Between 1975 and 2005 I completed innumerable candidate assessments (I never counted them!). I was always pushed, at least in the beginnings of my relationships with a mission board, or when a new candidate person came on board, to tell them if the person should be a missionary, or not. 

As a mental health practitioners trying to help further the cause of missions, I will be looking at issues as they develop in the arenas of assessment, overseas behavior and treatment, and contexts where you find cross-cultural and organizational cultural issues. I also want to discuss how to work with missions in the most effective way, looking at specific kinds of assessments and the ministerial exception.I am hoping, Theresa, that I will surface issues that you may be able to speak to from a legal perspective. 

We’ve talked before about various aspects of child abuse investigations. In this series, I’d like to talk about safety plans. We may talk about several different kinds of safety plans, but to start with... Let’s talk about the legal and psychological aspects of a safety plan. 

Whether restoration is limited is going to depend on our definitions of restoration. The first is relationship. The second involves position. The third involves location. 

Theresa, you and I regularly consult with organizations that are dealing with abuse and trauma. In this thread I would like to focus on the accused – the perpetrator, or alleged perpetrator. What should our stance be for restoration? 

Hi Theresa. A few months ago we did a pretty good blog series on psychological assessment. However, I have had a lot of pushback from folk on this. 

Thanks Theresa, for the summary of your comments about the job descriptions. However, before we close this off, I think we need to say more than that job descriptions are hard to write.  

Brent, you have gathered a couple of modern missions job descriptions, and you’d like me to comment on how they compare to the Department of Labor suggestions. So here we go. 

Brent, you asked me to look back about 20 years and write my job description for when Bruce and I and our four small sons lived overseas for 7 years. He asked if I had a job description—I don’t think anyone did back then for this type of job. 

For this post, I'd like to note a few underlying psychological reasons to go with your reasons. I will comment on most of your points, or after any particularly important points.