Globally Ever After

Phil Davis came to know Christ right after getting kicked out of college. As he read the Bible and joined a church for the first time, he discovered, to his deep disappointment, that all the “fun, cool stuff,” as he describes it, had already happened in New Testament times. Seemingly, modern Christians were just “biding their time, trying not to sin too much” as they waited for Jesus to come back.

Imagine Phil’s delight a few years later when he read his first missionary biography and discovered that God’s plan for the world is still very much happening today with all the associated risks and thrills. This could be exciting, he thought, and immediately tried to get involved. By that time, Phil had married Angie and welcomed the first few of their eventual eight children. Like the Fletchers, they were turned down by several mission agencies because they were already too old, with too many children and no formal Bible education. So, for the next several decades, Phil worked as a roofer and contented himself with supporting missions through their church and encouraging younger people to become missionaries.

“I would try to talk godly people into going to dangerous places,” Phil says. “They’d look at me like I was insane. ‘This will be great,’ I told them, ‘You’ll love it. When you get to heaven, all these people will hug you because you brought the gospel to their people group.’” Phil felt frustrated by what he considered apathy in the American church. “I thought of missions as one of the primary things a church should be doing,” he says.

As Phil mobilized with maximum enthusiasm but minimal success, Angie was busy at home. “We had eight kids,” she says, “I was trying to make sure they ate.” Angie shared Phil’s passion to support missionaries, but she didn’t expect to be personally involved. “Without the seminary training so many organizations wanted,” she explains, “I didn’t really think we were going anywhere.” But God had a surprise in mind.

Serving the Not Served

When Phil was in his early 60s, he attended an event hosted by a group of mission agencies highlighting unengaged people groups. Each table of participants was assigned a people group, and they strategized about what it would take to reach them with the gospel. As they prepared to take communion to close the final session, the speaker asked from the stage, “Has everyone been served?” Phil’s table leader stood up and answered, “No, our people group has not been served.” Phil still chokes up remembering the moment. He felt God saying to him, “Now you can go.”

Phil wasn’t sure how Angie would feel about his renewed passion for global missions. “For 40 years, I was always into this mission stuff and Angie was into being a mom,” he says. “I didn’t think she’d be interested in going off to some weird place.” But as their children left home, Angie embraced the opportunity to serve the Lord in a new way. The Davises contacted Pioneers and finally felt welcome. “They didn’t say, ‘Well, you should really reconsider because you’re kind of old, broken, and frail,’” Angie explains. “They said, ‘Come on, let’s walk the trail together.’”

“I was leaning on the door when it popped open. I just fell right in.”
Phil

Phil was drawn to the Arab world and countries he thought of as the “scary -stans.” Angie spoke Spanish and considered South America a more reasonable option. They decided to start by visiting a country in South Asia, where Phil learned he had underestimated his wife. “She had to wear a full-length robe and a head covering she could barely see out of, and it was blistering hot,” he remembers. “We traveled a road where foreigners were regularly abducted for ransom, but she didn’t freak out. She was fine.” The Davises were willing to move there but found out they were already “perilously close” to the government’s age limit for long-term visas. Instead, they shifted their focus to a neighboring country with a similarly massive unreached population. They have served in South Asia for seven years and counting.

Work for the Willing

For Phil and Angie, ministry mainly involves sharing the gospel with their friends. Angie meets regularly with two women who want to learn more about Christianity. They read passages of the Bible together, and Angie answers their questions. “It was so freeing,” she says, “when it finally dawned on me that I wasn’t responsible for anybody’s conversion. I have the freedom to introduce them to Jesus. One of the young ladies I’m meeting with has had dreams about Him.”

For the first time in decades, Angie also now has a day job. She handles the administration of a company supporting dozens of church planters. She qualifies for a business visa, which leaves Phil free for the kind of ministry he loves best: “wandering about” and meeting people. “I ask God to bring me people who might be interested,” he says. “I’ve had some really fun conversations.”

The Davises attend an English-speaking church, and Phil tries to encourage the local believers to reach out to their neighbors. “Like churches in the West,” he explains, “they think having a nice, close-knit community of Christians is the goal. They forget about going out.” Phil hasn’t found a use for his roofing skills in South Asia, and he doesn’t feel uniquely qualified for ministry. But he’s uniquely willing. “I know half a dozen people in my home church who can do what I’m trying to do better than I can,” he explains, “but they’re not interested. So, you get to have knucklehead, or you get nobody.”

“Somebody has to prepare the field, somebody has to plant, and somebody has the joy of reaping. They may not all be the same person.”
Angie

To open more doors for ministry, Angie has learned three local languages to various proficiency levels. She has a theory about language learning as an older adult: “It’s time-consuming.” At the school where she studied most intensely, students were expected to spend four hours a day in class “getting their brains fried” and 20 minutes at home listening to recordings. Angie says it was obvious who did the homework and who didn’t. In her opinion, time and effort had far more to do with her progress than age— “People say we’re slow, but I tell you, I was basically the same speed as the others.”

Phil agrees wholeheartedly (“Don’t think the story that old people can’t learn languages is true in any way, shape, or form!”), but he took a different approach himself. “I don’t have this language at all because I wasn’t up for it,” Phil says. The way he looks at it, their city is home to 3 million unreached people. For many of them, English “might as well be their first language. They will not let you struggle when they can switch into English and have a deep discussion.” So, Phil didn’t put the time in like Angie did. “I felt guilty,” he admits, “until I realized the Apostle Paul used Greek, which was the English of his day.” Phil based his decision not to invest as much time in language-learning on his context and his ministry goals. “If I were out in the villages,” he says, “I would have had to learn the language to talk to anybody. What was optional for me would not be optional at all.”

Wisdom and Whippersnappers

The Davises only planned to live in South Asia for five years, the duration of Angie’s business visa. For Phil, “That was a natural break. At some point, the government is going to ask, ‘What are you doing here on a business visa at this age?’” Once again, he underestimated his wife.

As the time approached for the Davises to either renew their visa or return to the U.S. permanently, Angie insisted she wasn’t finished yet. “We got into this so late,” she says. “It takes years sometimes before you get close enough to somebody to have a spiritual conversation. Opportunities to study the Bible with people are developing—and suddenly we cut it off? As long as our health holds out, I want to stay another five years. Asians don’t seem as bothered by our age as some of our other friends.”

In Asia, “Gray hair is valuable, I think because it’s not often achieved,” Angie says. “Gray-haired people are thought of as wise.” Phil doesn’t necessarily enjoy the special treatment (“They bring us chairs to sit in, which is kind of insulting.”), but he recognizes it shows respect and care. And he thinks age brings another advantage in ministry:

Older people have a deeper well of trouble they’ve gotten through in life. Various medical things, or financial things, or kid things that were the end of the world, but they got through them. In some ways, older people might have it easier because they’ve been through more junk and come out the other side.

The Davises joined a team in South Asia led by a man in his 40s with more than a decade of experience. Three months after they landed, their team leader had to leave the country permanently. Phil and Angie’s only real option was to join a nearby team focused on a different people group and led by a single woman in her 30s. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. “Anybody who’s in our age cohort,” Phil says, “is probably not used to being under the authority of some young whippersnapper. They’re going to have to be able to handle that this person’s in charge, and they’re not. They’re going to have to defer.” Somewhat surprisingly, for Phil and Angie’s team, “It just worked. We gelled really well.” Angie even gets to use her Spanish with a Latin American teammate.

“We look old and experienced, but we’re really wet behind the ears in terms of how this is done.”
Phil

Home and Away From Home

While team life has been a joy, daily life in South Asia can be tough. “You’re all excited at first,” Angie says, “and then it wears thin.” She misses potable tap water, smooth sidewalks, and being able to dry clothes on rainy days. It’s possible to shop in convenient, modern stores, but if you want to get to know local people, “you’re better off going to the market where you buy your fruits here and vegetables there and your garlic over there. They take your ironing here and butcher your chicken there. All kinds of potential new friends, but it’s not convenient.” And some stressors go much deeper than inconvenience. Angie shared, “I’m hurting for the women who, by their clothing, seem to me to express that they’re constrained.”

The Davises come back to the U.S. once a year to reconnect with their grandchildren and their sending church. They have worked out the timing to be present for the birth of all of their grandkids except one. The problem is, when they come home, they no longer have a home. “We have three daughters vying for free babysitting,” Phil says, “and they’ve got various digs in which we can live out of our suitcases.” As much as they try to be part of their grandkids’ lives and appreciate video calls, “It’s not the same as hugs and kisses.” The Davises’ 3-year-old grandson once asked them on the phone, “Are you in heaven?” His other grandmother had recently passed away, and he wasn’t sure what Phil and Angie’s departure really meant.

The More the Merrier

Phil finds it a lot easier to mobilize people for missions after serving overseas himself. “I’m stoked about trying to talk people into this,” he says, but he realizes it’s not for everyone. “At the end of two years, you’ll know whether you can hack it for another five or not. And if not, that’s fine. You gave it a shot, and it didn’t work out. You tried something that’s not easy. So, we’re going to honor you for that.”

Are you curious if you’d enjoy market shopping and living out of suitcases? Are you a godly person interested in moving to a dangerous place? Or, like Angie, an available person who wants to introduce people to Jesus? For as long as you’ve walked with the Lord, you’ve had a standing invitation to participate in global missions, whether it involves airplanes and foreign languages or not. Don’t be too quick to assume it won’t, even if people bring you chairs without you asking. Would you like a few extra people to hug you in heaven because you were a part of bringing the gospel to their homeland? When it comes to older missionaries, I agree with Phil— “There’s not a ton of us, but the more the merrier.”

Going Out in Style

As a follower of Jesus, you are part of a global array of people who have embraced the challenge of the Great Commission at every stage of life. For 25 years, my job has included not only welcoming new missionaries, but also reading resignation letters as they move on to other roles and ministries. I want to share one of my favorites. Jeff and Constance served as missionaries for 12 years, starting at age 56. They summed up the experience this way:

For five years in Asia, our work focused on evangelism of unengaged islands among Muslims who were really animists. Later, we moved to Europe, where the work was on the streets of Pakistani-background ghettos. We have experienced hundreds of encounters on the street, in dark alleys, in mosques, at universities and schools, at malls, in jails, police stations, ports, in taxis, on buses and boats, in jungles, on the beach, with threatening boat captains, motorcycle accidents, terrible weather, dangerous military and criminals—through big seas, little boats, snakes, rats, wasps, and roaches the size of Buicks. We may even have accidentally planted a couple of churches. We want to thank the Pioneers family for making it possible to follow our calling. It has been a grand adventure.

Wherever your walk with the Lord leads, join me in praying for more workers for the global harvest—especially ones with silver hair and the boldness to embark on a new grand adventure.