Note: Some of the pastors quoted in this article may no longer be serving in the roles described. Their positions reflect their ministry at the time of writing.
Since Radius' inception in 2012, many churches have sent their members to receive training and, in the process, we've had the privilege of getting to know these men and women and further equipping them to bring the Lord worship where it currently does not exist.
As we talk with the pastors and churches that send, we often hear similar stories of heartbreak as a congregation sends out a missionary or missionary family, only to confront the uncomfortable reality that not everyone they send stays.
"One of the things I discovered was it seemed like we would send people, but not everyone would sustain on the mission field. And for me, that was personal and somewhat painful," says Joel Reich, senior pastor at a church in Iowa.
Kyle J., who served as missions pastor in the southern US, expressed a similar observation: "If we're talking about people going to be church planters in a closed context amongst an unreached minority language group, you're talking about 20 to 30 years. Well, if the average person can't stay on the field more than 4 years or 7 years, we're never going to get that done."
In their search to solve this attrition issue, many stumbled across Radius International.
Searching for a Solution
Greg Altmeyer, director of global ministry at a church in Iowa, was one of them. "At the time, Radius was the only training that seemed to fit the need of helping us to prepare our workers to go to second language contexts," he explains. "It provided training that really forced them to wrestle and count the cost of what they were endeavoring to do."
Kyle came across Radius through conversations at CROSS Conference one year, but he wasn’t willing to send his members on word of mouth alone. So he visited Radius for himself during one of our Radius Days. He met the faculty. He sat in classes. He watched how students were taught. Only then did he feel ready to entrust his people to Radius. "Whether it's training or whether it's with an organization, it's important for you to put your eyes on those things and to see those things for yourself," he says. "I think that's hugely important for pastors."
What They Discovered
When Kyle sent his first couple through Radius, he expected them to return with practical skills like linguistics, phonetics and culture acquisition methods. And they did. But something else came back with them that he hadn't anticipated.
"I kept hearing them say that in all these cases, Radius just kept telling them to be humble, obedient followers of Christ," Kyle recalls. "And I'm sitting there going, okay, what about the church planting? What about the linguistics?" But his couple kept returning to this theme. "I thought this was supposed to be like Navy SEALs for missionaries, and it is, but that was one of the things that most struck me, that it is a primary concern of Radius to ensure that when students come through, whether they go to the field or not, they are taught to be humble, obedient followers of Christ."
The technical skills matter. But at Radius we teach something more fundamental and even predictive of success on the field: character. Character shapes how a missionary learns a language, navigates conflict, perseveres through suffering, and ultimately stays. It is foundational to how a worker operates in their country, and it's what these pastors kept seeing in their people after Radius.
Altmeyer has now sent 24 missionary candidates through Radius, serving across North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. "They arrive on the field confident, but also humble," he observes. "Confident in their ability to navigate the task before them by God's grace, and humble about the effort, perseverance, and dependence on the Lord required to learn language, culture and relationships." That posture shaped how they approached difficulty, how they handled team dynamics and how they asked questions they didn't yet have answers to. "They grew in their understanding of suffering, their ability to navigate team conflict, and their capacity to have hard and necessary conversations. They knew what to do, and they're still doing it."
Reich sees the same thing. Cindy (name changed for security), a Radius graduate from his church now serving in Africa, embodies what this kind of character looks like over time. "I have just been so encouraged to see how the training she had has benefited her sustainability, but also just her perseverance in serving on the field."
A Shared Commitment
Cross-cultural church planting among unreached language groups may be, as Kyle puts it, "the hardest job in the world that a believer can have." The peoples waiting to hear the gospel for the first time deserve workers who will stay long enough to learn their language, understand their culture, and plant churches that endure. That requires rigorous preparation that matches the difficulty of the task. Zeal and passion may open the door for many of these missionaries, but as these pastors have seen, it is proper training that keeps workers on the field.
As Altmeyer reflects: "We know that they care deeply about the people that we send there. They want to see them succeed in their walks with the Lord and in their pursuit of cross-cultural church planting."
A shared commitment to the workers and their work is why pastors continue to send their missionaries through the program. And the results are evident: men and women who are tested, trained, and ready to stay.
