Our book Missions & PsychoHeresy is available
as a free ebook on our web site. In preparation, we asked three
questions of 35 of the largest mission agencies and 9 of the largest
denominations in America. The three questions were: 1) Do you use mental
health professionals to screen or evaluate missionary candidates? 2) Do
you use psychological tests to screen or evaluate missionary candidates?
3) Do you use or favor the use of mental health professionals to assist
missionaries if they are experiencing problems of living? We concluded
the survey by saying: “No one, but NO ONE, questioned the use of mental
health professionals and psychological tests for screening missionary
candidates, and no one, but NO ONE, questioned the use of mental health
professional to care for missionaries.”
Because we will be at a conference in London in July,
we decided to survey mission agencies in the UK. To do so we obtained a
copy of the UK Christian Handbook 2007/2008, which, along with a
great deal of other information, includes a directory of mission
agencies. We went to the part of the volume that lists “UK mission
workers serving overseas,” obtained a list with the 25 largest UK
mission agencies, and surveyed them. We used a set of three questions
similar to the ones used in the US. If we had had these UK survey
results when we wrote our Missions book, we would have come to
the same conclusion. Though given the opportunity to do so, NONE of the
UK mission agencies questioned the use of mental health professionals or
psychological tests.
The first time we attended the same conference in
London 18 years ago, there was none of this therapizing in the mission
agencies as far as we had been told. How did this dramatic change occur?
The seed bed of psychotherapy internationally is the US. First the US
mission agencies became infected with the need for mental health
professionals and personality testing. Then the US branches of mission
agencies such as Frontiers, OMF International, and SIM influenced their
UK counterparts. Next these UK branches influenced other UK mission
agencies with the practice that had become so prevalent in the US.
As we have demonstrated in our Missions book,
there is no scientific justification for the use of mental health
professionals or personality tests for selecting missionaries or for
therapizing missionaries experiencing problems of living.
We thank the Lord for those of you who rely on the
Word of God rather than the psychological wisdom of men and reject the
pseudoscience behind the use of mental health professionals and
personality tests.
Dear Friends,