Key Missions Topics
Missionaries talk about:
Money and Missions
"Completing God's mission:
Hire someone or do it yourself?"
Hire someone. Business owners might tell you of their conflict between completing the work themselves and hiring workers to assist. It may be easier and faster for a business owner to do the work themselves rather than to entrust that work to someone else who may not be as fast or as skilled. The problem is that the owner may not have the time to manage and expand the business while doing the work. The solution is to hire and train people to help.
Do it yourself? Our culture tells us that the way to succeed is through an independent, self-reliant attitude which is backed by a good work ethic. However, many business owners eventually realize that to succeed in accomplishing more they must delegate or entrust some of their work to other people. The business cannot succeed or grow without a team of people pulling in the same direction.
In missions it is next to impossible to hire someone to do what needs to be done. Who can you hire to live in a difficult location, learn an unwritten language, translate the Bible, and teach all the Jesus commanded His disciples? How do you hire someone to walk by faith, depend on the Holy Spirit, and lay down their lives selflessly on a daily basis so that difficult people can know the God of the Bible? If you live in a remote place, you may have to decide whether you will spend your time building your house or translating the Bible.
If you have enough resources, you might be able to hire help to provide transportation, fix generators, build houses, supply food, install plumbing, set up solar systems, and network communications technology. However, in places on earth where people have no access to the Good News, those people with the skills needed are most often faraway.
Missionary candidates are faced with a dilemma in regard to the physical load of living and working where they do: they cannot do it all themselves and they cannot hire someone to do it for them. The cost often adds up in decades of time as Bible translators devote time to necessary endeavors that are incidental to the work of establishing thriving churches.
How does a person spend a lifetime serving other people overseas without a business income?
Resources and willing people are needed to assist the church-planting team.
Get It Done
What do we want to get done? In our case, we want to see thriving churches established – in places where entire language groups of people have no access to the Good News about Jesus. We want to accomplish the mission Jesus gave us to do on the highest authority in heaven and on earth. (Matt. 28-18-20)
We would love to hire someone to get it done. The problem is that relatively few people will commit to go to where they are needed to do the work. Even workers in relatively nearby cities are often afraid of unreached people groups who live in remote places. The fears of snakes, bugs, animals, jungle, and wild people is not exclusively a Western thing.
Individuals have stepped up to say, “Count me in!”
In years past, ordinary people, who saw needs, decided, “If no one else will do it, we will.” Among them were former soldiers, Bible teachers, administrators, school teachers, mechanics, professional athletes, nuclear scientists, engineers, IT specialists, pilots, electricians, HVAC techs, and people of many other backgrounds and skills.
The greatest ability is availability.
Churches have set apart and sent missionaries to accomplish God’s mission. Most of the time they have been unable or unwilling to provide all of the resources to accomplish the task; A thriving church for an unreached people.
The humbling aspect of engaging in God’s mission is the realization that, especially from the perspective of the individual contemplating action, unless God intervenes, the task is impossible.
Unless God raises up a team behind their work, they cannot accomplish the objective given by Jesus, in Matthew 28:20, of teaching people in even one language group to observe all that Christ commanded.
Unless God intervenes, professional pilots, mechanics, school teachers, administrators, Bible teachers, and others cannot go help, Bible translators cannot finish their work, and church planters cannot establish thriving churches of Christ-followers who are equipped to carry the work of the ministry into areas where Christ is not known.
But Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matt. 6:18)
The Apostle Paul makes clear that His means is through the people of the Church building each other up. (Romans 10:13-17, 14:19Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 2, 2 Corinthians 1-5)-
A Team?
Now that these intended missionaries have decided to join the team, most of them are no longer able to earn their own income because their time is, instead, devoted to doing what needs to be done to have a part in planting thriving churches among the least-reached people groups.
How does that work?
That is what many of them are still wondering!
Some call it, “the walk of faith”. Unless I believe God’s word, I will not take the risk. Unless I trust God’s provision, I can’t leave what I am doing now to support myself and my family. Unless God provides, I can’t go. Unless God raises up help, I can’t do the work. Unless God moves the hearts of other people to rally around me, I will not have the resources to do what is necessary to accomplish the Biblical objective.
These missionaries can only be as generous in their endeavors as the generosity of their supporters make that generosity possible.
Better Together
Generally, God’s design is that those who want the work to get done, but can’t go themselves, send the representation of their work, in the form of money or representatives, to those who are doing the work. That way, those missionaries who are being supported can hire help where it is available, purchase tools to assist their productivity, sustain a presence on location, and guide their assistants toward effectiveness.
We all hire help every day. Someone builds our cars. Someone else brings the fuel to where we can buy it. Someone builds our homes. Someone maintains our homes and appliances. Someone installs lights in our houses. Someone produces the electricity that powers the lights. Someone grows our food. Someone brings the food to where we can buy it. Someone keeps track of our finances. Someone makes our money available to us.
Hiring Help
Missionaries have many of the expenses that the rest of us do. (Sometimes in two countries.) Their ability to serve others is only as great as the resources which are in excess of their cost of living where they live and the routine expenses to stay there.
In remote places on earth, there is often no one to hire to accomplish these things so the missionary spends a lot of time doing this work; instead of or in addition to accomplishing the Biblical task. Supporters can assist by funding the transportation of hired workers and/or sending support workers who can reduce the work load of survival that the missionary carries so that the work of the ministry can be completed in a timely manner.
A Bible translator, who may be the only person on earth who has the language skills to translate the Bible into the language of the people he or she serves, cannot translate the Bible while he or she is spending time fixing a worn-out generator or solar power system because of the lack of resources to purchase something reliable.
A pilot who spends sixteen hours a week in the tropics cutting grass around the aircraft hangar to keep the snakes away because he cannot afford a 48-inch riding mower that could complete the job in four hours, or to hire a local worker, loses two days a week that could be used for improving the flight program and providing transportation.
A missionary’s freedom to serve and to give is found in the resources that are in excess of that required to sustain a presence in a remote location. For most missionaries whom I know, the income in excess of maintaining a presence is not very much. Therefore they make sacrifices and spend much of their time doing things themselves that they might otherwise hire someone to do.
If you live in the jungle, the tractor is broken, and the only means of transporting food, medicine, and medical patients in and out of your location is the airstrip, which cannot be mowed because the tractor is broken, then the Bible teacher and translator spends time fixing the tractor.
If your primary tool in translating the Bible is your computer, which records sounds, organizes vocabulary, and provides translation resources, then, when it is broken, which happens often in tropical heat and humidity, the missionary spends time as a computer repairman.
If the only means of charging the computer battery is the generator, which quit working because of poor quality fuel, then the Bible teacher becomes a generator engine repairman.
Meanwhile, the things that only that missionary can do, such as translate the Bible and teach in the local language, are left undone.
The missionary needs help.
The team needs to be expanded.
Bigger Than Me
Fear keeps many people from taking the next step toward a career in missions.
Will God provide for me? Could I raise enough financial support to commit myself to the work?
Pilots, mechanics, school teachers, linguists, doctors, nurses, and others often have high education expenses and on-going training requirements before they can effectively serve.
They ask, “How can I pay for this as a missionary?”
For most of us, the answer is this: You cannot.
The fallacy is in thinking that a meaningful role in a God-sized task can be accomplished with man-sized individual effort.
You will have to start moving based on faith in what God has revealed already, praying for His direction and provision.
Enter Vision Casting
Many of us would probably not bother other people about what we want to do in missions if it were not for the money.
We would deprive other people of having a part and would do it alone as much as possible.
I think it is safe to say that this is generally not how God works. While we do have a personal responsibility to take action as far as it is in our own power to do so, God works through other people, in partnership with us, to accomplish His purposes.
That means we have to trust Him to work through other people in inter-dependent relationships to accomplish the work He has given us to do.
The way those other people begin to get involved is by hearing God’s word and, as the missionary, your presentation of the needs and opportunities before you. you share what God has revealed, your vision to have a part in His plan, and provide an opportunity for people to join with you; by faith.
Strategy planning
You can map out a plan for your own action, and for engaging people about accomplishing an objective together. However, you cannot move hearts to engage with you over a lifetime to accomplish a God-sized task.
If you can manipulate people for a short while (don’t do this), to accomplish your objectives, whose work is it? Who gets the glory? You; and not God? Don’t manipulate people. Do invite people to join you in asking God for His direction and provision. Allow others to join you in what God has directed you to do.
You know, when you are giving your entire life to glorify God by serving other people, it’s OK to let other people give with you and to you so that you have something to give when you get where you are going.
Do depend on God.
Prayer is your greatest tool; because God is your only Provider. Ask God what He wants you to do. Ask God who He wants you to invite. Ask God for people to join you in His work. It’s His work. Will He pay for what He orders?
So, start moving; believing Him.