How should missionaries arrange their homes to ensure national visitors feel at ease rather than intimidated?

Home life is part of a missionary’s public witness. Hale advises missionaries to arrange their homes to encourage national visitors and help them feel comfortable.

One practical approach is to make at least one portion of the home resemble the visitors’ home. When every room announces Western taste and Western budgets, guests may feel like spectators, not friends. Hale notes that “matching pillows, fresh paint, or new carpet” can keep the missionary from relaxing, and that tension often transfers to guests, who cannot relax either.

At the same time, Hale does not commend turning the missionary family’s home into a perpetual state of discomfort. Other areas of the home should serve the family’s legitimate comfort. A home needs to feel like home for the worker, too, because long-term ministry requires steadiness, not performative austerity.

A missionary home should be shaped for hospitality and ease, with at least some familiar space for national guests, while still sustaining the family’s health and stability.

Related Material

• Missionary Living Standards for Effective Ministry — gives a broader rubric for balancing comfort, health, and witness over the long haul 
• How Visible Wealth Undermines Missionary Credibility — sharpens the “Western budgets” concern into a credibility-and-trust issue 
• Reframing Privacy for Missionary Stewardship — frames “open home” expectations as a stewardship issue, not merely a personal preference 

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Source: On Being a Missionary, by Thomas Hale & Gene Daniels

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