What comes next

Last Thursday, September 18, I submitted my letter of resignation to Mission to the World. I became a cross-cultural missionary in September of 1980. So that’s 34 years of cross-cultural missionary service. In many ways it was a difficult decision, but at this point I have no doubts about it. I don’t see how I could continue in MTW unless certain things changed. MTW will probably give us at least three months to visit our churches and thank them for their support of us over these many years. They might give us as long as to the end of January.

Our plan is for Phyllis to get a job in a hospital. She may also pursue more education simultaneously. I will also look for a job. Since Phyllis will be working, it could be a part time job. That would provide sufficient incomes and also give me time to write a book, which I would like to do.

One possibility that has appeared very recently is working with Third Millenium ministries. You can view their website and purpose statement here: http://thirdmill.org/ Very briefly, they are creating a seminary level education in various languages and distribute the curriculum free of charge. The director of Third Mil has heard of my Knowing-Doing-Being framework and has shown some interest in my helping them figure out how to do more than just transmit information. They want to know how they can also help people use this good information with kingdom impact. Since one of my specialties is learning (my recent doctorate is in Human and Organizational Learning), I am qualified to help them with this.

Third Mil has thousands of people using this curriculum all over the world. So there are lots of opportunities. I’ve been told that I could probably work from home, travel about three times a year, and take advantage of Skype to keep in touch with people. This is not official, but probably a likely scenario.

I would have to transfer my current support from MTW to Third Mil. Even if only 60% of our current supporters go with me, I think we can make it work assuming Phyllis gets a job. I could possibly work part time for Third Mil and write the other part. It’s also been suggested that if I can work full time for Third Mil I could probably write during a percentage of my time, and keep the copyright. But none of this has been confirmed.

This seems like a good option for me, at least for a while. Here are some of the advantages:

1. Would allow me to work from home (wouldn’t have to move)
2. Would allow me to use some of my strengths in a way that MTW has not been interested.
3. Would give me time to write.
4. Would provide sufficient income if Phyllis is able to work also.

I hope to find out soon so I can begin asking our supporters to transfer their support.