Changing our model of ministry

 A few months ago, we relocated from Turkey back to the UK. We will be continuing to work alongside a local church in Turkey, but it will be through a model of in-person visits and remote work (i.e. Zoom). The plan is that going forward, and once COVID restrictions have eased, we will make one long annual visit to the city we used to live in as a family and my husband will make more regular shorter trips. We’ll do work such as discipleship lessons via video chat while in the UK and in-person when we visit.

Why are we doing this? Living in one country and visiting another for ministry purposes is, in many ways, not ideal. Wouldn’t it be better to accept that God has closed this door for us and move on?

Here’s a few reasons why:

Our local pastor asked us to

When we, in conjunction with our local Turkish church pastor, our sending church and our organisation, came to the reluctant conclusion that there was no good way for us to stay in our city long term, our local pastor pointed out that relatively speaking, the UK is not so far away from Turkey. He asked us if we’d relocate to the UK and come back and visit for ministry purposes. Cross-cultural workers foisting their own ideas onto a situation where there is already a local, Bible-believing church with its own leadership with no regard for the church or leadership is not respectful or helpful. But the flip side is that when our local church pastor asks us to do something, we need to think seriously about it.

It is possible

In some ways, it’s not possible to know how realistic something is until you try it. But we’ve talked with our sending church and organisation and we all think it can work. The time difference isn’t too big, plane tickets aren’t too expensive, visas are not required and we speak the language. My husband will be making many of the visits by himself (once travel restrictions ease up) and we think our location and situation will allow us to manage that strain and impact on our family. Home educating our children makes a longer annual visit as a family possible.

It will (hopefully) be useful

Ironically, we will actually have more time to spend with our local Turkish church as visitors than we did living in that city, with my husband working nearly full-time to get a work permit for us to be able to live there. With non-Christians regularly getting in touch or turning up to the church building because they want to investigate Christianity, start reading the Bible or even become a Christian and start baptism lessons, there is plenty that can be done on visits and some of it can be continued via calls/video chat from the UK.

Our local church is the only Turkish church in the city of 1.5 million but more than that, there are no churches in the neighbouring cities 2-3 hours drive away. The church doesn’t currently have much manpower to visit isolated (mostly male) believers in those cities but the hope is that my husband will be able to visit some of those men in person when he’s in the country and be in contact via calls/video chat when he’s in the UK.

And the critical factor in this is that we already have the relationships with the church, having lived there for three years. In the Turkish culture, relationships are absolutely crucial and they take time. We know the church and they know us. Our pastor trusts us. We can visit and encourage church members and provide pastoral support as necessary.

Why not?

It is the Lord’s harvest and at the same time it is our privilege as God’s children to be involved in the great task of taking the Gospel to the nations. There are countries which, after a period of openness, are getting harder to get into again. It’s not a ‘traditional’ model of cross-cultural work, but new challenges of access and new opportunities through technology demand different solutions. There’s a little church in a big city with a faithful pastor in a country that desperately needs the Gospel and they’ve asked us to come and help in this way. Why wouldn’t we try and say yes to them?