Missions minded: The power of a tap on the shoulder

Buck Burch

If you have ever watched a modern TV show about SWAT teams entering a building, you may have noticed a particular tactic used when the team is advancing. A SWAT team "tap on the shoulder" (or hand on the back) is a non-verbal communication method employed during high-risk engagements to ensure team synchronization and safety. The shoulder tap acts as a physical signal chain, allowing members to know the person behind them is ready and in position, thus silently enhancing team coordination. 

After a sharp disagreement about missions strategy that led Paul and Barnabas to form two separate teams, Paul traveled to Lystra, where he met young Timothy. Timothy’s reputation and family background made Paul believe he would be a great addition to his team. In a sense, Paul tapped Timothy on the shoulder to join him on his next mission trip (Acts 16:1-3). 

Randy Williams has served in various vocational church roles, from youth ministry to discipleship to campus pastor to missions pastor. Over the many years of Randy’s ministry, he has learned the power of a “tap on the shoulder.” The Lord has tremendously blessed his missions ministries, so I asked him about this phenomenon of calling out others into missions. 

Randy is very comfortable offering an opportunity for people to join him on mission trips. “At no time have I ever received an answer of ‘no,’” Randy explains. “I have sometimes received a ‘not this trip but the next one,’ but at no time have I ever felt like I blew it and asked the wrong person.” When asked about his deliberation in choosing people, he responds, “I really have never given it a lot of forethought. When I was working with Levi Skipper at Concord Baptist in Clermont, I learned to see other people’s potential in leadership.” Being able to sense the capability of someone to grow in their leadership potential is an important impetus in calling them out to go. 

Various barriers sometimes prohibit calling people to join God on mission. However, Randy is a strong believer that God’s call can overcome all of those barriers. “Funding has never really been a barrier to tapping someone on the shoulder. I really believe that if God calls someone to go on a trip, He will provide their funding.” At his church, Randy utilizes a designated “Give2Go” fund that has underwritten trips with 50% of their total costs. Because of the generosity and commitment of the church to missions, funding has not presented a limitation to God’s call. 

The involvement in missions feeds into every aspect of church life. Currently serving as missions pastor at Ebenezer Baptist in Toccoa, Randy works to offer various mission trips twelve times a year. Randy remarks that “our current pastor, Jamie Smith, also taps people on the shoulder to go with him.” In all of his experience, Randy points to the importance of the senior pastor’s vision and personal involvement in missions as integral to success. 

I asked Randy about what he looks for in a person before tapping them on the shoulder. “Our missions philosophy is task-driven by what the field needs; then we develop the team based on those expressed needs from the field,” Randy says. “This leads to a discovery or search for a team member who has a certain skill set to meet that need.”

Randy gave an example of a recent second trip to Scotland this year to do construction: “There is a lady in our church who is great at architectural and interior design, so she will go with us.” He pointed to another example of field needs: “In Italy, we wanted to be involved in the Olympics ministry, and the missionary there, who grew up in our church, asked me to send folks gifted in evangelism. So we sent a team of three to fill that need.” Missions at Concord got started with some long-term members who always went on every trip to do construction. “They would write checks for construction projects, because that’s what they felt specifically called to and gifted for,” he remembers. Beyond field needs, Randy also looks to field demands. “Sometimes physical fitness is a prerequisite for receiving the tap on the shoulder,” he shares. “If we’re going to be climbing a lot or walking for miles in snow, we need team members who can handle that physically.” 

Some of the most memorable times he felt the Lord lead him to tap someone on the shoulder were when God impressed him to choose a family to go, and then seeing how their lives consequently unfolded into a life of missions over the years. He shares, “One time back in my student ministry days, God led me to tap the shoulder of a father who was grieving over his stepdaughter who had recently been killed in a car wreck. That student who lost her life had been involved in missions before the accident. At first, I questioned whether God really wanted me to do this, because this parent’s grief had turned to anger. But his response was, ‘Randy, I’m going to go on a mission trip to Brazil with you, because this missions stuff was important to my stepdaughter.’ This involvement in missions facilitated the healing that dad needed.”

Another time, Randy felt like God wanted him to ask a lost person to go on a mission trip with him, so he tapped him on the shoulder. During the trip, the man just observed the team at work, but three weeks later, he got saved. He told Randy, “I feel like I’ve been sitting in the stands just watching Christians, but now I want to be one.” 

Randy offers three words of advice for missions leaders and pastors who are considering tapping someone on the shoulder to go on mission: 

1. Responsibility. We have a responsibility to spiritually pour into our folks. In Acts 1:8, Jesus’ last words must have been His most important ones. He made it a clear priority that this is what He’s called us to do, to be His witness in Georgia, in the United States, and to the ends of the earth. 
2. Sensitivity. God has laid certain people on my heart, but I have to hear Him clearly. Levi often told me that if I think of someone, we should assume that God has laid that person on my heart. So I’m going to act on my thoughts under the Spirit’s direction. 95% of the time, a person responds to me that he/she was thinking about that too. 
3. Continuity. When tapping someone on the shoulder, consider the whole family. Steve Parr’s book on Why They Stay reveals that one of the top reasons why kids stay in church after entering adulthood is that they served together in church with their family while growing up. This is why family missions is so important to my ministry.  

Paul’s choice of Timothy not only led the young man to join a mission work; it ultimately led him to become a pastor of a new church in Ephesus (1 Timothy 1:3). Randy shares that his own son, Miles, went with him to Mexico on teams that Randy led, and now that son serves as a youth pastor in Alabama. In essence, Miles is Randy’s Timothy, and he is joyful to see other shoulders being tapped for the advancement of missions teams in future generations. 

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