Why So Many Missionaries Come Home Before Their Time

Missionary attrition is the technical term for a missionary leaving the field earlier than planned, avoidable in many cases, unavoidable in others, and the distinction between the two categories matters a great deal to those who prepare and sustain those who go. The international study known as ReMAP II found that about 43 percent of missionaries leave the field within ten years, too high a number to treat as a distant statistic irrelevant to any church that takes missionary sending seriously. Eight avoidable causes recur frequently in these cases: interpersonal conflict, lack of clarity about one's own call, family difficulties, absence of ongoing member care, financial problems, health issues, poorly processed culture shock, and excessive pressure for visible productivity.

Attrition rarely has a single isolated cause; it is usually the accumulation of several small problems, left unaddressed in time, that build up until staying becomes unsustainable. Five preventive areas have been shown to reduce this risk: careful candidate selection, adequate training before departure, responsible screening by partner agencies, ongoing supervision on the field, and sustained member care throughout the entire term of service. Responsibility for a missionary's staying on the field is always shared, church, agency, and candidate together, and never falls in isolation on any single one of these three parties involved in the process. According to Paul in Athens, God has already fixed the times and the boundaries of each people's dwelling place (Acts 17:26), a reminder that the Lord himself watches over the course of every person sent, even when it turns out shorter than originally planned.

Once on the field, the first ninety days exist to lay solid foundations, not to produce immediate visible results meant to impress those who stayed behind at home. The rush for quick results can, paradoxically, close doors that were still patiently opening, forcing relationships and processes that needed more time to mature naturally. Well-built routines in this early phase function as anchors of stability amid so many simultaneous changes, not as prisons that stifle a ministry still being born, the prophet Jeremiah instructed the exiles to build houses and live in them, to plant orchards and eat their fruit (Jer 29:5), a call to settle in with intention, not merely to survive provisionally while waiting for better days.

Ongoing accompaniment from the sending church needs to be planned in advance, even before departure, with communication channels and rhythms of contact already established between both sides. Missionaries who feel genuinely accompanied, not merely remembered sporadically, serve with greater willingness and for far longer than those left to fend for themselves once the initial excitement of the sending has cooled. As one author on the subject observed, more important than everything that happens before arrival on the field is what happens after it, a direct reminder that preparation, however careful, does not replace the constant accompaniment that must follow.

Review the eight avoidable causes of attrition listed above, and identify which one you consider the weakest point in your own preparation today, if you are a candidate, or in your church's care structure, if you already support a missionary. Ask your church's leadership how it intends to exercise ongoing care for those already on the field, not only for those still preparing to depart. And if you have already been through a major change in your own life, review what your first ninety days of adaptation were like, what helped and what was missing, because that personal reflection tends to clearly reveal what any family newly arrived on the field will also need to face.