Missionary Personal Support
While it is about us, it’s not about us!
“How do you get paid?” “Do you have to raise support?”
These are questions many people ask us as they consider a career as missionaries. The thought of “asking for money” terrifies them when it comes to missions. Yet those same people would find nobility in asking other people to help someone whose house has burned down or whose family has incurred great medical expenses. Just look at Caring Bridge, Go Fund Me, Facebook, and a host of other web sites to see what I mean.
It is important to look at what a “missionary” considers to be his or her mission. Career missionaries who are establishing thriving churches among unreached language groups of people are generally inviting action for the physical and eternal lives of perishing people who have no access to hope. These missionary teams not only save lives on a regular basis but teach other people to save lives. Dealing with educational needs, poverty, bondage, medicine, persecution and many other needs is a normal part of ministry to the unreached. More importantly we work to bring eternal rejoicing and praise to our God through those who have been and will be redeemed eternally.
Yes, without coercion or manipulation, we ask people to give their resources and even their very lives to help us do this work, because in doing good works, to quote Ken Johnston, “I don’t believe that you can ever sacrifice for the Lord and come out on the short end, because God still has a bigger scoop shovel than you have; you scoop out and He’ll scoop in.” We do that by faith, believing that God has something better for all of us who will get involved in those things which matter to God.
“I don’t believe that you can ever sacrifice for the Lord
and come out on the short end,
because God still has a bigger scoop shovel than you have;
you scoop out and He’ll scoop in.”
– Ken Johnston, NTM
A person who wanted to be a career missionary told me, “If I serve with [another very good mission] then I will not have to raise support.”
On the surface that sounds like a great idea but that also means that a lot of people who know him personally will not have the blessing of directly participating in what God will do through him. Nor will he seek as earnestly to engage other people in that work, or depend so completely upon God to provide to do the work.
There are many different ways and reasons for the way missionaries raise support and how they distribute the income they receive. As above, there are organizations that raise funding for ministry independent of their missionaries. Some organizations require that their missionaries make a specified effort to raise funds through direct appeals and receive donations into a general pool from which missionaries are paid as salaried staff from the pool, plus additional funds for ministry. Other missionaries tell nobody about their needs and trust God to move the hearts of donors without telling them anything and use what comes in for both personal and ministry needs. Like the situations presented in Romans 14, there are different views and positions on walking by faith concerning funding ministry. Each of us is accountable directly to God for how we respond to what we know and believe.
There are plenty of good books on the Biblical basis of fundraising, so I won’t get into common ideas, doctrines, and practices concerning funding ministry. See the links below.
Ethnos360 missionaries are individually responsible for trusting God and engaging people about the ministry in which they are engaged. They are free to tell people about the personal and ministry needs, but must be careful to honor God’s moving through the Holy Spirit in the hearts of donors rather than reverting to pressured appeals. Friends, family, churches, and individuals who want to make this ministry possible send donations to Ethnos360 designated for the ministry of those particular ministries and missionaries. The missionaries’ personal, business, and ministry expenses are paid from those gifts designated for their individual ministry within Ethnos360. So, these missionaries walk by faith in that they trust God to provide what they need and live within the means provided through the gifts designated for their particular ministry.
Start With Nothing
I left Borneo, Indonesia at age 19; with a suitcase half full of books which I would never use and clothes that I could not wear where I was going. What works well among the orangutans on the equator just doesn’t in the USA in winter. I wanted to be a missionary bush pilot to serve remote tribes of people who had no other hope of hearing about Jesus. I wanted to speed the urgent work of fellow missionaries. The prospect was huge to me. Where should I train? Where will I get the funds? Each step since then has been a walk of faith: knowing the direction and purpose but trusting God for the steps and means to get there. Over the first eleven years God brought a wide variety of people into my life who were willing to exercise extraordinary faith in God’s work in me. Through them and my own hard work He provided what I needed to take the next step toward working among unreached tribes as a career missionary bush pilot with New Tribes Mission (now Ethnos360).
Include Other People
So, what’s bad about giving? What you own is yours to do as you wish. If you are doing something that God calls good, at personal cost, for the temporal and eternal well-being of other people, do you want to keep that to yourself? Do you want to include other people in your work because it is so worthwhile?
People who are exploring a career in missions tend to be frightened by the concept of raising funds for personal and ministry support to serve others. What they don’t realize is that God uses their need and the seeming impossibilities of their personal endeavor to draw themselves into closer fellowship with Him. That’s good! What’s more is that He draws other people into what He is doing – for their good, for His glory, and for the eternal salvation of the people for whom participants work together as a team. (2 Cor. 4:15)
We are talking about the value of the eternal souls of men and women who are destined for an eternity separated from God. The cure, the message of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, is already in our hands to give to them. What will we do with it?
What we do on both ends of our ministry (both with those who send us and those to whom we are sent) is show people what God’s word says and ask them to take action by faith in God’s word. It may seem simplistic to say, “Who made money anyway?”, but faith is about who is worthy of our trust.
Trust God For Everything
As “faith missionaries” we still don’t know from month to month how the bills will be paid, how we will be able give to the missionaries we support or how we will be able to accomplish the next thing toward which God is directing us. Sometimes it is really difficult to believe that God will provide all of our needs. Yet I can tell you that, despite our monthly struggle, I can look back at more than 29 years of ministry and ten years of training to see God’s amazing provision and His stunning work in the lives of people He has enabled us to serve. The result of His work through us and our team is ongoing now and eternal in nature. (We would love to tell you some of our many stories!) We are so glad that we trusted God so that we could begin to see what He is doing!
Recognize Grace
Ultimately it boils down to grace, values and choices. We all give to each other out of recognition of God’s grace toward ourselves. We want to minister that grace to the missionaries we support, to the people who send us, and to the people we serve along with our fellow missionaries. Grace: unmerited favor. Thank you for extending to us the grace of God! We intend to go and do likewise.
Present Opportunities
Like the people we counsel, I cannot tell you how God will provide. I don’t know.
I can tell you what He has done in the past. I can tell you generically about some of the people who supported us for a while, and some who still do; every month. It’s not about the size of our faith. It’s about the object of our trust. God most often uses ordinary people like us (you and me) who see a need and, by grace alone, provide for other parts of the Body of Christ to accomplish His purposes.
Not only does God want to build our faith, our trust in Him, but He wants to build the faith of the people around us. One way He does that is through us, based on His written Word, providing opportunities for other people to express their faith through their actions, their resources, and their life choices.
What would you like to do?
What would you like to ask other people to do?
We would appreciate your prayers. We would like to be able to do more to reach people with the Gospel who have no hope of hearing unless we act. The job and the available resources to accomplish the task are way beyond our means. But God uses people who know to include others in what He is doing. So, by faith, we work to invite more and more Christian to have a part in establishing thriving churches of Christians among language groups of people where there are none. Would you pray for more resources and more laborers?
God often provides through one person telling another about vision, purpose and opportunity; then inviting them to join in. If God leads them to do so, and they want to, they will.
So here’s my pitch:
Would you like to join us in our journey of faith? Would you like to help strengthen our monthly financial foundation for ministry?
Better yet, why don’t you join us as career missionaries? You will be amazed at the ways God provides, and the people He brings into your life to accomplish His purposes. It will not be easy; you will be talking to God a lot about this, but what good endeavor is easy?
If the money thing is getting in your way, here are some good resources to help you gain a Biblical perspective on God’s mission and money.