Nobody warned you that coming home would be the hardest part.
For those who cross cultures to serve, the return can be harder than the leaving. Cross-cultural "re-entry" is often a hidden wilderness of grief, anxiety, stress, and disorientation-a season few around you can see or fully understand. Whether you've served in missions, the marketplace, the military, or the nonprofit world, the disorientation is real: home has changed, the people have changed, and so have you.
When It Takes More Faith to Come Back: Trusting God During Re-entry is a spiritual companion for exactly this season. Written by Dr. Brian Virtue-a professor of leadership and spiritual formation who walked through his own sudden, difficult return after nearly a decade serving in Asia-it offers forty devotionals that meet you in the honest, in-between work of reintegration.
These devotionals are not quick fixes. They are meaningful companions for disorientation, mourning, and lament-rooted in Scripture and seasoned with hard-won experience. Each one offers a short reading, reflection and journaling questions, a guided prayer, and a "Talk with a Friend" prompt for mentors, couples, families, or small groups, so you never have to process the journey alone.
Along the way, you'll do the real spiritual and emotional work that returning requires: reconnecting with your home country, reclaiming your spiritual narrative, discovering where God is now at work, and honestly assessing your emotional and relational well-being. And in your season of disorientation, you'll encounter grounding truth about who you are and where you belong-in Christ, and in the life that still lies ahead.
This book belongs in the hands of returning missionaries and their families, sending churches, member-care teams, and anyone who wants to understand the hidden cost-and unexpected gifts-of cross-cultural service. Endorsed by leaders in missions, theology, and clinical psychology, it names what so often goes unspoken and points steadily to hope.
You made it back. Now let this book help you find your footing-and discover that your adventure with God isn't over. It's just taking a new form.
What Others Say About This Book:
God's people are not only sent; they are also called home. And for many, returning proves more spiritually and emotionally demanding than departure. Brian Virtue is a wise and steady guide for those navigating the complex terrain of re-entry. Rooted in Scripture and seasoned with experience, each entry speaks directly to the hidden strains and unexpected gifts of returning. This book will be a key resource for ministry workers and global Christians seeking to re-enter their "passport cultures" with wisdom and resilience. ─Stephen T. Pardue, Ph.D., Director of ThM/PhD in Theological Studies at the Asia Graduate School of Theology (Philippines), and author of Why Evangelical Theology Needs the Global Church
About the Author:
Brian M. Virtue, Ph.D., is a leadership-development specialist and author who teaches leadership, peacemaking, and spiritual formation at the International Graduate School of Leadership (IGSL) in Manila, Philippines. His passion is the formation, equipping, and care of leaders in transition.
A missionary kid who grew up around the world, Brian served with Cru and spent nearly a decade living and ministering in the Philippines and across Asia with his family. His own sudden, difficult return home gave him a firsthand understanding of the grief, disorientation, and hope of cross-cultural re-entry.
Drawing on that journey and years of study in leader formation, Brian now writes and teaches to help returning workers thrive. He lives in Long Beach, California, with his wife, Christine, their daughters, Morgan and Kaelyn, and son, Colin. When It Takes More Faith to Come Back is his heartfelt guide for the road home.
