Practical Integration in Cross-Cultural Member Care

Following the tradition of practical theology, practical integration seeks to create a meaningful dialogue of integration concepts in a particular community and a particular context. This essay explores the context of integrative holistic missionary care labeled Member Care. The historical backdrop of Member Care is rich with many founding foremothers and forefathers who have created a legacy of research and experience in advocating for missionary wellbeing and supporting families and individuals in the stresses and strains of cross-cultural transitions. More recent work has identified the multi-layered framework of Member Care that acknowledges the spiritual, personal, familial, organizational, and professional roles in the addressing the relational and emotional needs of missionaries. Next steps for practical integration in member care include attention to the spiritual needs of local or national mission workers, partnerships in Member Care efforts in newer mission sending countries, and integrative research and teaching around personal transformation and mission. Ray Anderson (2001) states, "Theology is not simply something to be known; theology is something lived and experienced by a particular community" (p.23). In his description of Practical Theology as a discipline, Anderson (2001) emphasizes the relationship of accountability between the theologian and the practitioner: as the theologian reminds and informs the practitioner of God's truth revealed in history, the practitioner challenges the theologian with the immediate truth of God's reconciling work in humanity. This interactive and mutually responsible model is a challenge and a call to the work of integration. Integration can be an opportunity to participate in work that is conceptual, as well as practical, and work that is happening in a "particular community" (p. 23). In this way, one can develop into a "Practical Integrationist." One particular community with a rich and nuanced history of "Practical Integration" is within that of cross-cultural ministry. Over three decades Christian mental health practitioners have been investing in ways to take the concepts of psychology, embedded with a Biblical and theological framework, to attend to the needs of cross-cultural ministry workers across the globe. It has been my privilege to move into this area with a particular focus on trauma and stress as a student, a researcher, and a teacher. Where Have We Come From? Member Care is the term that has been adopted to reflect a holistic perspective to the support of missionary personnel. The practical integration happening in the early years centered on the missionary women and men who moved to international or cross-cultural settings out of a motivation to follow a call of faith or Christian service. Many of these missionaries were of North American or European origins, and they travelled to areas in the developing world to offer social services, Christian teaching, and evangelism. Key areas of research and clinical attention for mental health workers caring for missionaries were the impact of mission on children and families, the process of cross-cultural adaptation to the field of service, response to crisis, development of teams, and models of organizational structure. All of this work was accomplished with an emphasis on seeking Biblical and theological understandings of the constructs, as well as insights from social, community, and clinical psychology. From the very beginning, this was integration with the goal of serving and ministering in practical ways to a particular community. This professional field of missions and mental health had a group of founding fore-mothers and fore-fathers, who began connecting God's truth of human emotional well-being to the task of service and evangelism in cross-cultural contexts. Their practical integration created an important point of reference to the Christian ministry community that was often skeptical of psychology and mental health. …