When I consider the theme of “Risk-Taking” in missionary sending, questions fill my mind. Here's a sampling:
• Is risk-taking a personality trait?
• When is it pride/arrogance/vanity and when is it wisdom/obedience?
• Is it risk if we are in God’s will?
• Isn’t it risky just to drive down the street?
• How did Paul decide when to stay and when to go?
• How can we decide what is risky for someone else?
• If someone goes into a risky situation, are agencies responsible for cleaning up the mess if it goes bad?
• Do risk-takers make better missionaries?
• Do risk-averse people lack faith?
• If people risk their lives for their country, shouldn’t we risk our lives for God’s kingdom? … And on and on I could go.

Thankfully, our authors have thought deeply about risk and the result is a must-read issue. Church leaders, organizational leaders, field workers, and supporters will all find helpful answers and questions in the following pages.

When I was young and brash, insecure and eager to prove I had faith, I looked at risky mission situations as invitations. People asked us about going to the dangerous Muslim world, and I laughed with naïve ignorance. It wasn’t that I was faithless but rather that I was immature and arrogant.

Then, one Sunday morning in Kazakhstan, I was sitting in a worship service when the secret police entered, locked the doors, and started filming everyone. After the service, they questioned the leaders. Over the next two days my team leader and I were questioned at the police headquarters in the city. I was unprepared and scared. What if I said something that endangered my team or the locals? All my earlier swagger was gone. I was just a scared kid who felt faithless and alone.

A short time later, we fled the country. My family made it out, but our teammates were put through a court trial. They were found guilty (falsely), their passports received a stamp, and they were escorted to the airport. Fortunately, they were just deported, but it took all of us months to recover from the ordeal. I had not been prepared for what we experienced. After that, my tone changed. I wasn’t so naïve or arrogant. When we were later expelled from Uzbekistan with most of the expats in the country, we felt grief at the loss of home and friendships, but we were better prepared for the ordeal and experienced a more secure connection to God.

The 1980s and1990s in the US were the days of no seat belts, no safety regulations in churches, covering up abuse, and a general apathy towards risk and wisdom. Perhaps that is chronological snobbery, but the narrative is easy to believe given the stories we hear (and some of us lived through). Our family moved to Central Asia in 1997, and it was many years before any kind of risk training was required. Now, most agencies include such trainings in their field preparation. Our team had Anna Hampton, one of the authors in this issue, come to Turkey and do a risk-management training for all the expats in the region. Our location was in a relatively low-risk zone, but we found the training helpful, nonetheless.

Going to the remaining unreached people groups requires stepping into risky situations. We are not called to avoid risk, nor are we called to engage risk for risk’s sake. How to think about and prepare to step into risk faithfully is the focus of this issue, and I think our authors do an excellent job. I wish I had this resource before heading to Kazakhstan.

Duke Dillard