Although as a player in the picture above, my size makes me stick out in a similar way to the coach who is wearing different clothes to the team.

I wrote about a missionary being like a coach previously, here. I like the coach picture because it shows that a missionary plays a different role to locals in the game of mission. They are a support role, they are not the players. They are advisory only. They can help before in preparation. They can help after in debrief and recovery. During the game they can only assist, they cannot control or take over (generally speaking and with slightly differing degrees depending on the sport). Instead of the focus being on the coach, the action is focussed on the players and their resources rather than what the coach can do. Whether the coach sits in the box or on the sideline, they stand outside the play. Even though they stand closer than the crowd, they are not as close as the players.

If the bridge metaphor shows how a missionary connects to cultures in their person, and the sniper metaphor shows the timeline of a missionary career as well as their target, the coach metaphor explores the outsided-ness that a coach has despite being close to the game; there is both proximity and distance. Next week I start to mix metaphors as I explore the missionary as a player, the goalie.