The Question Every New Missionary Faces
There comes a moment in every new missionary’s preparation when the idealism meets a troubling question: Am I ready? The theological training feels adequate. The conviction burns genuine. The sense of calling is unmistakable. Yet something whispers, something honest, that books and Bible School classes have not prepared you for the particular bewilderments that await in a foreign land. This is not doubt about God’s sufficiency, but rather a growing awareness of your own insufficiency for work that demands not only doctrine but judgment, not only faith but practical wisdom hammered out through years of actual trial in a strange land.
This is where a peculiar grace enters the economy of God’s Kingdom: the grace that flows from the experienced to the inexperienced, a transmission that is not simply informational but transformative. It is the grace of learning not from books but from a seasoned guide who has faithfully walked the path you are about to enter.
The Biblical Architecture of Mentorship
Scripture does not leave us guessing about the importance of this transmission. The Apostle Paul writes to Timothy with unmistakable clarity: “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2).
Observe the beautiful architecture embedded in these words. Paul to Timothy. Timothy to faithful men. Faithful men to others. This is not only the passing along of doctrine, though it includes that. It is the transmission of steadiness, the demonstrated capacity to hold fast when circumstances press against conviction. It is the transfer of judgment: knowing not simply what is true, but how to live the truth within the particular constraints and surprises of actual life in a particular place.
Solomon understood this as well: “Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14). The young missionary arrives in a foreign land with conviction burning in the heart, but without the calibrated judgment that only years of genuine trial can produce. This is not a personal failure; it is simply the nature of inexperience. No amount of reading or preparation can substitute for practical wisdom.
The Particular Journey
My wife and I arrived in Uganda as so many young missionaries do: with ideals intact, conviction genuine, training reasonably solid, and yet profoundly unprepared for the actual texture of missionary life. We had read books about cross-cultural ministry. We had attended missions classes and schools on both service and adaptation. We had prayed earnestly for the Lord’s guidance. And yet nothing, nothing, had adequately prepared us for the simple, crushing reality that nearly everything we assumed about ordinary life would become a labyrinth.
Consider the water bill. In America, one pays a utility bill without a second thought, a routine transaction, almost beneath notice. In Uganda, the water bill becomes an exercise in obscure procedures, cultural negotiation, and the profound uncertainty of whether one is even approaching the task correctly. The electric account transforms into a puzzle with pieces that remain hidden until someone patient enough explains them. These are not trivial matters for philosophical debate; they are the material substance of survival, and when they confound you repeatedly, they have a way of shaking confidence in ways that are difficult to articulate to those who have never lived abroad.
More profoundly, there were decisions we would never have anticipated facing. Decisions about relationships with national church leaders. Questions about how to conduct ministry in ways that honored local culture while remaining faithful to scripture. Choices about finances, about security, about the thousand daily interactions that require not only good intentions but genuine wisdom.
This is where particular help from the Lord became evident to us in a way that prosperity and comfort in America had never quite allowed.
Steadiness in the Chaos
It would be inadequate to say we simply “had access” to Keith Stensaas. Rather, we were given the profound privilege of laboring alongside someone who had already walked this path, not for one year or five, but for thirty. Thirty years of learning Uganda. Thirty years of navigating its complexities, its peculiarities, its genuine obstacles and its inconveniences. Thirty years of watching God prove faithful precisely when faithfulness was most demanded.
Brother Keith embodied something we did not yet possess: a grounded equilibrium that was not the product of naiveté or special immunity to concern, but rather the fruit of decades spent discovering, repeatedly, that God’s promises hold true precisely when they are most needed.
This became vivid during the global upheaval of 2020. The world reeled. Uncertainty was the common currency of every conversation. Even seasoned believers questioned whether the future held any stability at all. Borders closed. Travel became impossible. The trajectory of every missionary’s plans seemed to depend on factors entirely beyond human control.
Keith Stensaas remained grounded. Not because he possessed some special privilege or inside information, but because thirty years of walking with God through genuine trials had taught him something the fearful world had forgotten: that God remains steady when circumstances shift like sand. He did not minimize the genuine obstacles. He was too sensible for the pretense of easy faith. Rather, he looked at the pandemic as a testing that God would navigate precisely as He always had. He could see that the path forward still existed, that Uganda could still be reached, that the work could proceed, not with reckless disregard for obstacles, but with the kind of practical faith that distinguishes between problems to be solved and problems that are opportunities to watch God work.
And because he possessed this equilibrium, he could communicate it. His steadiness was not theoretical. It was lived, observable, accessible to younger missionaries who desperately needed to see what faith actually looks like when circumstances are genuinely difficult.
The Transmission of Practical Wisdom
Young missionaries arrive on mission fields with ideals. They arrive with theological training, often considerable education, and genuine conviction. These are not small things. They are essential foundations. Yet they are not sufficient. What they lack is the practical wisdom that can only be acquired through doing, through trial and error, through watching someone who has already made the errors and learned from them.
Brother Keith knew, from three decades of experience, how to navigate the actual Uganda, not the Uganda of short-term mission trips or imagination, but the Uganda of complicated relationships, seasonal patterns, unwritten cultural protocols that make perfect sense once you understand them but remain opaque to the newcomer. He knew which officials to approach and when to approach them. He knew how to communicate requests in ways likely to succeed. He understood where patience would eventually yield results and where pushing would create offense. He could distinguish between problems that required persistence and problems that required a change of approach altogether. Just as importantly, he knew where to get an oil change, one of life’s simplicities that rarely require deeper wisdom.
This knowledge cannot be acquired from a book. It cannot be theorized. It must be lived and then transferred, through daily contact, through watching, through doing alongside, through the thousand small decisions that reveal how a seasoned believer actually thinks when faced with genuine complexity.
For us, this meant learning not only what to do in various situations, but why it mattered, how it fit into the larger fabric of missional work, how to think like an experienced missionary rather than simply doing what an experienced missionary suggests. We learned the difference between American efficiency and African relationality, between Western problem-solving and the patience that genuine cross-cultural work demands. We learned, in short, how to be missionaries not in the abstract but in the particular, difficult reality of Uganda.
The Grace of Accelerated Growth
One of the most underappreciated mercies in Christian service is what might be called the compression of the learning curve. When you work alongside the experienced, the path that would ordinarily take years to navigate becomes traversable in months. The obstacles that would otherwise pile up, damaged relationships, cultural missteps, practical inefficiencies, are prevented before they occur.
Had my wife and I attempted to navigate Uganda’s practical realities without Brother Keith and Mrs Sally’s guidance, we would have learned, eventually. But the cost would have been steep: months of frustration, errors that might have damaged relationships with national church leaders or created obstacles to the work itself, the wearing friction of trying to solve problems without knowing whether our approach was culturally appropriate or practically sound. The work itself would have suffered. Our effectiveness would have been diminished not by lack of faith but by lack of wisdom.
Instead, the presence of a tested guide meant something remarkable: genuine efficient progress. Not the hurried, breathless kind of activity that mistakes busyness for accomplishment, but authentic forward movement. We learned not only what to do but the reasoning behind it. We began to understand how decisions fit into the larger strategy of ministry. More importantly, we began to develop the capacity to think through new situations ourselves, drawing on the framework that brother Keith had patiently taught us through observation and conversation.
I believe this is what John Henry Jowett meant when he spoke of the gentleness that draws people toward truth. Brother Keith’s influence was never hectoring or condescending. It was not the heavy-handed direction of someone pulling rank or asserting authority. Rather, it was the quiet, steady presence of someone who simply knew and, in knowing, made wisdom available to those who were eager to learn it. A young believer learns far more from watching a seasoned missionary remain calm in a crisis than from any sermon on faith. He learns far more from seeing how actual problems are solved, the conversations required, the timing involved, the persistence that yields results, than from theoretical discussions of missional strategy.
Formation as a Pastor
Yet something unexpected happened in the course of our time in Uganda under Brother Keith’s mentorship. The practical wisdom we were acquiring became something more than useful for missionary work. It began to shape us, to form our character, our judgment, our understanding of what Christian leadership actually requires.
I returned to America to plant a church here in Mississippi. A new congregation, much like a new mission field in many respects, facing novel challenges, requiring decisions that no book had adequately prepared me to make. And I found myself drawing, repeatedly, on what I had learned from Brother Keith. And still today, I have been able to call him and draw upon his wisdom for help in time of need.
How do you lead a congregation through uncertainty? The same steadiness Brother Keith had demonstrated in the pandemic. How do you navigate complicated relationships within a church community? The same patient wisdom he had shown in Uganda. How do you distinguish between problems requiring immediate action and situations requiring patience and prayer? The same discernment he had modeled daily.
The mentorship I received in Uganda was not simply about becoming an effective missionary in a foreign land. It was about becoming a more wise, grounded, practically faithful leader of God’s people (a reality for which I still have much to learn), wherever that leadership might take place. The principles that govern cross-cultural ministry, understanding context, respecting those you serve, combining conviction with humility, these are the same principles that govern any authentic pastoral ministry.
This is the profound gift that mentorship offers: it forms not only your competence but your character. It shapes not only what you do but who you become.
Consider a Deliberate Season of Learning
This brings us to the heart of what this reflection must accomplish. If you are a young missionary considering your entry into cross-cultural ministry, I urge you to consider something: Before you plant your own work, before you strike out as an independent operator, invest time laboring alongside an established missionary.
This is not a suggestion born of weakness or lack of faith. It is, rather, a recognition of the way God has ordered His service. We learn through relationships. We grow through observation and apprenticeship. We acquire wisdom not through isolated study but through proximity to the wise.
The Apostle Paul writes: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). This principle extends to the missionary community as well. Choose to live and work in harmony with those who have gone before you. Choose to sit at their feet, to watch how they navigate complexity, to ask your questions and absorb their answers. This is not surrendering your own convictions or your own calling. It is, rather, accelerating your growth in the direction you are already headed.
The established missionary, the one with thirty years in Uganda, or twenty in Brazil, or fifteen in Southeast Asia, possesses something you cannot acquire any other way. They possess the accumulated wisdom of decades spent watching God work within a particular culture. They know the pitfalls. They know the opportunities. They know the thousand small decisions that, when made correctly, compound into genuine spiritual fruit over time.
The Debt We Owe and the Obligation We Bear
It is appropriate now to speak plainly about what the younger generation owes to those who mentor them, not in the sense of debt that enslaves, but in the sense of obligation that dignifies. The recipients of such mentorship have been given a gift so considerable that gratitude, while essential, is insufficient. There must also come the recognition of responsibility.
Brother Keith and Sally Stensaas gave not only their time but their hard-won understanding. They gave the fruit of their labor and the learning that came from their mistakes. They gave the certainty that comes from having walked a path before, which means they gave the gift of not having to repeat their errors. More than that, they gave themselves: their availability, their patience, their willingness to answer questions that must have seemed elementary to someone of their experience.
The young missionaries who receive such gifts bear an obligation: to pass it forward. To become, in time, the steady presence for newer believers entering the field. To remember not only that we were helped, but how, the specific ways in which wisdom was transmitted, confidence was restored, and seemingly insurmountable obstacles were revealed to be the ordinary terrain of foreign missions.
This is the chain that Paul described to Timothy, continuing unbroken across generations: the faithful teacher to the faithful student, who becomes the faithful teacher to the next generation. It is the mechanism by which the Church advances not through the brilliance of any single generation, but through the faithful accumulation of knowledge, experience, and the demonstrated reliability of a God who never abandons His people.
The Practical Spirituality of Brotherly Support
There is something deeply biblical about the recognition that we do not journey through difficulty alone. The Psalmist writes: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1). This is not only sentimental poetry. It is a recognition of a fundamental truth about how God has ordered His Kingdom. We are not isolated individuals grinding through trials in solitude. We are members of one body, and the health of that body depends upon the faithful transmission of strength from those who possess it to those who need it.
Brother Keith’s grounded faith, his practical sensibility, his refusal to be shaken by circumstances, these were not private virtues exercised for his own benefit alone. They became gifts to the younger missionaries, expressions of the one body functioning as God designed it to function. When he remained steady during the pandemic, he was not only demonstrating personal faith. He was strengthening younger believers. When he patiently explained how to navigate Uganda’s practical complexities, he was not only transferring information. He was expressing the love of Christ through availability and wisdom.
In Uganda, thousands of miles from the familiar structures of American Christianity, this truth became vivid in a way it rarely does in comfortable circumstances. The young missionary couple needed exactly what Brother Keith had to give: not answers to theoretical questions, but the steady presence of someone who had already walked this path, who remained unshaken by the obstacles that seemed overwhelming to the newcomer, and who possessed the practical wisdom to navigate the intricate terrain of cross-cultural ministry.
The Shape of Faithful Gratitude
Gratitude for such mentorship is not a simple feeling, though it surely includes genuine feeling. It is a recognition of grace received and a commitment to grace extended. My wife and I were not only helped to accomplish our missionary work more efficiently, though we certainly were. More profoundly, we were loved. We were steadied when steadiness seemed difficult to find. We were shown what it looks like to hold fast to God’s promises while also thinking clearly about the ordinary problems of daily life.
This is the inheritance of those who have worked alongside the seasoned. It is the privilege of the new to sit at the feet of the experienced, to watch faith made practical, and to learn not only the facts of the faith but the practice of it, the way faith actually works when it encounters real obstacles in a real world.
And for those of us who have received this gift: we return to our own fields of labor, in Mississippi or anywhere else God plants us, shaped not only as better prepared laborers but as more faithful leaders. We become living testimonies to the truth that God works through relationships, that He transmits wisdom through the generations, that the young need the steady hand of the experienced, and the experienced are themselves enriched through the privilege of pouring themselves into the next generation.
In time, we will become the steady presence for others. The circle will continue, not broken but expanding. The work of God advances not through the brilliance of any single generation or the independence of individual workers, but through the faithful accumulation of tested wisdom, hard-won experience, and the demonstrated reliability of a God who never abandons His people, whether they are navigating the complexities of Uganda, planting churches in Mississippi, or laboring in any foreign field.
For this, and for the Stensaas family who embodied it so faithfully, eternal gratitude remains forever appropriate.
Pastor Thomas IrvinÂ
George County Baptist ChurchÂ
Lucedale, MississippiÂ
