Along the way to the mission field: Factors affecting persistency of missionary recruit

The goal of the study is to discern the factors affecting persistency among missionary recruits. The term persistency is used in this case as the continued progress of the missionary recruit toward deployment to career missionary service. If missionary recruits are unduly delayed in reaching the field or never reach the field, there is frustration of purpose on various levels. The numbers of career missionaries are failing to keep pace with the population growth rates and the numbers of those who commit to full-time cross-cultural missionary service at conferences like Urbana. The author is puzzled as to the lack of persistency among North American missionary recruits.;The investigation is framed by the following questions: 1. What is the nature and status of pre-field recruitment and candidate development services among select mission agencies in North America? 2. What are the factors that negatively and positively affect persistency among North American missionary recruits? 3. Suspecting motivation to be relevant to these factors, what insight can selected motivation theories provide by way of explanation for the elemental and measurement issues related to the stated persistency problem? Semi-structured interviews with administrative personnel from seven Wesleyan-Arminian mission agencies (four denominational and three non-denominational) serve to determine trends in recruitment and candidate development programs.;A critical incident survey conducted on-line with recruits and recently deployed missionaries elicits stories from which categories of factors and events are derived using grounded theory practices of content analysis. Numerous graphs portray the results of this analysis.;Using Frederick Herzberg's two-factor (Motivation-Hygiene) theory as the theoretical framework and elements of missio Dei theology and the Wesleyan quadrilateral as the theological framework, the author interprets the data relating to issues of divine calling, preparation and progression toward deployment as career missionaries. Missiological implications are drawn from the resultant analysis and an evaluation of the research project is provided for those doing further study in the area of missionary recruitment and development.