With more Americans working overseas, especially in Asia, leaders connected with foreign churches want mission boards and others stateside to devote more resources to their thriving congregations, in order to serve the needs of expatriate Christians.
“The world has become such a global village, and that necessitates all mission bodies to rethink their philosophy of international church ministries,” says Louella Gould, who is director of women’s ministries at the Evangelical Church of Bangkok where her husband, Bob, is the senior pastor.
“For many church and mission-sending bodies, focusing on this group is not at the top of the list of priorities,” she says. For example, Gould says, there are at least 350,000 English-speaking expatriates in Bangkok. “This group has be come a tremendous opportunity for ministry and evangelism.”
TEMPORARY ASSIGNMENT: Stretching from Islamabad to Istanbul, Ecuador to Estonia, nearly 600 overseas English-language churches exist for expatriates.
“The main distinctive of an overseas church is that many of the members are transients,” says David Chism, pastor of Mexico City’s Capital City Baptist Church. “They know when they arrive that they will be in the city for a short period.”
Pastor Dave Petrescue of the Maadi Community Church in Cairo agrees. “There is a distinct sense of the temporary. We are sojourners.”
International congregations often appear to be a miniUnited Nations. Petrescue says his congregation counts members from 32 nationalities and 50 denominations. “To serve the diverse expatriate population well, the church must be broad enough to include people from various cultures and denominations without losing its focus and doctrinal base,” Petrescue says.
Despite the diversity, most pastors say they preach the same message they would back home. Richard G. Boss, affiliated with the Latin America Mission and pastor of International Evangelical Church of Lausanne, Switzerland, says, “Spiritual needs and problems are basically the same the world around.”
ACCOMMODATIONG TRADITIONS: Typically, overseas churches struggle with different practices.
“We need to find a way to accommodate the varying worship styles and theological stances of a variety of denominations,” says Charis Geisinger, a member of the International Christian Fellowship of Managua, Nicaragua, who has also attended international churches in Indonesia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Russia during her husband’s diplomatic career. “There have been discussions from how often to serve Communion and what to call it, to whether women can be allowed to preach and fill leadership roles.”
Needs are different among Americans abroad. “Because of the fact that people are often transferred in a few years, the counseling aspect of the ministry is very important,” says Boss, who served similar churches in Panama, Mexico, and Colombia.
Besides rapid turnover, many international churches face unusual situations. For example, John Adams, former associate pastor of Quito’s English Fellowship Church, says college-age and retired people are often missing. With out many elderly members, many overseas pastors find that they do less hospital visitation and fewer funerals than their colleagues in the United States.
Likewise, obtaining a qualified pastor is often a problem for churches that are independent or a long way from their connectional base.
Few congregations are willing to support the expense of recruiting a full-time pastor from the United States. Thus, they turn to someone locally, often a missionary with other responsibilities, or they invite a recently retired person to serve part-time. That, coupled with a short-term pastorate of only a couple of years, often leads to a truncated program or instability.
Andy Fletcher, deputy director of Young Life’s International Schools ministry, has been a member of international churches in Switzerland, Japan, and France. He identifies other challenges, including a lack of commitment by those who see their time abroad as a form of vacation, small and anemic youth groups, and a lower level of spiritual maturity.
Geisinger, on the other hand, is grateful that overseas churches spend less time emphasizing programs. “Our overseas churches have been much less structured and formal, meeting in rented facilities, having to set up for every service.” That lack of a physical facility has “served to emphasize that the church is not a building, but the people in it.”
NEW DIRECTIONS: Many overseas churches began as the outgrowth of mission work or the desire of expatriates to duplicate worship experiences from back home. But that “chaplaincy” type of ministry is changing, according to Fletcher. “An exciting trend is found in those churches which are being planted deliberately to reach out into the community on a broader, more modern front,” he says. Crossroads Church in Geneva is targeting the international community for evangelism, appealing to those who have little or no church experience.
Many who have participated in these congregations encourage churches back home to be supportive. “Most denominational mission boards completely overlook the idea of ministry to English-speaking people overseas and see no need to send out and support pastors for such congregations,” Geisinger says. “This is an important area for ministry and counseling.”
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