Roland Allen on the Training of Candidates

This is a quote from his book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?
Allen says:

The young men so educated are sometimes, by that very education, out of touch with their congregations. They return to their people with strange ideas and strange habits. They are lonely, and they have to struggle against the perils of loneliness. They are not even the best teachers of people from whose intellectual and spiritual life they have so long been absent. They do not know how to answer their difficulties or to supply their necessities. They know so much Christian doctrine and philosophy that they have fogotten the religion of their country. The congregation has not grown with them, nor they with the congregation. They come, as it were, from outside, and only a few exceptional men can learn to overcome that difficulty( page 106)

I fear that I may not be one of those exceptional men. It is lonely here. I am but a stranger in this place. I do not know which way to turn. I feel as though I am standing on the bank of the Red Sea with walls of water on my right and my left and the Egyptian army behind me. May the gift of faith send me running across the sea on dry land!