Cindy: It was March 1990. Jamey and I had prepared and been commissioned, and we were moving overseas. As we soared above the Pacific Ocean toward Southeast Asia, we were inspired—no, thrilled—by vision! And we were eager to engage the tasks that were ahead—language and culture learning, bonding, team building, and contextualized witness. Our young hearts were earnest. Jamey and I longed to be used by God! But our motive of usefulness proved very fragile as we faced the realities of our own immaturity and unhealedness.1 We had yet to understand that our inherent belovedness would sustain us more than usefulness ever could.
Over a decade later in 2002 I enjoyed a rich discussion with Miriam Adeney about how God moves women to pioneer among unreached peoples. In her readings and research as a mission historian, Adeney found that “women pioneers are very diverse, but they have one thing in common: each has profoundly encountered the love of God.” It is this love that “anchors them” and moves them into mission.2 This is true for men as well as women.
We can speak of this encounter with the love of God as an “anchoring,” or we can use the metaphor of “rooting,” as we find in Scripture (Eph 3:17; Col 2:7). God’s desire is that our whole life and ministry spring from a constant encounter with his love—like a plant feeding unceasingly through its roots. The movement of downward rooting sustains our forward motion. This is what I imagined when our mentor and brother–in–law, Rick Love, introduced 2 Thessalonians 3:5 to me: “And may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ” (NASB, 1995).3 I immediately imagined an axis: a vertical A line moving horizontally along the B line (see Figure 1.)

Healing encounters with the love of God, at critical moments of the mission journey, form in us a sustainable motive for a lifetime of service—our identity as the Lord’s own beloveds! This is at the heart of spiritual formation in mission.

Rooting into the love of God

Jamey: Rooting into the love of God as God’s beloveds—this was not how we understood our calling in our early years of engagement in mission. In time, crises and conflicts exposed the unhealed places in our hearts. God was beckoning us into greater and greater wholeness. I experienced times of healing from fear of rejection and failure, of release from shame and judgments, of seeing how my anger masked my fear and insecurity. God was calling me to embrace my foundational identity as a beloved son of my heavenly father, which was deeper than my identity as a missiological practitioner and scholar. Cindy had her own stories too. These stories of healing and restoration and wholeness became the place where our lives intersected most fruitfully with those among whom we lived in Indonesia, and with our colleagues and friends in mission. Our ongoing formation was opening to us the field of our sowing, and our stories of encounter with the love of God were the seeds that we were sowing. We knew that wholeness—continual encounters with God’s love—needed to be not only our starting point but also the place to where we would keep returning home.

Being sustained in Christ

In 2016 we moved to the United States. One of my part-time jobs was as a vocation formation group leader for small groups of seminary students at Fuller Seminary in online and in–person classes. I grew in my understanding of and experience of contemplative practices. I knew that returning to my home in God’s love would keep me simple and childlike, humble and able to overflow with love in ways that were winsome and compelling.
But I also began to see that I needed a way of being sustained in mission that was unhurried and life-giving, inviting me to express my deepest longings in God and grieve losses in a healthy way. I began to hunger for practices and rhythms that would help me do that. Among these were practices of silence, solitude, retreat, contemplative prayer and lament, as well as ways of reading Scripture that were formational (fostering encounter with Jesus) rather than informational.4 (Cindy had been leaning into these ways of encounter with Jesus for many years prior in Indonesia.) I also began to meet with a spiritual director and to recognize the importance of journaling and rereading my journal.
In addition, through my experience in the 2nd Half Collaborative5 as well as on the Frontier Ventures Formation Team, God has invited me into a richer experience of spiritual friendship and honest, open community. In safeguarding friendships and authentic community our calling is continually formed, confirmed by others, and sustained. These friends help us listen to our desire for God and to nurture a way of living that is consistent with that desire, responding faithfully to God’s presence.6
From our experiences, we both now see a pathway into and in mission that can be diagrammed like this. Fuller descriptions of each part of the diagram are provided below.

WHOLENESS—Receiving God’s great love, which enables us to absorb vision and implement the tasks of mission from a place of fullness. Crisis moments expose our need for healing from wounds, judgments, shame, trauma, and false or skewed narratives about who we are and who God is. People are drawn to the love of God that overflows from our lives. This wholeness is also called in Scripture “union with God” (John 17:21; Col 3:3) and is at the heart of lasting spiritual formation.
VISION—Receiving God’s heart for the world from the Scriptures, from sitting in God’s presence, and from statistics, stories and images that draw us to God’s great work of redemption and reconciliation in Christ.
TASK—Overflowing with love in the work of language and culture learning, bonding, interceding, giving and receiving hospitality, witnessing, and helping others be formed to the image of Christ.
As God keeps inviting us to fresh encounters with the love of God, resulting in wholeness, vision and task, our calling is continually formed and confirmed through AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY and SAFEGUARDING FRIENDSHIPS.7
SUSTAINING RHYTHMS—Engaging in mission in unhurried and life-giving ways. As we grow older in mission and come to know God’s love in all of life and all things, these rhythms increasingly open to us times of infused (rather than active) growth. Our influence overflows from our “receivements” rather than our achievements.
And so dear reader, beloved of God, our prayer for you today is, “May the Lord (keep) directing your heart into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ.” Stay safeguarded in your community and sustained by unhurried spiritual rhythms with God that nourish your soul.