Prepared for takeoff

Hannah Perszyk and fellow aviator Abigail Loveless huddle around a map of Puget Sound. Perszyk presses a plastic navigational plotter onto the map and measures the distance from their hangar in Arlington, Wash., a small city an hour north of Seattle, to Port Angeles, a town on the Olympic Peninsula, down to Bremerton and back. Then, she calculates the amount of gas it will take and their cruising elevation.

Loveless is a little nervous, but not Perszyk. She taps the map, indicating the route they’ll be flying: “I am excited because I live over here.”

Although she grew up in a Christian family, Perszyk had never given any serious thought to vocational ministry until three years earlier when she became a Christian and started praying about her future. When a friend told her about the summer camp at Mission Aviation Training Academy (MATA), she decided to give it a try.

Now Perszyk is preparing to climb into the pilot seat of a Cessna 172 and fly 50 nautical miles on her first cross-country trip. And she’s only 17.

With baby boomers retiring and younger generations joining the mission field in fewer numbers, global ministries are facing a growing shortage of pilots and mechanics. Sending organizations like MATA are reaching out to younger students, hoping to introduce them to missionary aviation before they begin college and adult life.

Preparing for the mission field is an expensive process that can take seven to 10 years and cost more than the average house in the Midwest.

Before joining the ranks of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), the largest sending ­missionary aviation agency, new recruits must already have their commercial pilot’s license with instrument rating ­certification as well as their airframe and power plant certificate—a mechanics degree that typically takes an additional two years of training. Altogether, these prerequisites add up to a minimum of 400 hours of flight time with an additional 50 hours of high-performance time.

And that’s just part of the education required for new pilots. Most missionary pilots also need to attend Bible college, study foreign languages, and spend up to a year raising money to cover their salary and ministry needs while serving on the mission field.

That high bar of entry has led to a decrease in the number of new missionary pilots in the pipeline.

Gary Elliott served 20 years as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force before becoming a missionary in the Philippines. He’s heard more than one story about missionary airplanes sitting on the field with no pilot. “There is a real shortage. If you talk to different mission groups, aviation groups, they will say, ‘Oh, we need 15 people right now, 10 mechanics, right now.’”

At 71, Elliott no longer works as a flight instructor at MATA. Instead, he serves as the ground school instructor, teaching students the fundamentals of flight before they get into the cockpit. In 2007, Elliott helped start the weeklong annual aviation camp to introduce teenagers to both flying and missions.

Looking at the framed group photos on the conference room wall, Elliott points out former students who are serving around the world in places like the mountains of Guatemala, the island of Palau, and the jungles of Brazil. “We know all the kids that come to camp are not going to be missionary pilots, but some are.” Each day at MATA’s summer camp begins with devotions, followed by three hours of ground school. Then campers spend another three hours in an airplane, during which students take turns sitting in the pilot’s seat and flying. They begin by learning how to control the airplane, and within a few days, they can take off.

In the evening, the camp focus turns to missions. Starting with what Elliott calls “world awareness,” instructors talk about global poverty, famine, disease, war—the “grim statistics” some teenagers have never heard. Then, they talk about how missionary pilots can serve people in remote areas through humanitarian flights. They can assist pastors, Bible translators, and other gospel-oriented ministries in reaching the estimated 1 billion people who live in areas inaccessible by road.

MATA aviation camp participants train on a flight simulator. Photo by Clayton Howie / MATA

ABIGAIL McMILLAN came to MATA in 2017 and began praying about serving as a missionary. When she graduated from high school four years later, she went to Brazil to help serve a missionary family who needed help with their four young children.

That experience strengthened McMillan’s desire to serve in missions, so when she returned to the United States, she enrolled in a two-year, mission-­orientated Bible college, Ethnos360. While there, she continued to pray about her next steps, asking God which specific kind of missions she should pursue.

After several months, McMillan says, she felt God leading her into missionary aviation. When she returned home, she committed to the process and began apprenticing as an airplane mechanic. Several months later, she began working on her private pilot’s license.

McMillan, now 22, knows finishing her mechanical training and flight certifications will be a long process. But that doesn’t bother her. “For me, it’s going to be a little bit more work. And I think that’s going to be good for me. I think the Lord set it up that way because He knows I need to stay in a place of reliance on Him,” she says.

McMillan often prays before her classes and while practicing maneuvers in the plane. “It has been a lot of prayer. You know, ‘Lord, equip the call.’”

MATA is not the only organization working to inspire the next generation of missionary pilots. MAF and the Jungle Aviation and Relay Service (JAARS), the aviation ministry long associated with the Bible translating organization Wycliffe, also offer aviation camps for teens.

Like the program at MATA, these camps give teens an opportunity to learn the fundamentals of flight and experience operating a small airplane while learning about the need for missionary pilots and mechanics.

JAARS also offers weekly trial flights at its headquarters in North Carolina. Spokeswoman Tracy Tooley says the young adults she meets at camps, colleges, and career fairs are often surprised to learn about mission aviation opportunities.

“You don’t have to be a preacher, a teacher, or a church planter to do that,” she says. “You can be a mechanic. You can be a pilot. You can be somebody who really is engaged with information technologies.”

MAF recruiter Will White says his organization currently needs about 20 new pilots, half of whom also need mechanical certifications. Several pilots are in the process of becoming full-fledged MAF missionaries, but the immediate need limits the ministry’s ability to expand into new areas.

White believes a general lack of foreign mission emphasis in American churches contributes to the lack of new missionary pilots. Young people growing up in the church often don’t know about the ongoing need for missionary service. And if they do, they often don’t know about opportunities for technically skilled workers. “They have a view of foreign missions as the Bible translator or the pastor or the church planter, and that leaves out all the technical guys.”

One exception: homeschoolers.

Tooley estimates as many as half the aviation camp students at JAARS come from homeschooling families. At MATA’s aviation camp, it’s about the same. MATA and MAF also recruit at homeschooling conferences.

White noted this might be because homeschooling families often read missionary biographies and study people like Jim Elliot and Nate Saint.

McMillan, who was homeschooled, said she read many missionary stories, and it inspired her to begin praying about her own future. “I began thinking, you know, I would be interested in missions. This would be really neat. And so, I gave that to the Lord because I was like, ‘I don’t want missions to be my goal. I want the Lord to be my goal.’”

Students study maps during pre-flight planning. Photo by Clayton Howie/MATA

WHILE MISSIONARY AWARENESS is a hurdle in the new pilot pipeline, the cost of training is an even larger impediment.

The average public university with aviation training runs around $150,000, including additional aviation costs. Private schools like the premier Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., can cost up to $250,000. Many students graduate with a heavy debt load.

Commercial aviation companies are addressing this problem by offering lucrative sign-on bonuses to lure new pilots. “I was at a career fair at the Oshkosh air show, and one of the other operators there was offering a $200,000 signing bonus paid out over time,” said White.

Because missionary organizations like MAF require candidates to raise funds to pay their salaries, many will not accept candidates with substantial debt. For MAF, that threshold is $200 a month.

Propelled by interest rates topping 6 percent, a typical 10-year student loan on a $150,000 education would leave an aviation graduate with a whopping $1,705 monthly payment, far exceeding MAF’s limit.

“That requires guys to go into industry and even fly corporate or commercial for several years to get that paid off,” White said. But the more time students delay mission work to pay off loans, the less likely they are ever to get to the mission field. “They start flying. You know, life happens. They have a family, and that shift to missions just never occurs.”

Flight schools like MATA offer an alternative to traditional universities with aviation programs. These flight school programs allow students to pursue their flight certifications while continuing to work. A student can complete the necessary certifications for around $40,000.

That’s still a significant amount for most people. But MATA encourages students to save their money and take classes as their funds allow, says the group’s director, Dary Finck: “We’re one of the unique organizations that pushes a debt-free approach.”

The result of this save-and-pay-as-you-go model has brought older students to their program, says Finck, typically two years later than the average freshman in college. “But they tend to get to the field about five years sooner.”

Students get practical flight experience with instructors. Photo by Clayton Howie / MATA

So far, all MATA graduates have finished their courses debt-free, and nearly a third of them have made it to the mission field. “By God’s grace, there’s always been provisions for the students,” Finck said.

Moody Aviation, a branch of Moody Bible Institute, is also working to lower the cost of missionary aviation training. Its forgivable loan assistance program (FLAPS) provides loans to cover the costs of aviation training, and forgives them if the student serves full time as a missionary pilot.

Graduates of Moody’s five-year mission aviation bachelor’s degree who qualify for assistance will be forgiven $500 loan payments for every month of missionary service for up to 12 years. Graduates who choose not to serve as missionaries or who delay service for more than two years after college must repay the loan with interest.

This unique college funding program, along with partnerships with missionary organizations that “lend” Moody instructors, keeps flight training costs to a minimum, said Jim Conrad, Moody Aviation program manager. However, because tuition and fees for the five-year pilot/mechanic program now total about $190,000, most students still need other forms of financial aid.

Despite the costs, Conrad said missionary aviation continues to be the best way to reach millions of people living without access to safe roads.

One of Conrad’s first students at Moody, Brian Marx, who has since spent the last 16 years flying with MAF, recently helped deliver the first New Testaments to the Moi people in Papua, Indonesia. A crowd of Moi believers, first contacted by missionary translators 24 years ago, surrounded Marx’s plane and celebrated with the missionaries. “There was not a dry eye, mine included,” Marx told his supporters in a newsletter.

Conrad says that’s the end result prospective pilots need to keep in their sights: “That is why we are here. It’s what we are all about, and it is a joy to be a part of making that possible.”

Back at the MATA hangar, Hannah Perszyk and Abigail Loveless discuss their route with Gary Elliott, who hands them a chart to write down their findings. The cross-country flight will be the culmination of the aviation camp, but for Perszyk, it might be the beginning of a much longer journey.

“I came here with the thought that I know aviation will be in my future, but I am not sure if it will be missions,” she said. “But then, being here, I am like, ‘Oh! This is what I want to do.’”

—Theresa Abell Haynes is a freelance writer and World Journalism Institute mid-career graduate who lives in the Pacific Northwest