NTM and Ministry Ages 0-4 (Part 1)

Hey, it’s N.J. here. I’m deviating from my normal content to write a bit of an autobiography series. I’ve done this in bits and pieces, but I’m working on writing about my life in a more structured format. Part of my journey towards something better for me and my life is working through childhood trauma, and through both my good and bad memories of childhood. I think I’ve always had a desire to understand the why behind things. And this is my way of exploring the why behind my family dynamics and childhood.

My title for this series was initially “Broke My Bones to Fit Your Mold” a reference to a Hot Mulligan song regarding religious trauma and the lingering effects of it. But that’s a bit long, so for now I’ll leave the song right here to start off this series.

I think the best place to start is with my parents and how they met. My parents met in bible college. I think that’s important to the foundation of my story. And this wasn’t just any bible college, this was New Tribes Mission (NTM – now Ethnos 360). My parents were both on a path to “native” missionary work when they first met. They both, in their mid-twenties, shared a joint vision of preaching to “unreached people groups” and converting them to Christianity.

To help speed up the story let me move forward in time to after they graduated and married. My mom quickly became a stay-at-home mom (hello little NJ). My dad was farming and working to save up for their next round of missions training (boot camp). He was working long hours while trying to also juggle his spiritual duties working as an interim pastor at a local church.¹ My mom describes this period of her life as stressful and lonely.

I wasn’t a planned baby, and they didn’t have insurance coverage at the time.² So they were forced to pay out of pocket for my birth and prenatal care. My dad blamed my mom and thought she had sabotaged the birth control in some way.³ Their plans for missions were set back (financially) by my birth.⁴ And the tensions between my parents escalated. My sister entered the picture about two years after I was born.

The only memory I have of this time is a physical scar from a burn on my hand. According to family lore I put my palm on a single pane glass stove and severely burned my hand. Family lore states that a doctor snipped the burnt skin from the palm of my hand. (Apparently, I hated doctors for a long time after that).

I don’t know exactly where, but my family found the money to move to Canada for missions training. We relocated to Durham, Ontario so my parents could complete their training to become full time missionaries. My memories are scattered, but this is the period of time where I start to have solid memories.

Fragments from my mind include sliding down a hill in a tricycle like sled. Digging out snow from the side of what seemed like a wall of snow around the sidewalk and making myself a little seat. Playing in a sandbox with an old-fashioned hand mixer. Falling asleep wearing itchy wool mitts.⁵ Running through the woods to go play with some older kids and their cool fort. Looking for a friend in the woods to go play in a sandbox together. My dad taking us for a walk around a pond (and foggy memories around also paddling around on a boat of some type on this same pond).

The actual reality behind all of these broken but overall positive memories, was a lot of pressure and indoctrination for my parents and for me as a child. While my dad was learning how to preach and my mom was learning how to be a supportive and submissive missionary wife, I was learning about an evangelical vision of god and jesus during childcare (most of the day). My parents were in a high stress environment, and they were living in two room household without full facilities. They had to walk down the street to a shower / bathhouse to use the restroom or bathroom. All while caring for two (three at the end) children under four. They also had assigned work detail duties to help keep costs down at the missions organization (stuff normally associated with paid staff like groundskeepers or housekeepers) – clearing sidewalks and cleaning the bathhouse.

The high point of training was a month and a half “jungle camp.” Students and staff would spend multiple weeks living in the woods living with their families away from all modern technology and conveniences. My mom (pregnant with my brother) and dad built a “house” in the woods. Cooked, ate, pooped, and showered in the woods for multiple weeks all the while caring for two toddlers. This accompanies “bush” training that is supposed to enable missionaries to live like this in the future. Living completely off the grid in a foreign nation. I’ve seen pictures of my parents learning how to slaughter chickens, cooking over a homemade stove, and building living structures like the one below.⁶ According to my online sleuthing, this was the culmination of a whole semester of training regarding off grid living.

What strikes me the most was that this was supposed to be training for how the rest of their lives would play out. This was practical and what they were committing to doing for god. They had every intention of taking their family of four (soon to be five) into a jungle like off grid environment to reach “unreached people groups” for Christ. They were committed and willing to give up every convenience and sense of modern living for god.⁷ In many cases this off grid living was also associated with extreme danger as well. My parents would tell us stories of NTM missionaries that had been captured by revolutionaries or killed by local natives.⁸

I don’t have a direct reason for what led to my parents being told to leave NTM. But I do know that shortly before their graduation from the NTM Durham missionary training school they were told to leave. Apparently with instructions to work on their family dysfunction and to return after counseling and bettering their marriage. And while I know it devastated my parents, I’m personally thankful their vision of missionary work did not come to fruition. Many of the MKs⁹ from NTM have horrible stories of their abuse suffered at the hands of the MK boarding schools that they attended while their parents where on the “missions field.”¹⁰

Retrospective thoughts.

Looking back now it’s hard for me to reckon with the fact that my parents were dead set on being missionaries in (potentially hostile) developing nations. What hurts a bit more is the fact that they were willing to sacrifice their own relationship and the safety of their children in order to make it happen.¹¹ I’ve talked with my mom a little around the abuse surrounding NTM. She told me that she was aware of it and knew kids that were abused at NTM. Despite that knowledge they were still willing to place their children and family in that environment. They were willing to give up everything including their children for their faith and their god.

1. For those unfamiliar with the language. Interim pastors take leadership of a church while the church is looking for a full-time permanent pastor. ↩︎
2. If you get pregnant, within “x” number of weeks after starting a new insurance plan they consider the pregnancy to be a “preexisting condition.” This is exactly what happened to my parents. (This was at least true of insurance in America in the 90s. I’m not 100% sure what the laws are now. ↩︎
3. For context my parents married August 92 and I was born June 93. ↩︎
4. I’m struggling not to add in a sarcastic joke about never truly being wanted, but yeah sometimes it felt like that. ↩︎
5. My family (me and my sister) had chickenpox, and my parents put mitts on our hands so we wouldn’t scratch at the boils / blisters. ↩︎
6. https://e360bible.org/blog/ethnos-canada-emanate/ ↩︎
7. There are so many problems with this type of missions work. Often contact with “modern” individuals has led to the deaths of many tribal and “unreached” people groups. (Think back to the widespread death of indigenous people in America during the colonization of America). And this has happened within NTM’s own history. They have introduced disease and led to the death of many indigenous people. The following link leads to a page mostly focusing on NTM missions work in Brazil. https://www.survivalinternational.org/about/evangelical_missionaries ↩︎
8. https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/new-tribes-mission-concludes-3-kidnapped-workers-are-dead/ I’m not sure if it was this exact circumstance, but I remember praying nightly for the safe return of captured NTM missionaries in Columbia. ↩︎
9. Missionary kids. (MK) ↩︎
10. Parents were encouraged to leave their school age children in the hands of NTM run boarding schools so that the parents could focus on the missionary work instead of worrying about homeschooling and caring for their children. CW for SA and child abuse in the following link. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/religion/ungodly-abuse-lasting-torment-new-tribes-missionary-kids-n967191 ↩︎
11. Instead of focusing on solving the difficulties in their marriage and learning how to work together my dad pushed my mom into a SAHM role and he worked 24/7. They didn’t talk or spend time together, but in their minds they were both focusing on their god given roles. Also they were working towards to save up towards their god given calling to be missionaries. ↩︎