April 11, 2026

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Category: Leadership

Training, Team Leadership

Leading a Team Takes Time

Over the past few weeks, I have had a number of conversations with both new missionaries and team leaders in a few different countries.   An observation that I have made in the past has been reinforced: leading a team takes time and more time that the team leader expected.  In these conversations, I have noticed a common theme among new missionaries – leaders don’t have time for them.   Leaders are so busy with their own ministry that they directly say or inadvertently give the impression that helping a younger, less experienced team mate is a distraction from their “real ministry”.   A few months ago, we featured in this blog the testimony of one of our area directors who had learned the importance of mentoring new missionaries.  But unfortunately, for many of us, we learn this lesson slowly. As team leaders, we often make two simple assumptions when we invite and… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Church Planting, Disciple-making, Training, Book Reviews, Leadership Training

Reaching and Teaching in Animistic Oral Cultures

A review of M. David Sills’ book Reaching and Teaching the Highland Quichuas: Ministry in Animistic Oral Contexts In my last post we looked at Sills’ book Reaching and Teaching: A Call to Great Commission Obedience. This book is clearly a follow up to this work. It is in essence an application in practice of the principles in the earlier book. “This book explores how the Lord led missionaries to minister effectively among a specific people whom he called to himself: the Highland Quichua people of Andean Ecuador.”(pp. 2, 3).The book highlights the challenges of reaching and teaching an oral people group with a long history of syncretism:… Read the whole post
Gary Ridley1 min read
Leadership Training, Church Planting, Disciple-making, Book Reviews

Are We Reading All of Matthew 28:18-20?

A review of M. David Sills, Reaching and Teaching: a Call to Great Commission Obedience, Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010. This book has sought to bring awareness to those who have been lulled into thinking that God wants us to simply reach them. He doesn’t. He wants us to reach and teach – reaching them with the saving gospel message and teaching them to observe everything that He has commanded. (220). So ends Sills’ book.… Read the whole post
Gary Ridley1 min read
Mission Leadership, Book Reviews, Multicultural Teams, Team Leadership

Leading multicultural teams

Just a few years ago, we could find very little that had been written about multicultural mission teams.  The subject has been of great interest in our mission organization, since our membership is becoming increasingly international, and many, if not the majority of our teams, already include members from countries other than the USA or Canada.   But very few resources for guiding the team leaders of such teams were readily available. A few would know of Lianne Roembke’s work, Building Credible Multicultural Teams.. Unfortunately, Roembke’s book has still not been released in digital form, and I cannot seem to find anyone who has written a review of it.  Then in 2011, Sheryl Silzer of SIL published her book, Biblical Multicultural Teams: Applying Biblical Truth to Cultural Differences. Silzer’s work focused on the formative nature of one’s childhood home and how that experience has impacted one’s view of what is right… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Teaming, Team Leadership

X-teams on the Mission Field

This entry is part 5 of 7 in the series Types of mission teamsPart 5 on a series about teaming on the mission field.   In a previous post, we talked about the three main types of teams found in our mission organization. When new missionaries think about teaming, they are generally thinking about what we have called a basketball team. Basketball teams work together closely and interact frequently with each other about their various ministries.   But many of our mission teams are more like track teams than basketball teams. Track teams have a common purpose and team members support one another, but each person on the team works independently. But there is yet a third type of team that is commonly found on the mission field.   We call this an X-team or an expedition team.    X-Teams have at least two members, a guide and an explorer.  We think of expedition… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
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