Pastor Wayne Schulz, one of WELS’ three mission counselors, serves missionaries and mission groups in the north-central part of the United States and western Canada. While preparing a ministry plan for the new year, Schulz sat down with Forward in Christ to talk about the mission counselor program and how it helps the work of our synod.

Tell me about your position as a mission counselor—what does that entail?
I look at us as field representatives. We’re out there to provide on-site assistance for missionaries, mission groups, and sometimes self-supporting congregations. Sometimes we’re referred to as the “research and development” arm of Home Missions. So we might research an area or different ways to do outreach through new starts. Then we develop those concepts.

Whenever someone is assigned from the seminary into a mission site, we spend time with them. Or if someone from a self-supporting church takes a call into a mission field, we also spend time with them. A mission counselor really acts as a teammate with the missionary. We’re there to counsel, encourage, and listen to the missionaries: what their frustrations are and what their dreams are. And then we encourage them in big ways and try to help them keep their focus on what God is asking them to do through his call.

Now when you say “missionary,” do you mean someone serves missions overseas?
Mission counselors deal only with home missions. So when pastors are called to develop home missions here in the United States, we call them missionaries. In many ways, there are world mission fields right now in the home mission fields where we live. We’re involved with ministry to Hispanics, Hmong, Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese.

As a mission counselor, do you do a lot of traveling?
My particular area serves four different districts: Western Wisconsin, Northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Dakota-Montana. So I work with those four mission boards.

Each counselor is primarily responsible for a certain area, and we draw up a ministry plan for the fiscal year. I did my plan quite recently, and I listed 23 prioritized places that have to receive my attention this year. Then the district mission boards look at it, and they might say, “Well we would like you to prioritize in this way.” And then I try to work my schedule accordingly. In my case, yes, I’m on the road quite a bit. I don’t fly as much as some who serve in other areas, but I do fly out to Montana and into Canada.