FAQs About Going

No. Candidacy is a season of preparation prior to making application for missionary service. It is during candidacy that you would be expected to either eliminate your debt or present a way in which you intend to manage debt while receiving a modest missionary allowance. Please do not allow debt alone prevent you from applying for candidacy. Many missionaries can relate amazing stories of God’s provision which allowed them to mobilize to the field. Please be in prayer about such matters and drop us a line as well here.

So now you’ve done it. You’ve come down with a case of apparently genuine, inescapable calling to the mission field. Now what?

Inquire

Introduce yourself to our personnel department by submitting a service inquiry. We want to walk alongside you as you discern this call. After you have made inquiry, our personnel department will contact you.

Confirm Your Calling

We don’t want to alarm you: sometimes, it is true, these callings come directly from God. Yet sometimes they come from indigestion. You will want to test your sense of calling to know its origins.

1. Visit with your pastor.
2. Share your sense of calling with a prayer partner.
3. Pray that God would relieve you of the burden, if it is not his clear design for you.

Illuminate Your Calling

If your calling is genuine, it will need a little illumination. What does God seem to have for you, specifically?

1. Read a missionary biography.
2. Participate in a missionary prayer meeting.

Apply for Candidacy

Before applying for full missionary service, you will want to apply as a missionary candidate. Our personnel department will direct you through this process.

Our fellowship is Lutheran by confession and worldview. We do not require that our workers belong to Lutheran churches. We do require, however, that they share with us a Lutheran outlook and identity. Our Lutheran identity is based upon the Word of God and the Augsburg Confession. We want our volunteers to share with us this same identity and confessional foundation. Read more in our Statement of Faith.

WMPL has a different way of talking about money than other ‘faith-based’ missions. One answer is, ‘no,’ in the sense that we go out of our way to emphasize that we look to the Lord to provide the support — of course, the Lord usually does this through people and so another answer is, ‘yes,’ in so far as our workers will do well to faithfully interpret the Mission of God for folks back home. We should not be surprised when this results in a robust network of mission partners.

What does this look like in practice? To begin with, we don’t fixate on a specific level of monetary support before mobilizing to the field. We don’t promise a formal ‘salary’ either. Instead, we speak in terms of a modest missionary ‘allowance.’ It is our policy to share what we have by God’s good provision, in order to do what he has given us to do.

We encourage you to read more about our financial policies in the Mission Handbook. Furthermore, a conversation with any of our missionaries in the field or staff in the home office will certainly give you a realistic picture of how our financial policies play out in real time.

We believe that student debt should not keep you from cross-cultural service. Yet managing student debt is a significant challenge. Our Personnel Office will help you evaluate the possibilities for managing yours. Loans can sometimes be deferred. Special scholarships sometimes apply. Contact the personnel@wmpl.org to begin a dialogue.

Indeed we do. You will find just a few listed here. Additional unlisted opportunities may be available from time to time. Send us an inquiry and let us know what you have in mind.

If you have questions that remain unanswered, you might want to download our Mission Handbook. Have a particular look at the chapter treating Personnel.

You can also check out WMPL Inside to view current policies that are not described in the Handbook.

If you don’t find an answer to your question here we invite you to contact us and ask a new one.