EMQ » Oct – Dec 2025 » Volume 61 Issue 4
Summary: Spiritual resilience is a fruit of vibrant spiritual life. Resilience enables missionaries to persevere through hardship, learning to find joy in its midst. It enables them to navigate the unfamiliar, overcome spiritual blocks, and learn together with friends. Its essence is willingness to give up all for Christ.
By Evelyn Hibbert
Some time ago, I joined an organization with a rich spiritual heritage. With time, I discovered that, with a few exceptions, members carried on the original spiritual forms but had lost the life that originally filled them. The words were the same, but the practical meaning was missing. This often characterizes aging organizations.
On reflection now, I wonder whether the rich heritage was more hagiographic than real. Hagiographic accounts present people as exceptionally spiritual and, usually, gloss over their weaknesses. Perhaps we only find remarkable spirituality in retrospect.
But God and his word are not hagiographic. God doesn’t change. His power in us is as true today as in centuries past. The Bible delights in showing God’s power amid human weakness. At its core, resilience lives this reality. Christ in us enables us to persevere and thrive despite sometimes overwhelming challenges.
Often, people pray for revival or renewal. They pray for flooding unreached areas with the Holy Spirit. This is essential. Yet, as Christ’s ambassadors, surely the starting point is our own spiritual vitality.
Spiritual vitality depends on continuing spiritual growth. Prayer is central (McMillan). The biblical narrative transforms our lives (Barefoot). Our views of the narrative’s ending affect our mission practice (Hines). Sometimes our spiritual growth stops, and we need to learn how to overcome these blockages (Miller).
Spiritual vitality is nurtured through holiness, sacrifice (Harries), faith, and vibrant missional community. This community is not built on rules. It emerges where Christ’s love compels us to embrace, together, outward-looking, missional living. It adapts to the changing contexts of sending churches, and the challenges of unreached communities.
Spiritual resilience and spiritual vitality are inseparable. Without vibrant spiritual life we cannot be resilient. Resilience strengthens our ability to find joy in hardship (Grudier). It enables us to navigate our way through unfamiliar challenges (Gerick).
If we know we are in the place God wants us to be, it helps us to persevere. Jasmine Lee compares Ignatius of Loyola’s and Hudson Taylor’s approaches to discerning God’s will, identifying a process that helps us with guidance today.
For missionaries among the hardest to reach, resilience is critical for endurance. The Williamsons and I share nomadic workers’ views on spiritual resilience. These are helpful for all cross-cultural workers.
All Christians are called to be pilgrims,[i] but missionaries leave more often than most. The pain of leaving and loss develops resilience yet can be especially difficult for TCKs (Kelley and Casey). This editorial is a plea for a rediscovery of deep, spiritual, missionary vitality. It is usually found in places where the church is growing rapidly, including in new mission movements. Through that vitality we find resilience. Its key is living what it means to give up everything for Christ (Philippians 3:8–10).
Evelyn Hibbert
Editorial Director
[i] Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Orbis Books, 1996), 8–9.
EMQ, Volume 61, Issue 3. Copyright © 2025 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
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