By Greg Smith

“Work yourself out of a job. That’s one of your most important goals.”

Cross-cultural mission presents challenges on several levels. Oftentimes it requires learning a new language, adjusting to new cultural norms, working with key partners across religious and social boundaries, adopting new patterns of living and many others.

One of those “many others” is learning to offer others the spiritual gifts and material resources you may have without believing those gifts and resources somehow make you “indispensable” to the work. Thinking yourself to be indispensable can be the downfall of years of good and meaningful endeavors. No one—apart from the Spirit of God—is indispensable in mission.

Years ago, an older colleague offered me key advice: “Work yourself out of a job.” Be wise enough and smart enough to look down the road at where you want your mission service to go and envision yourself NOT being in the picture. Rather, envision your colleagues, friends, partners and associates being there in your place, carrying the work to new vistas and increasing growth in ways not possible for some ex-pat “foreign missionary” like yourself.

Working myself out of a job is what I’ve tried to do since my wife, our oldest son and I first ventured into cross-cultural missions in 1987, first in Costa Rica and later in domestic service in Virginia.

Thus, for the past seven years, in developing and directing our non-profit’s immigration legal services program and serving as the program’s first U.S. Department of Justice accredited representative, I have attempted to keep just this vision before my eyes. I am confident that, for all the good our program has done since launching in 2016, its achievements are truly just a foretaste of great things to come!

In a way, keeping this vision in front of me has not been hard to do because I began the work a bit late in my missionary journey. Prior to 2016, I served in theological education, mission administration, pastoral ministry, religious education promotion, church planting, non-profit ministry, Spanish-language certificate-level training, cultural competency training, among others. What I hadn’t done was anything remotely related to immigration law or immigration legal practice.

So it was only in the twilight of my career that I leapt into matters related to immigration. When I finally did, knowing from the start I would only have a few years’ time to invest in it, I found this made it easier to keep the vision before me from the start. But over the years as I dove deeper and deeper into the real and undeniable need of many to apply for or renew their legal ability to live and work in the U.S., the desire to help meet that need passed from merely working a “job” to realizing a passion. I found that it is very difficult to work oneself out of a passion.

Yet that’s where I am. Because, as I know from every other mission-related adventure I’ve undertaken, no matter how much I wish otherwise, my gifts nor my resources nor my dreams nor my anything is indispensable. As I said before, no one – apart from the Spirit of God – is indispensable in mission.

For the next 12 months, my main goal is to transition LUCHA Ministries Immigration Legal Services program to new hands. Over the past seven years, several volunteers have served with me to assist immigrants, refugees and asylees in this work. For the last four of those years, our team has primarily consisted of a retired volunteer immigration attorney, a second DOJ accredited representative and me. In all these years, we’ve handled close to 300 cases. I couldn’t have served with a better team!

Now, by God’s grace, two highly gifted women have stepped up to meet the challenge of leading this ministry beyond 2024. We rejoice that they have heard God’s call and responded in faith. We rejoice in their desire to plunge into the nuances and challenges of immigration law and administer the program for the benefit and support of those who need its services. And we rejoice that they seek to use their knowledge and complementary abilities to bless the lives of so many. Yet above all, we rejoice that these women share a common and deep love for the immigrant, refugee and asylee community.

I invite you to pray for LUCHA Ministries’ Immigration Legal Services program. Pray for our new leaders who will soon take the helm of the program. Pray that God will show us the interpreters, office assistants and other volunteers needed to aid them with the program. Pray for donors who will hear God’s call to financially fund the program so we can reach even more non-citizens in our area who legally qualify for immigration relief. And pray for those who will seek the program’s services in the future. God has blessed me to envision a future where God’s indispensable Spirit leads God’s called people in greater mission and service! Thanks be to God!

Greg Smith serves with his wife Sue  as CBF Field Personnel in Fredericksburg, VA. You can learn more about their ministries and support their work at www.cbf.net/smith.