The picture of a sniper resonates with my experience of being a missionary particularly as it relates to timeline and target. On numerous recountings, I have described a former missionary’s perspective on mission to me, as we chatted at CMS Summer School one year. He said to me in the first term, learn the language and don’t kill anyone (other versions are stay married or make a friend). Second term, you can make a list of all that needs addressing. Third term, you can address the first item on that list only. Over roughly 10 years, this is a rough sketch of the missionary timeline and target.

To me the above timeline and target matches the picture of a sniper as one part of the way an army wins a war. Snipers have a key expertise. They can take out a small target from a long way away. In terms of mission service, aiming for taking out a target in the third term of service echoes this ability. It echoes the waiting and watching, basically just the time involved in this task; mission work is time intensive. Patience is required; is demanded.

The sniper pic also echoes needing a good vantage point; it takes time to learn a new culture and be able to start to speak into it. Even though I know Khmer culture more now than when I first came, I’m less inclined to offer strong pronouncements about what Khmer Christians should do; my vantage point has shown me all the things that I don’t know about Khmer culture. A wise missionary said it was easiest to teach a book of the Bible, harder to teach doctrine and even harder to teach practical ministry subjects cross-culturally. Each step requires more and more cultural knowledge to do well.

Finally, the sniper metaphor highlights a sniper’s weakness. If the enemy gets in close they are at a disadvantage in hand to hand. While a sniper is specialised, their speciality is a liability when it comes to other activities. A weakness of mine at the moment is that I struggle to understand conversations between Khmer speakers that don’t involve me. This weakness reminds us that a sniper is only one part of an army. They won’t win the war, but they play an important part. Their specialist equipment speaks to the skills they bring that are ultra good at one thing and not great at others.

As I think about timeline and target in our context: First term learn Khmer (though, never finish learning). Second term begin teaching in Khmer and later give leadership a go. Third term becomes a culmination of the first two terms: improving teaching in Khmer as I lead in various capacities. This hopefully gives you a sense of my sniper technique in terms of target and timeline.