International Campus Minister - International Campus Minister CMF International Employee Review

Worked with smart, kind, and efficient people.

I can’t think of any.

Living abroad is a wonderful (and challenging) experience. Learning a new language or culture is obviously so enriching. There are a lot of really great people that work for CMF. It’s an experience that will change your life for better or for worse. This is not a normal job in any way and CMF will likely tell you that.

I was a missionary overseas with this organization for years. Take it from a seasoned veteran that this isn’t the sort of place most people want to work long term for a variety of reasons. It’s a meat grinder. It seems like the majority of the information out there about what it’s like to work for CMF is from people who work at the home office in Indianapolis and not the folks who work overseas. This review is aimed at the perspective of someone who worked overseas, which is most of the people who work for CMF. The perspective of home office employees is irrelevant in an organization like this because it’s not the focus of the work being done and represents a small percentage of the employees. Keep this in mind when reading information or reviews about CMF. Do you want the perspective of someone who sat in a comfy office in the midwest or the people who did missions and went abroad? Easy choice. CMF, more than anything, peddles a good story. It is not a missions organization, it’s one giant PR campaign. What they require their missionaries to do is to go out and live/create that story. The story is then sanitized and fed to eager churches and donors in the USA. And so all that tax free money continues to pour in. Quite literally millions (fact check it). Do lives get changed? In my years-long experience not often, not significantly, and not permanently. But they sure do know how to tell a good story. To this end CMF is very proficient at convincing people to raise money for the organization (mostly young, naïve people) and sending them abroad. So, what’s it actually like to work for CMF as a missionary in a foreign country? In short: deeply taxing and very rarely rewarding. Here are some highlights: The burnout/turnover is quite high and we had fresh new missionaries coming and going every year or two or three. They always came energized and excited and they almost always left jaded and cynical. Think CMF gives a hoot about it’s missionaries? Look at the turnover and how outgoing missionaries are treated. Hint: It’s not great. I know dozens of former CMF missionaries and the vast majority would never associate with CMF again. And there’s many good reasons for that. The CMF rumor mill was like nothing I’ve ever seen or experienced before or since. The missionaries within CMF and some of the home office staff are gossipy in the extreme and a lot of the time it was malicious gossip. The churn of rumors was nearly nonstop. The interior politics of this organization are nasty and navigating them was exhausting. Homophobia and other ish is alive and well in this organization. What’s even more cringe is that many, many missionaries and home office staff identify as “liberals” (in the American sense) and on a personal level have no issues with the LGBTQ community. But the organization as a whole is decidedly anti anything but pretty traditional Christian and to be a part of it you have to turn a blind eye to the bigotry. And good for them. It’s a “Christian” organization afterall. But the bait and switch of “We love everyone” simply isn’t true. On several occasions I watched this organization openly persecute, exclude, marginalize, and ultimately push out or fire people in the LGBTQ community. It’s the 21st century. Is this really still a thing? You work with a lot of children. Missionary recruits are majority very young people (in their 20s) with little or no other job experience. This is probably why turnover is so high: it’s tough job and children are getting sent to do it. Immaturity, bad attitudes, abysmal work ethic, inability to regulate emotions like an adult, non-existent professionalism, and naïve worldviews are common on the teams. The version of Christianity being peddled by CMF is decidedly American and seems to be curated to appeal to the American donor base. Few other iterations of Christianity or cultural nuances are supported or tolerated. And most of the time this bias isn’t even recognized or talked about. It’s all about American money and exporting American Christianity. Tragic. Predictable. Most poignantly, CMF as well as organizations and churches like it seem to be fertile breeding ground for narcissism. When you’re on a moral crusade and you’re convinced you’re right I’m not sure how this is avoidable. Are there good people who work for CMF? Absolutely. Some of them are just delightful. But there are also some raging narcissists in the ranks as well. Tread carefully now. If you just have the travel bug or want to live outside of your home country just go do that. Don’t be a missionary. Don’t affiliate with CMF or an NGO like it. There’s far better and far less traumatic ways to live an adventure, which is what so many young people entering CMF seem to want to do. I can’t recommend that good, upstanding, feeling people seriously consider working for CMF. It’s rough. And it takes years to wade through and be able to clearly see the flaws, the nepotism, the bigotry, and the narcissism. If you’re good at shutting up, keeping your head down, and basically living under a rock you might do OK with CMF. Guard your heart.