Missionary Support

I’ve been huffing and puffing for years about writing on this subject. I’m finally sitting down to have a go at it. There might be a whole book here or at least a magazine article, but a blog entry is at least a start. Maybe I can get a few main points down and get some more input from comments.

The subject is missionary support. Sometimes this is called the “faith” support system. Newly recruited missionaries are willing and eager to give their lives to the call of God to help take the Gospel to people in other cultures who have not had a chance to understand it. In order to rise to this challenge, they have all kinds of barriers to overcome. There is lots of preparation to do and there are tremendous emotional and psychological challenges to deal with; leaving home and familiar cultural environs, separating from family for several years at a time, learning a new language, adjusting to strange food. These are all things far above and beyond what most folks have to deal with. Oh, and there is one more thing we need you to do. We have no money at all to pay you with, so you need to go to everyone you know and go out and talk to hundreds of people you don’t know and ask them to give you money for your monthly living expenses.

And there is the rub.

This one little extra duty easily keeps the majority of would-be missionaries from ever leaving home. I went through this process. It was without doubt the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted to do. I was miserable and sorely depressed for over two years doing it. And I never did get past about 70% of our support goal. We did finally go to our assignment with the organization. But raising support is like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it. For various reasons, people drop off and you must constantly be beating the bushes, trying to get more support for your work. We lasted for a few years on the job before the financial stress on my family was so debilitating that I had to quit and do work for which I was directly paid.

I submit that the system is broken. I felt that strongly when I was living in it, but felt I couldn’t say anything about it at the time. Now I’m no longer getting my living from that system, so I can feely speak out.

There are some other systems for supporting missionaries. The Southern Baptists pay most of their missionaries most of the salaries from money collected by the denomination from churches through what they call the “cooperative program.” This by and large frees their missionaries from this process. But most missionaries have to raise their own support. It is true that the support-raising process does yield the benefit of connecting directly with the people who will be supporting you and thus, hopefully, gaining prayer support and other non-monetary encouragement. The Southern Baptist system misses out on that aspect, it would seem.

There seems to me to be a huge disconnect going on here. We say the Great Commission is the most important thing Jesus left for us to accomplish. Sharing the Gospel with those who haven’t heard is supposed to be the highest thing on the agenda of the Church. But the people who are set apart to do this are shoved out on their own to raise the money to pay their rent and buy their groceries. We don’t ask pastors to do this. We don’t ask youth pastors to do this. We don’t ask music pastors to do this. We don’t ask denominational administrators to do this. We don’t ask church secretaries to do this. It can be argued that “missionary” is the most important job in vocational Christian ministry. Our missionaries are heroes of the faith and we applaud them and enjoy hearing their stories of exotic far off places. But if you follow the money, their real value to us is apparent. They are second class citizens of the Church.

I will share some of my own experiences. Perhaps they will sound like belly-aching. But I’m not part of it anymore. Those who still are would not likely talk like this precisely because it does sound like belly-aching. So I will broach the subject for them.

I mentioned that support-raising was depressing for me. I suppose part of it was that I was raised to be very self-reliant. That is a quality that is important for a missionary. Out in a far-flung corner of the world you will probably have to deal with a lot of things on your own and you better be versatile and flexible. Asking for money just feels an awful lot like begging. My trainers and coaches in this process hyped scripture to convince me this was a noble effort, but it still felt like begging. And the responses I got from people reinforced this feeling. It was amazing how folks would shy away. They knew what was coming. They didn’t want to have to say “no” and it made most people uncomfortable. It also made me uncomfortable in relationships because I had to force myself to see everyone I met as a possible supporter. I was always supposed to be trying to get something out of them. I hated it. I am a giver, not a taker. Most people who want to give their lives to missionary endeavor are givers. It pains them to have to ask for something.

I was also depressed because the job seemed insurmountable. And I was for several years aware every day that I had to do this job I was terrible at while at the same time I was not doing the thing that I was supposed to be serving at which was something I knew I was proven to be good at. It seemed like such an inefficient waste.

I found that there were a few who actually enjoyed the process. They had a knack for it. Salesman skills seemed to be the thing and some could just naturally do it. And some of these were pretty mediocre at the job they were raising funds to be able to do. Others who were brilliant at the job but not good public speakers or very quiet and shy suffered even though their job on the field was vital and they excelled at it. It just seemed so not right. For every one that had plenty of support, it seemed there were a hundred that somehow tried to scrape by on insufficiency.

Another thing that I ran into was an amazing lack of strategic thinking. Folks were eager to support what I called a “real missionary.” It happened that my role was to be one of support doing the rather high-tech job of video production. But “real missionaries” are out there on the front line dealing one-on-one with foreign people. The irony is that much of the one-on-one on the front line can and should be done by the local indigenous church. The cost of supporting a western missionary is usually many times what it would cost to support an indigenous missionary or church worker. So if a westerner is involved, it really had better be in a role that a local believer can’t do. It should have leverage and be enabling to the local church. So helping with technology may be far more strategic than some of the things the “real missionary” might do.

We approached a lot of churches and participated in a good many missions conferences. Most of these efforts yielded nothing. And from what other missionaries have told me, that is the rule rather than the exception. I ran into several kinds of attitudes regarding missions. Some churches would see us coming and figuratively lock the doors. They already had enough missionaries asking them for money. Some just had no vision beyond their own community. Some paid lip service to foreign missions but grudgingly gave support out of guilt to try to fulfill an obligation that their heart wasn’t really in. The numbers spoke accordingly. Then there were some that were crazy for missions. But those churches often had a policy of supporting missionaries from their own congregations heavily. If you weren’t from their church, well, sorry. We seriously thought about moving and changing church membership as a strategy. I’m not kidding. And when a church considers taking you on, it is usually a painfully slow process. It can easily take a year or several even if they really like you. Getting support from individuals was much quicker, but then, that kind of support also drops off much easier, thus the feeling of trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it.

From where I stand, the church is basically saying to people who want to be missionaries: “It’s great that you are willing to give your life for service this way! We honor you! Now, we dare you to accomplish this nearly impossible task! Be warmed! Be fed! See ya!”

So, what’s going on here? One thing seems really obvious to me. What we consider “tithing” and “giving to the Lord’s work” falls into some distinct classes. The most popular and common is what I call “pew padding.” We are all about “giving” money to the Lord to buy new padded pews for the church. They will be so much more comfortable, won’t they? We may eagerly give to support the youth ministry because it’s so great for our kids. But give to something going on over there on the other side of the world? What will I get out of that? It seems that often our “giving” really isn’t. It’s an investment and we want to personally see the return. I do believe in placing our giving wisely and treating it as an investment. But is the return to come to me or to go to someone I will never meet until heaven?

There is a research project I would love to see done. If I were ever to pursue a doctorate, I think it’s something I might try to do as part of it. The data may actually already exist. If so, I’d sure love to see it. I have a theory. My guess is that the total amount of money given to missions annually from the USA is a fraction of one percent of the money spent annually building church buildings and servicing mortgages on church property. Yes, I know we need church buildings in this country. But the spending ratio is way off. One need only look at the annual budget to see if a church is an instrument of the heart of Jesus, or a social club. I submit that the Church at large is way overspent in real estate and way under spent in missions.

Then there is the western lifestyle. I have had the opportunity to travel to dozens of countries. If I had my way, a person born in the USA would not get citizenship until they have traveled to a third world country. We are so amazingly spoiled here and there is absolutely no way to understand it in your soul until you get away from it and see how the rest of the world lives. I submit that the funding to complete the Great Commission has already been provided. I believe that the Church in the west has already been trusted with all the money and expertise necessary to get the job done. But we spend it on ourselves. And we ask missionaries to scratch in the dirt like chickens for their living. It’s a disgrace to the Church.

So, is the system broke? I say yes, absolutely. Bit where is the problem? It’s not necessarily with the faith-based, raise your own support method. I submit it’s with the Church. The money is there. The situation should be one of having more funds ready to use for the effort than there are people to take advantage of it. “Please, would you consider being a missionary? We have all the support you will need!” I guarantee you there is not a missionary alive who could even imagine this scenario. But it is the way things ought to be. And I believe it is the way things could be if the Church at large was truly obedient to what Jesus Christ has asked us to do with our lives.

But, sadly, the Church has not been and is not obedient in this regard. So we have to come up with another system. I heard a statistic a long time ago the source of which I really need to look up. It said that something like 90% of the support for evangelical Christian missions comes from people over 60 years old. This was over ten years ago. It doesn’t take a genius to do the math. The current system is not working and it’s going to get worse.

I wish I had a great solution. I’ve been pondering this problem for many years. The solution is probably not one but many. Perhaps tent-making will become a bigger thing. We need some keen minds to be applied to this. When the Lord one day asks me what I did with what He gave me to build His Kingdom, I don’t want to be one of the many who will have to say, “Look at the beautiful building we built for you Lord!” God help us to see through His eyes what is important and what is not.

Still Hope in Venezuela?

A few days ago and again today I got more email reports from missionary friend Merrill Dyck in Venezuela. He said earlier this week a couple of Indians got on TV and spoke in favor of the New Tribes Mission missionaries. They said they were fed up with anthropologists living in nice houses in the cities trying to micro-manage their lives. Then yesterday, Friday, there were mass demonstrations in Puerto Ayacucho. Some people had traveled for several days from remote Amazon locations to demonstrate. The AP reported about 400 people but the local sources reported as many as 4,000. They were saying that they are not opposed to the government but they disagree with the president. They also are saying that the missionaries are the best help they have ever gotten and that the government has never done anything significant for them. It seems the debate is lively down there, the people who are affected are speaking up and their voices are being heard on the streets and in the local media. Pressure is being brought to bear. Interestingly, though the governor of the Amzonas region has supported President Chavez and ordered the missionaries out immediately, neither he nor the federal authorities have actually signed the legal documents to make what they have decreed law. So things are really still in limbo. About 200 Mormon missionaries have already been pulled out citing difficulties renewing visas. At this time, the NTM people in the Amazon region have pulled out to the cities. Others are staying at their village locations. NTM is trying to get a meeting with the government but so far that has not happened. All are on edge wondering what will happen next. Just maybe Chavez will back down. That would be quite a miraculous thing. Merrill asks us all to pray.

The HIgh Cost of Dying

I had the privelege of making the acquaintance of Steve Saint a few years ago. Steve is the son of missionary pilot Nate Saint who was martyred with four others including Jim Elliot in Ecuador in the 1950's shortly before I was born. Steve's mom died last November and as a result of making the funeral arrangements, he did some long and hard thinking about our contemporary traditions regarding death. The costs involved are appalling. Steve calculated that Christians bury billions of dollars in the ground in the form of expensive caskets that do nobody any good. What if we could start a new tradition that would reroute some of that waste? Read all about it in the I-TEC website archives, then you might take a look at my extention of the idea below.
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I started reading through some of the archives of the newsletters on the I-TEC web site. I had some thoughts about the Coffin Fund idea. I too have been appalled by the high cost of dying in this country. It has seemed to me a ripe area for rebellion against the status quo! Cremation would seem an obvious option but they make sure that has high cost as well.

You have probably already thought down the direction my mind went to and I would imagine there are laws and regulations on the books to make sure this doesn’t happen, but maybe they could be changed. This is my thought: in order to really make a statement with this concept, why even hide behind the rental casket? That’s another $300-400 wasted. Why not actually have an inexpensive wooden box? That would be better than the cardboard you ended up having to deal with. If one doesn’t run into the assumed legal roadblock, it would seem that what could be actually physically and financially possible would be to put indigenous people into the coffin building business. From raw material of plywood or locally cut plank wood using a portable sawmill like the ones I saw in P.N.G. a small crew of tribesmen could probably build several simple boxes in a day. Transporting them would likely be the most difficult and costly part of the operation, but possibly they could be moved a few at a time to a location where a shipping container could be filled, then shipped by sea. If these could ultimately be sold for $200-300 with a profit of $50-100 to the tribe, it would seem like a really worthwhile venture. And it would be an ongoing thing. The demand for the product is constant and unending. One could still opt for the rental casket, but the visual of the plain wooden box in our civilized funerals would make a dramatic statement and would propel this idea quickly.

I’m assuming there is protective regulation against this kind of thing as I’ve never heard of an imported casket. I’ve yet to check.

Got to thinking about this whole thing with regard to I-TEC’s involvement. It hit me that the central dynamic that has made the “Beyond the Gates” story so compelling is death. Death is something westerners don’t want to think about but all of us know we cannot avoid it. The thought of risking, facing, and enduring death by conscious choice forces the issue of each of us to consider life on both sides of death, what is truly important, and ultimately how we live each day in light of the inevitable. So I’m thinking that dealing with death is entirely related to everything I-TEC is about and what the Palm Beach story is about and indeed what the very Gospel is about.

Perhaps the gates of splendor should be made of plywood.

Thank You Pat Robertson

A couple of years ago I spent some time in the back country prairie of Venezuela in a village of the Panare people. A couple of missionaries had spent their entire adult lives in that village helping the people with medicine, education, community development projects and their primary mission to translate the Bible into the difficult Panare language, share the Gospel of Christ and help them start a church. All this was accomplished at great personal cost to this family quietly laboring in obscurity in this forgotten corner of the world. Another family working in that village lost their teenage son in a plane crash not long before and yet they pressed on with the work.

I was sent there with one of my students to document the festivities surrounding the dedication of their finally completed Bible translation. (The video is available from New Tribes Mission) This was a huge event for these people. I could go on about it as I kept a journal with lots of the details. While there I also met another missionary couple who were living in this particular Panare village. They had been doing similar work with the Pume tribe. The Pume live near the border with Columbia and increasing guerilla activity was making it increasingly dangerous for the Americans to stay there. They eventually had to pull out to safer territory and were doing their translation work in the Panare village, living in a borrowed house, and regularly paying the way for Pume church leaders to come to visit with them for ongoing training, fellowship and co-labor on the Pume Bible translation. I regularly receive their email updates.

These dear, selfless, dedicated, sacrificing people you never heard of have been the real influence of Christianity on indigenous people in Venezuela. Fast forward a couple of years to Pat Robertson's ill-thought out suggestion to assassinate Venezuelan president Chavez. Is the guy a creep? Probably. Should we stand against him? Probably. But Robertson’s careless use of his TV bully pulpit has caused Chavez to announce yesterday what New Tribes Mission members have been fearing for some time: New Tribes Mission is being expelled from Venezuela. Sorry Pat, your subsequent apology is worth crap. Chavez is accusing the missionaries of being agents of the CIA and of exploiting indigenous people. The CIA accusation is completely absurd which even Chavez probably knows. As for exploiting his people, Chavez is by this very act exploiting them for his own political gain. Kicking out people who actually care enough for his poor back-country Indians to give their lives to live among them to help improve their lives here and now and give them hope for eternity is going to rip out the best thing that ever happened to these villages. Would this have happened without Robertson's comment? It very possibly might have anyway. But why help it along by suggesting something diametrically opposed to the teaching of Jesus?

I could rant on, but what we have here is yet another example of the media painting Christians as idiots. Only this time, it’s that sliver of media actually controlled by Christians. And not the big hair, wild-eyed folks, but the supposedly thinking flavor of Christian TV. Well, Pat, thank you so much for exerting your influence to get the Gospel of Jesus to people who need to hear it. Here’s a great idea for you: why don’t you have on your TV show these missionaries who’s life’s work you have caused to be yanked out from under them? Put their stories on the air for us all to consider. They will have plenty of time to appear now.

Fuzzy

Ever have a day when everything seems fuzzy? I do.

Aliens

Mutability

We went to see an orchid nursery Saturday. I’m really not a flower guy. To me flowers have always been these things my wife plants by the mailbox. And then they die. Or they are these things she loves for me to get for her. She puts them in a vase. And then they die. I like the flowers all right. They are pretty and smell nice. The “then they die” part is what has always put me off them. It’s like you can’t really own them. You can only rent them until they die. So I was really surprised to learn that if well cared for, orchids can easily outlive their owners. They get put in people’s wills and handed down for generations. Interesting. A little bit of permanence there. Then there’s the variety. I never had in my head what an orchid looked like. Now I know why. There are something like 25,000 species of wild orchids and about 100,000 hybrids. That’s not an exaggeration. There really are that many. It’s the largest family of flowering plants and they grow on every continent except Antarctica. Even within one type of orchid there are wild variances of shape, size, color, and fragrance. I would never have guessed so many different types of flowers were all orchids. That is one of the things that makes them fascinating. You can never really get your head around all of them. It’s that mountain/hummingbird thing again. They can be cross-bred to produce unending variation. They are so amazingly changeable. But that change takes patience. A new plant takes seven years from seed to first blossom. That’s a long time to wait to see if your experiment yields a show winner or a dog. Once a desirable combination is achieved, it can be cloned to produce millions of identical flowers. I don’t really want to get into a big bioethics conversation, but I couldn’t help think about the differences and flaws in people. I often wish my personal combination of genes would have had some of my junk bred out of the mix. But the changes most of us seem to need most can only happen after we’re born. That’s hard. Not even the mutable orchid can do that.