About Field Directors
Missionary Field Directors provide essential support in various areas to our missionaries and the projects they lead.
Spiritual Support
Missionaries deal with a lot. For most, disruptions to communication systems, civil unrest, rogue military elements, political violence, checking the roads for bandits before a trip, malaria, dysentery, working in areas with resistant religions, communication in a strange language, loneliness, fatigue, disappointment and severe challenges to one’s altruism and sense of innocence are everyday occurrences.
Who prays with missionaries and ministers to their needs? Who walks with them through times when the task does not seem worth it and the cup trembles in their hands? The field director. It is their job and ministry.
The field director should be one who has walked at least a mile in missionary shoes so he or she can minister to them and empathize with them and, together, find comfort and strength for renewed service through the word of God.
New Project Development
Who speaks for the secret believers in closed countries? Who represents them before church officials and in planning meetings? Who works with partners in the church to seek creative ways of entering those difficult places? Who seeks to envision how the gospel may penetrate the places where it has not yet reached? Who seeks to apply lessons learned in the field by other missionaries while searching for methods that may work in a creative-access environment?
The field director is a voice for the voiceless and an advocate for missionaries. When missionaries want to build a church or a school or do some other project, it is the job of the field director to represent that project to AFM administration.
Facilitating Materials Production
Perhaps a missionary has produced a set of Bible studies that are very powerful for his or her people group. Field directors may determine that the studies would also be helpful for another mission project and facilitate the exchange of information between projects for the advancement of both. Field directors seek to advance printed, electronic, and audio works based on the efforts of the missionaries in the field that may be of use to other missionaries and ministries or the church at large. Field directors also maintain good working relationships with the publishing houses in the various fields where our missionaries serve and use their materials production services.
Creative Projects
Each field director may have a special area of ministry, for which he or she is particularly gifted. Field directors may also have a burden for some type of ministry. For example, students in some of our African projects experience tremendous difficulty finishing high school because they keep the Sabbath. Field directors can seek alternatives for such students while traveling through various fields and speaking with church officials. They assist missionaries in planning evangelistic strategies unique to the culture in which they work. They may be authors and want to write helpful articles or even a book for use in ministry or to help missionaries deal with a particular issue. Missionary field directors are first missionaries and then administrators. They must bridge the gap between the AFM home office and missionaries in the field, and they play a vital role in facilitating the work of missionaries and pushing back the borders of the unreached.
Administrative Functions
Field directors have many administrative functions, including:
• Finalizing annual budgets for missionaries
• Answering missionary questions
• Communicating policy to missionaries
• Seeing to the spiritual, physical, and emotional wellbeing of missionaries
• Representing missionaries on committees and in meetings
Will you be a part of reaching the unreached through your support to a field director? You can play a vital role in missionaries’ spiritual and emotional support, assist in Bible study materials, and be a voice for God for the unreached through your gift today.
To donate, select your Field Director from the list on the right of this page.
