One of Hudson Taylor’s famous
quotes is that “God’s work, done in God’s way shall never lack God’s
supply”. Our organisation is what is
commonly known as a “faith-based” organisation which means that we trust in God
to supply all our needs. This includes our personnel. In the last two years we
have been able to find more than 10 new people to fill key full-time positions
in Australia as well as other people to manage the transitions during handover
periods. This does not include the 35 or so people that we have sent long-term
to Asia in that time. I thank God that he has supplied all these people to meet
our needs! We have a great team and I value each one of them.
However, I sometimes find it
exhausting thinking ahead and trying to fill all the roles that we need people
for. At times I get anxious and wonder how on earth we are going to find
faithful, available and teachable people who are passionate about
cross-cultural mission. Many of them need to raise their own financial support,
because we don’t have outside sources of income to pay for OMF Australia
personnel. Many churches are reluctant to support people who don’t go overseas.
Our only income is from donations towards OMF work.
As well as doing the role of
recruiter and Executive Director, I am also the Personnel Manager for our 28
OMF workers all over Australia and over 100 adult workers (+children!) on our
fields that are coming and going ever more frequently. This means regular
reviews and meetings to coordinate our efforts in caring for our workers and mobilising
prayer and people for reaching East Asian people. At the moment I am not able
to keep up with all of the demands of this role, and I hope to hand over some
of that to someone else this year.
