around them are too weak, too divided, or too different from what they’re used to. Others avoid membership because they fear associating with a church will expose them to government scrutiny or bring problems for the local believers.
Yet even when the danger is real, the cost of neglecting the church is greater than the cost of going home. The missionary who does this is communicating to new believers that they don’t need the body of Christ. But a Christian without a church is like a branch cut off from the vine, like an arm disconnected from the body. Being deported may remove a missionary from the field, but neglecting the church removes him from one of Christ’s primary means of grace in his life.
Refusing to Evangelize
When Paul exhorted Timothy to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim. 4:5), he wasn’t giving him an optional assignment. Proclaiming Christ is at the heart of the missionary task. Missionaries are sent to places with little-to-no access to the gospel to preach the Word. But the fear of being sent home can silence their witness.
Some missionaries learn the language, build friendships, and embed themselves in the community—yet they rarely or never speak of Christ. They wait for the “perfect opportunity.” They tell themselves they’re “building long-term trust.” Some say they have come primarily to pray. However, beneath these explanations often lies fear: fear of deportation, fear of exposure, or fear of losing access.
What good is it to stay ten years in a country if we barely open our mouths and proclaim the gospel? Is that being faithful to Christ, to the people we were sent to serve, or to the churches that sent us? To be sent home because you boldly proclaimed the gospel isn’t failure; it’s Christ-honoring obedience. This is far better than staying for decades while rarely proclaiming Christ.
Avoiding Biblical Discipleship
Jesus commands us in the Great Commission not simply to make converts but to make disciples, and this requires “teaching them to obey all that I have commanded” (Matt. 28:19–20). Yet some missionaries see their role as “sowing seeds” while imagining that someone else, someday, will do the hard work of discipleship. Other missionaries reduce discipleship to a handful of lessons from select texts taught only in one-on-one interactions. But teaching new believers “all that Christ commands” includes teaching them to gather with a local church.
Again, we can understand why a missionary would take this approach in a hostile context. It limits the missionary’s exposure, and the new believer’s, to those they don’t trust. But evangelism without discipleship is incomplete, and discipleship without the church is anemic. Following this “discipleship” model is far worse than being sent home for investing in a handful of believers who gather regularly.
Facing Our Fears
Fear whispers to the missionary, “If you speak, you’ll be exposed. If you gather, you’ll be deported. If you disciple, you’ll lose your place here.”
But these whispers are lies. Fear promises to protect us, but in reality, it starves our faith and feeds our doubt. The real tragedy is not to be sent home, but to stay on the field while being silent, isolated, and unfaithful to the mission.
Faithfulness isn’t fundamentally measured by how long you remain in-country, but by how you proclaim Christ, invest in his church, and courageously disciple others. If obedience forces you to go home, so be it—better to go home with a clean conscience than to remain with a compromised witness. There are worse things than going home.