Equipping Missionaries to Navigate Risk and Follow God’s Call
Our shared missionary calling is to see the gospel proclaimed and churches established among all peoples. Part of that calling is standing alongside missionaries who serve in challenging places.
As Global Security Coordinator for Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM), Ed helps missionaries prepare for challenges, navigate difficult decisions, and respond when crises arise. This work grows out of our years of missionary service and our commitment to the people who carry the gospel around the world.
Security in Service of the Great Commission
Missionaries face questions that rarely have simple answers. How should they prepare for an unfamiliar environment? How can they respond wisely when circumstances change? What does faithfulness look like when continuing ministry involves real risk?
These decisions affect more than an individual missionary. They touch families, teammates, local believers, and the communities being served. Our ministry helps missionaries and leaders consider those responsibilities with prayer, practical wisdom, and care.
Security serves the mission. It is not a promise of a risk-free life, but part of preparing and supporting people as they follow God’s call.
How This Ministry Serves Missionaries
Preparing Missionaries
Preparation begins before a crisis.
Ed trains new and experienced missionaries to understand risk and respond wisely to the challenges of cross-cultural ministry. He also develops practical resources for field leaders who care for missionaries and families serving in complex environments.
The goal is to make preparation useful and understandable—helping missionaries recognize the challenges they may face and equipping leaders to carry their responsibilities thoughtfully.
Guiding Difficult Decisions
Instability, health concerns, and emerging threats can require missionaries to reconsider how they serve. Decisions about staying, relocating, or evacuating are rarely straightforward.
Ed works with missionaries and field leaders as they assess their circumstances and consider how to respond. That process takes seriously both the missionary calling and the responsibilities people carry toward their families, teams, and local communities.
Sometimes faithful service means staying. At other times, it means withdrawing or continuing ministry in a different place. The aim is not to choose the most dangerous path—or automatically the safest—but to respond with prayer, discernment, and wise leadership.
Supporting Missionaries Through Crisis
When a serious incident occurs, missionaries and their families need people who will stand alongside them.
Ed leads a trained team that works with AGWM leadership to support missionaries and the organization through crisis. His experience includes helping missionaries navigate conflict, unrest, threats, and evacuations.
The work is deeply personal. Behind every response are people, relationships, and a calling that deserves thoughtful care.
Alongside his AGWM responsibilities, Ed has also provided training and collaborated with other missionary-sending organizations, extending opportunities to strengthen preparation and care across the missions community.
Faith, Wisdom, and Care Belong Together
We often return to Nehemiah’s example: he prayed, and he posted a guard. Trusting God did not remove the need for practical preparation.
We believe missionaries should neither pursue danger for its own sake nor assume that avoiding every risk is the same as faithfulness. Prayer, the Holy Spirit’s leading, sound judgment, and wise counsel all matter. So does love for the people affected by a decision.
Careful preparation cannot guarantee safety, and taking a risk does not guarantee ministry results. Our desire is to help missionaries approach their calling with courage, humility, and thoughtful care—not fear or recklessness.
Explore the Heart Behind the Work
These selected resources offer a closer look at missionary risk, preparation, and the responsibilities of those who go and those who send.
1. A Theology of Risk
Ed served as lead writer of AGWM’s official A Theology of Risk position paper, developed with a writing team. It offers a biblical framework for missionary risk decisions and addresses questions shared by families, sending churches, and friends.
2. Security Briefs With Ed Nye
Through short videos and podcast episodes released every two weeks, Ed shares practical guidance on risk, preparation, and missionary life. Created primarily for missionaries, the series also gives churches and supporters a window into the questions global workers face.
3. Why Go
Ed contributed the chapter “Is it Moral to Send Missionaries to Dangerous Places?” to AGWM’s book Why Go. Building on themes from A Theology of Risk, the chapter considers the responsibilities involved in sending missionaries into challenging environments.
4. When Mission Involves Danger: The Moral Responsibility of Sending
In this article for Mission Frontiers November/December 2026 edition, Ed considers the responsibility of the Church and missionary-sending organizations when God calls people to serve in dangerous places. He explores why faithful sending involves both a willingness to accept risk and a commitment to thoughtful preparation and care.
Stand Alongside Those Who Go
Your partnership helps make this ministry possible.
Through the generosity of churches and individuals, we are able to continue this work of preparation, training, and support. Your prayers and financial partnership sustain our missionary ministry and help us stand alongside others as they follow God’s call.
We invite you to pray with us for wisdom for missionaries and leaders, strength for families facing difficult circumstances, and opportunities for the gospel to be made known.
To discuss a church visit, speaking opportunity, or another way to connect, Contact Us.