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.