Investing in National Consultants

God is at work! We have been praying for God to send out laborers into His harvest, and God is answering those prayers, often in some unexpected ways. You probably know that BI has an active and growing Advancement department to direct our recruitment efforts. In addition, Bibles International missionaries participate in recruitment as they visit churches and colleges. Through these means, we see young people express their interest in an internship, which becomes a launching pad for nearly one-third of them to join BI.

However, we are also seeing the Lord work in the hearts of national believers, and He is doing so almost without any effort by BI. In the past year, we have had qualified candidates from Chad, Honduras, and Peru contact us directly about their interest in serving alongside us. In addition, we just added two new Asian consultants to our team that already had ten nationals (BI has 34 consultants in total). In almost all these cases, the Advancement department had no presence there to pursue them, and BI members had little or no prior contact with these candidates. They just responded to God’s work in their heart as a direct result of your prayers and ours.

Why should we be excited about national consultants joining BI? In general, we are excited when any qualified, godly individual joins our team, whether they be missionaries or nationals. However, national consultants bring so many advantages over missionary consultants. In a world which is becoming increasingly complex and dangerous in terms of politics, investing in national consultants is soundly sustainable. We do not need to help them get into a country where we are working, because they are already residents in the country, or at least in the region. The work of national consultants is not disrupted by trips away from the field for furlough or family events, because their network of churches and families is within their own borders. And when the consulting needs to be done through online means, the national consultant likely has no time zone difference from the translator, so workshops are not cut short because of timing issues.

Because national consultants typically work on projects within their own country or in a nearby country that has a similar culture, they are much more culturally connected than missionary consultants. They usually share very similar cultural values with the translators they are helping. If they must do any adaptation, it is a much smaller step than that required for expatriates. It is likely that a national consultant shares at least one language with the translators, and they may even have sufficient exposure to the language being translated (the target language) that they do not need a back-translation. (Missionary consultants typically need a back-translation, which is a translation from the target language into a shared international language.) So, a national consultant can hit the ground running, whereas the missionary consultant needs to spend a year or so in language school, followed up with additional studies. National consultants can also more easily work through complex cultural and linguistic issues because of the shared culture and language, increasing the likelihood that workshops will proceed more smoothly and that strong relationships will be maintained.

Investing in national consultants is also economically efficient for our projects. National consultants typically take half the amount of time to complete the BI mentorship program, which allows them to advance our projects sooner than a missionary consultant can. There are fewer costs associated with their travel since they assist projects in their own country or region. Speaking of travel, the cost for a missionary consultant to do one overseas trip for one workshop is roughly equivalent to the salary of a national consultant for an entire quarter, in which time that person could conduct two workshops.

There are, though, some challenges related to national consultants, and BI constantly seeks to mitigate those challenges. We work through our affiliate teams overseas to increase accountability and decrease dependency upon an American organization. We look for candidates with significant formal training to reduce our chances of paying a high cost to supplement their education. We keep the national connected to the rest of the BI team through monthly prayer meetings, consultant seminars, and regular visits from BI staff. We assign each national consultant a mentor who is within the same or a nearby country, so that he or she can learn the work from someone who relates well to them.

National consultants do not typically come to us with a huge network of supporters, a wealth of consulting resources, or sizeable bank accounts, so our greatest challenge is funding for their training, resources, and salaries. By including such people on the BI team, we “become fellow workers for the truth” (3 John 8). Pray that God will give us wisdom in recruiting and training national consultants and that He will provide the funds to make a worthy investment into their lives for the sake of the millions around the world who still wait for a reliable Bible in their language.