By Anna McShane — Dear Pastor Jerry,

I was hanging my laundry at the lovely beach lodge where we vacationed last week when the global worker who was staying upstairs came down with his trash. He hung out for a while, chatting. “You know,” he said, “Last week when we got here, I was so burned out I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just hid in our room and hung out on the porch. Yeah, I needed to be away from people.”

I was beginning to think this guy knew how to talk about vacations when, in the next breath, he blew it.

“We’re here for 10 days, and then because of the way our frequent flyer miles worked, we have to stay a few more days so we’re going up to the top of the island to a hotel. But one of our church members picked up the tab for that …” 

You see, if you are a global worker (or any ministry worker) it is not OK to spend money on vacation. Classic ministry issue. Vacation is something ministry people don’t take very often, and when they do, they worry about what people will think. Vacationing in a place like this with a gorgeous beach is a dirty little secret that you can only indulge in if someone else is paying the bill.

And even then, maybe it’s not “OK.”

Did you ever wonder why global workers don’t write about their vacations? Well, there are several reasons.

One is that the perception of the church at home, those giving the support, seem to think global workers should be, well, working. After all, they sent them out to reach the unreached, and that’s a big job. There must be sermons to prepare, Bible classes to teach, people to witness to.

Actually, very few global workers prepare sermons and many do not teach Bible classes – at least not big ones. More often Bible study happens one-on-one and “witnessing” looks very different here than at home. Ministry is far more organic, to use a trendy word. And, with apologies to the pastors preparing weekly sermons, it’s more exhausting.

Ministry happens in the midst of daily life. Life means markets, food, banking, transportation, fixing the broken plumbing, drinking endless tea or coffee with the neighbors, and a host of other things that are just life. In all those situations there are people who are far, far from the Lord. So as life happens, so does friendship, encouragement, questioning, counseling, building bridges that might possibly lead, down the road, to a discussion about Truth. Yes some global workers have specific jobs – they teach, they doctor patients, they counsel, they fly planes, or they develop micro-businesses. But even then they are in ministry 24/7 while they are doing the job that gives them a visa into their target country.

A second problem is that many global workers live in places where a vacation looks exotic. Like our beach! Palm trees, warm sand, blue water, mountains, and valleys. Absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. Looks like something out of a tourism brochure. What you don’t see is the piles of garbage in the streets, the electric wires hanging askew, and the vendors clamoring for our attention. But if I send pictures of where we “vacationed” it will raise questions of whether we should be spending support funds on this. The fact that it’s cheap doesn’t seem to translate. It looks expensive.

If global workers don’t take vacations, though, it’s disastrous. The pressure of living cross culturally, thinking and working in another language, living with constant ambiguity, often working in circumstances where they have to somewhat “hide” their Kingdom goals, is highly stressful. They not only have a world around them deeply needing the Lord, but they have co-workers and teammates that they probably didn’t choose. Often those teammates are from different home countries with different heart languages than the global worker from your church. The possibility for misunderstanding is high. Add to that the pressure of making sure children get a proper education, being extra careful with water and food to avoid illness, and in many places, just dealing with dirt on a daily basis.

Why am I writing this to you, Pastor? Because my mission organization requires me to take vacation, but I need the home church to ask me regularly if I am doing that. What am I doing to renew and refresh my mind and soul and body? That might be more important than asking me for a list of the people I led to the Lord this year, or how many Bible classes I’m teaching. I need the affirmation from the church that a few weeks each year should be spent some place where I can rest, read, sleep, relax, recharge, and most of all do NO ministry.

It’s a dilemma. Global workers feel guilty when they aren’t working. Global workers crash and burn if they don’t take significant breaks. Pine Creek church can help keep us here by encouraging us to take a vacation, and then asking, genuinely, if we went to a nice beach or mountain cabin and enjoyed ourselves. We’d be happy to send pictures if we know we won’t get judged.

Sorry, I just have a big guilt complex. I bet I’m not the only global worker with that problem.