Are You Psychologically Suited to be a Missionary?

Tom, Martin, and Deidre respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.Our question this week:For the longest time I have believed that the Lord has called me to go into the mission field.But our church and our denomination requires that I go through a process of psychological testing to see, I guess, if I have what it takes to be a good missionary.That doesn’t seem right to me.But I’m not sure if it’s my pride resisting this or my spirit.What should I do?

Tom:

This question Martin and Deidre, we just get it all the time because we have so many people, whether it be people on our mailing list who are supportive of the ministry, they have a heart to go out and to be used of the Lord.Many do feel that it’s a calling, but they’re running into a wall, most of them.

Martin:

Well what we have done (we have received the same kinds of inquiries and complaints) and we recently last fall did a survey of 35 of the 100 largest mission agencies and in that survey we just asked three questions. Do you use mental health professionals to screen missionary candidates?Do you use psychological testing to screen missionary candidates? And the third question had to do with if you had a missionary that was having problems of living, do you use mental health professionals in order to help them with those problems of living.And the reason we did that is that we had done a couple of articles in the past in our newsletter, having to do with two very well known high level mission agencies and we found that they were very steeped in psychology and the use of psychologists.So we looked into it and essentially what we’ve done is to come up with a book that contains all we know about it and the things we want to say about it.What we know about it is the answers to those mission agencies and what we want to say about it is that it is wrong from two standpoints.It’s wrong biblically and it’s wrong from a research standpoint.What we have done is we have gone ahead and looked at some of the most popular psychological tests and we have indicated why they shouldn’t be used and we have looked at what service these psychologists provide either through screening or through care and we have indicated in this book why they should not be trusted to do this.Furthermore we say what we have been saying right along; the Lord has given us all that we need for life and godliness.We don’t need these other individuals.We don’t need their theories and ideas and if they mix them in with Christianity it just demeans the effect of the Word rather than empowers it any more.We can’t have more power than we have with the Word, we can’t minister more strongly than we can with a strong believer that draws alongside.So we are sympathetic with these individuals.In fact we reprinted part of a letter from a couple who was rejected because of their failure on the psychological test that they had taken.So we’re adamantly opposed to this; we are sympathetic to those people who write, and have called us and are concerned about it.We’re sorry that so many of the mission agencies are steeped in this and we just sound a warning: get out of it and use what God has already empowered you with.

Tom:

You’d think that if the questions on the test are a reflection of what we’ve been talking about in our programs—if these people are really called of God and have a heart through the scriptures to do what he’s called them to do, they would fail this,—you’d think.

Martin:

The interesting thing is that if you think about those individuals who have been so well known over the years, in missions throughout the world and starting mission sites and evangelizing nations, what we find is that we find individual who are peculiar in their own ways.I remember when I was questioning one of the mission agencies, he said, you know it’s kind of interesting, I was a missionary, he told me.He was a missionary to Africa and he said you know I think if you’re a little bit crazy, I think it’s helpful as a missionary.He was saying that as a former missionary, but joking around a little bit.But fact is we don’t know the character, the qualities, the profile, the types of temperaments, or anything like that which makes the ideal missionary.As a matter of fact, one of the things that was frustrating is about all they could say about the ideal missionary is it’s somebody who doesn’t drop out after being there a year or two years.But it’s a career missionary who stays on the field.

Tom:

Right.

Martin:

Well, somebody who stays on the field may be not too good a missionary, we don’t know.

Tom:

Right, well as you alluded, is this something that Hudson Taylor went through, or Jonathan Goforth?I don’t think so.These used to be men and women as well who are heroes and heroines in the faith, but that’s not the case any more because we’re looking to another criterion to do God’s will, to do God’s work, but it’s not God’s way.

Deidre:

And the other criterion doesn’t even hold up.These tests do not do what they claim to do.

Martin:

We look at the academic research with respect to, and I don’t like to get into technical terms, but I’ll use it anyway, criterion validity.Criterion validity is very simply this: if the test is supposed to screen in and screen out the people for a particular occupation, profession or whatever, then the test ought to be able to screen in the best and screen out the worst and there is no indication that these tests do that in any way.As a matter of fact, we even talk about the standards for testing volume put out by the APA, and these tests that they use and the purposes for which they use these tests are really in violation of the standards volume, but in most cases these people don’t know who hired the psychologists, they just go ahead and hire them because they are kind of enveloped with this whole psychological mentality that exists in America. They just trust them and there’s no reason to trust them either to screen out or screen in, or to use the tests that will give a profile that will get in or get out the right person.