What does it look like to make Christ known in the hard places? For Jeff and Michaela*, two of our professionals serving overseas, a lot of things come to mind. But integrating work and faith, they say, is an indispensable part of their witness. Perhaps, for some, this approach seems a bit too simplistic – expected, even. According to Jeff, however, this mindset is important, especially because it is not always a given.
“Many people aren’t taught how to use their vocations for Christ and live very compartmentalized lives,” Jeff explains. “But as Christians, we ought to thoughtfully consider how to live as Jesus’ disciples in our day-to-day work.”
This holistic approach may be rare in cross-cultural work, but for Interserve, it’s been embedded in the culture from the beginning. For more than 170 years, our people have engaged work as a way to bless the nations – and as a form of worship that proclaims Christ’s worth to a watching world.
And, of course, they have embraced their professions as opportunities to build deep relationships with others. As our workers around the world interact with patients, students, peers, and customers, they establish trust and communicate something unique about who Jesus is.
For Jeff and Michaela, this means offering their best each day on the job, being Christlike in their interactions with others and setting up systems with long-term sustainability in mind.
“Although we see ourselves serving here for a while, we want to set things up so that locals aren’t depending on us. Our visa situation can change at any given moment, which makes our lives here unstable – whereas locals are probably going to live here their whole lives,” Michaela explains. “If we don’t train locals as leaders and make our efforts reproducible, all of our work will go away when we leave. But if we train locals well, then they can build upon our work and perhaps even bring it into other communities.”
In addition to living out this holistic, sustainable approach personally, Jeff and Michaela have helped local brothers and sisters to do the same. While investing in followers of Christ at work, Jeff has taken into consideration both their professional and spiritual growth. He has asked them to think about what it might look like to live incarnationally with one of the people groups in their region, and he has also encouraged them to intentionally invest in the next generation of leaders.
“When I’m doing faculty development, I teach our faculty members that they are in a position to offer both hands-on training and discipleship, and I encourage them to plan for the future,” he explains. “For example, I’ll say, ‘Imagine you’re training a group of young doctors for two years. What would you teach them in those 24 months? What would you want them to learn about being a Christian physician?’”
“This really isn’t an original idea,” Jeff adds. “It’s the discipleship model that Christ followed. He established this principle of multiplication. If you want to be more fruitful, then you ought to train others for leadership rather than doing everything yourself.”
*Names changed.