I’m reading a book entitled worthKeeping: Global Perspectives on Best Practice in Missionary Retention. It is quite good. Unfortunately it isn’t for sale on Amazon, so you won’t see it on my reading list.

This book is based on extensive research on missionaries and mission agencies. It studies retention and attrition. Why is this a concern? We want to keep good missionaries working productively for as long as possible.

The authors look at many factors to see if there is any correlation to attrition. One of the first factors is the size of the mission agency. Small organizations (especially those with ten or less field staff) lose almost half their missionaries within three years of service. The annual attrition rate is 17% for that group.

Larger mission agencies from “older sending countries” like America lose, on average, 6.3%. I did a quick check on our statistics. Wycliffe has been losing less than 5% for the past several years. That is great!

As I read, I’ll post more about the book.