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Support Teams

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(But something is better than nothing?)

So, you want to support God’s work through missionaries! 

There are people who will be living on location among a remote people group, translating the Bible, discipling believers, and working to leave behind a church that is led by local leaders and engaging in ministry. 

Support would be all of the other people who are working to help make that work possible. 

Are you not sure if you can learn an unwritten language, establish relationships, teach literacy, translate the Bible, and walk with people through the entire Bible to establish a thriving church? 

Maybe God is leading you to work in a support role. 

In general there are three types of support teams that work with Ethnos360 missionaries:

  • Career Support Missionaries
  • Home Country Career Support
  • Sending Church Support Teams

Sending Church Support Teams

The primary support team includes the local churches and individuals who are praying, providing oversight, giving encouragement, and sending finances so that those church-planting missionaries can stay on the mission field to complete the work. 

Career Support Missionaries Overseas

On the mission field, support workers would include the people manage the bookkeeping, provide administration, handle government paperwork, oversee church planting, guide the Bible translation process, supply health services, make food accessible, assist with literacy program development, support TCK education, give technical and communications support, help with the construction of buildings, and supply various means of transportation. 

Home Country Career Support Team

Sending country support workers would be those people who make it possible for everyone else to minister where they do.

Why support workers?

Support workers are all over the New Testament; accompanying leaders, providing comfort, supplying needs, handling conflict, offering housing, delivering gifts, clothing, food and messages. 

The Biblical picture of ministry is that of a Body with all of the parts working together under the Head to accomplish God’s work together. The Holy Spirit gives gifts that are needed by the Body to accomplish His work. (1 Corinthians 12:12ff) There is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (See Ephesians 4:4ff) 

The point is that God’s work involves all of the members with their gifts, not just a few people in a remote place. We all have needed, necessary roles in what God is doing. 

Support workers enable other missionaries to do the main thing: church planting.
(Matthew 28:20 …teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you…)

A missionary who spends months each year hiking through the jungle for supplies is greatly relieved by a pilot who can bring the groceries and supplies to the house in the jungle. The missionary is now free to spend more time translating and teaching the Bible to disciples toward establishing thriving churches. The pilot is free to spend more time flying the aircraft when an aircraft mechanic, flight schedule coordinator, or accountant joins the team. Many of these people have children who are homeschooled, so a professional school teacher helps them all. These people all need a place to sleep, electricity, plumping, and vehicles, so builders, electricians, plumbers, and auto mechanics assist the whole team.

When a key support role such as a High School math teacher remains open, a missionary may need to withdraw from a vital role in church planting to meet that need so that the rest of the missionary team may continue to function in their roles. There have been times when many church-planting families found it necessary to return to their home country to meet the educational needs of their children. Work in their strategic ministries halted until solutions could be found.

What kind of support roles are there?

On-Field Career Support Personnel.  Career support missionaries serve on the mission field after completing the two-year Ethnos360 Training. They handle the technical, logistical, and physical workload that enable the Bible translators and Bible teacher to spend their time translating and teaching. Those people might be builders, supply chain workers, accounts managers, school teachers,  administrators, consultants, doctors, nurses, pilots, or mechanics. These people serve multiple church-planting missionary teams and keep everyone else functioning well while serving in their specialty. Some are experienced missionaries who provide oversight, guidance, accountability, and technical advice to missionaries and associated teams.

  • Skilled Associates. These are people like school teachers, construction workers, IT professionals, groundskeepers, heavy mechanics, and people with many other skills who go overseas with three weeks of training to serve from six months to two years to assist the career missionary teams. 

Home Country Career Support Missionaries. These are the people that handle international transactions, process gifts, communicate with the world, navigate government red tape, manage personnel, mobilize new missionaries, train new missionaries, handle Bible printing processes, connect with the sending churches, assist retired career missionaries, handle taxes, manage health care plans, and coordinate worldwide ministry outreach in thirty-six countries.  Without these people, pretty much nobody goes anywhere or accomplishes anything effectively. Many experienced missionaries enter these roles because of skills, age, health or family needs that prevent serving overseas. They are vital to keeping key people in strategic positions on the mission field. 

Sending Church Support Teams. These are the people in your local church who disciple people, equip them for ministry, cast the vision for worldwide outreach, organize the sending of missionaries, pray for missionaries, provide opportunities for missionaries to connect with the congregation, engage in spiritual oversight of missionaries, organize the sending of missionaries, send funds to support their missionaries, and send help to assist their missionaries until the task is completed. None of the missionary teams can function without these key people in their sending churches. (See Wayumi and Short-Term below.) 

On-field Support: What is being supported?

The objective includes establishing thriving churches of faithful Christ-followers who join us in proclaiming His glory where He is not known..

Establishing a thriving church among a remote unreached people group is a huge task.

Teamwork makes a very big difference in reducing the time it takes to establish a thriving church among an ethnolinguistic group of people who are unreached with the Gospel. For example, an hour in an aircraft on average saves a missionary more than a week of surface travel. Wiht planning and local knowledge, a supply buyer can often purchase more groceries and supplies for group of families in a day than one missionary family can acquire in a week of searching in the stores locally.

In the past, it often took missionaries twenty to fifty years to establish a church among an unreached people group and put the Bible in their hands. Bible teaching, translation, and discipleship are key components of the work of the ministry. Teaching people to obey, “to observe all things whatsover I [Jesus] have commanded you”, takes time. This is a key objective of the Great Commission. 

What is often not well known is that there is a huge logistical toll to establishing thriving churches near the ends of the earth. The Bible teaching and translation can only be accomplished by the people who have learned the unique language and culture of the people group being served.

Bible teaching, Bible translation, discipleship, and all that precedes being able to do those things are part of a huge task that often took missionaries twenty to fifty years. There are many logistical and technical needs that eat up the time, resources, and health of the missionaries who are working to plant churches.

The things that take the most time are often the logistics of:

  • traveling or transporting people and supplies to live in remote locations,
  • repairing equipment that breaks frequently in harsh environments,
  • construction and frequent maintenance of buildings in harsh conditions of moisture, pests, and insects, 
  • recovering from frequent extreme health challenges in  the high stress and medically difficult places.

What could support personnel do to relieve the Bible teaching and translating teams toward helping them complete their objective?

Like deacons who relieve the workload of church leaders, skilled workers who do not know the ethnic language can greatly relieve the workload of several church-planting missionaries, shaving years or decades off of the time it takes to complete the objective. 

For Ethnos360, the objective is to reach ethnolinguistic people groups who have no access to the Gospel, and when we are done, leave behind a thriving church of Christ-followers who have a Bible in their hands, readable, understandable, in their language, who are lead by Biblically ordained leaders, and who are engaging with us in ministry to the local Body while reaching out as partners with us in completing the Great Commission.  

Home Country Support

Any organization has a home office, accounting, human relations, personnel onboarding, training, a supply department, leaders, and communications. So it is with missionary work in bridging the gaps between countries, offices, banks, communications, and oversight.  The larger the team and/or the greater the distances, the more important the office hubs. 

When a church sends a support check intended for a missionary living in a remote place on earth someone has to open the letter, cash the check, deposit the money, and transfer the funds to where the missionary can use the gifts for the intended purpose. For integrity and transparency there must be accounting and oversight.

A church that sends a missionary can reasonably expect that their will be training and logistical support toward the success of the new missionary.

To present opportunities, expand the team of missionaries, and advise donors of progress, there must be communications and publications. 

 

Support in Sending Churches

What can you do in your local church to support a church planting ministry in a place far away from home?  

  • Knowledge
  • Prayer
  • Vision
  • Preparing
  • Rallying
  • Sending

Knowledge: A key aspect of support is knowing what we are supporting.

  • Who are we trying to reach as a local church?
  • Who are we sending as missionaries to do the work?
  • What will remain when the missionary work is completed?
  • What do our missionaries need to complete the task?
  • Who can we send to assist with completing the work?
  • Is the local congregation aware of the importance and status of this work?
  • How are the people in the congregation able to engage?
Prayer. Dependence upon God to do the impossible work of changing hearts and providing the means to engage people about Him.
 
  • What can we do to cultivate a culture in our local church of active dependence upon God concerning reaching least-reached people groups with the Gospel?
  • How and when can we intercede for the language groups of people who have no access to the Gospel?
  • What are we asking God to accomplish in the lives of our missionaries?
  • How do we give the congregation the information they need to pray effectively?
  • When and how will we know when God has answered our prayers?
  • Are we actively praying together as a local part of the Body?

Vision. Knowing God’s purpose, what needs to be done, and how is a key in engaging with Him in His work.

  • Why. Do the people in your church know the Bible basis for missions? (Or is it the missions basis of the Bible?) Why are you engaged as a local church body?
  • What. Does the church know the difference between ministry and missions? Do they know what Jesus commanded His disciples to do?
  • How. Do people in your congregation know how to engage in expanding the edges of the Church into where Christ is unknown? Do they know the roles they might fill with their own gifts and skills? Where do they plug in to missions at your church?
  • Where. Does your church know where the needs are globally and locally?
  • Who. Does your congregation know your missionaries by name and with whom they are working? Do they know who is the missions contact in your church? Do they know who to go to with requests? When you missionaries return for a brief visit before returning overseas, will your congregation know who they are?
  • When. Do the people in your congregation know generally when the next missions event will be? When will missionaries be in the area? When will the missionary task be completed? When will missionaries come to report on what God has done? When will congregants have opportunities to take action as part of the Body?

Preparing. Is your local church preparing laborers to be sent or preparing as a body to send laborers? 

Sending agencies don’t send missionaries. Local churches do. 

Knowing precedes going. 

  • Foundations: Knowing God precedes engaging in His mission. 
  • Ministering: Knowing how to minister at home precedes learning how to minister to people in another language and culture. 
  • Awareness: Knowing the needs of people who have no access to the Gospel precedes sending people to meet the needs.

It takes a team to establish thriving churches in places where people have no access to Biblical truth. Missions in a function of the Body under the direction of Christ as the Head. 

There are many roles we fit into from time to time. 

Giving, praying, advocating for missions in your community, actively sending missionaries, casting the vision of how we can get involved in God’s work, serving as associate missionaries for several years, or sending people for training to serve as career missionaries are all roles in supporting God’s work. 

  • A key missions support ministry in the local church is preparing people to send and be sent. 
  • How do we send laborers?
  • If we want to have a part in establishing thriving churches where Christ is not known, someone must be sent from our church who is qualified to do that. Are there people in the local congregation who could be sent by the church to establish another local church?
  • How is the local church preparing people who could be sent to do establish local churches?
  • People are needed who could ordain leaders, teach the whole of scripture, translate the Bible, unlock a mysterious culture, learn an unwritten language, and develop lasting relationships that can lead to all of that.
  • People who are walking with God are needed to support the church planting work on the mission field.
  • Who can be sent from our church to do what needs to be done? Who is qualified? 
  • If we don’t have anyone who is qualified, what do we need to do to equip someone?

What will it take to provide on-field support for missionaries who are establishing churches?

  • What can we do as a Body to see that the work or ministry is completed?
  • How will we trust God as a Body for the resources that are necessary to complete the work?
  • How will the congregation know about the ministry, progress, and completion schedule of the work in a particular location?
  • How will we prepare the congregation and the youth to go or send people as qualified missionaries from our part of the Body?

Ways to prepare children for missions: 

  • Ensure children clearly understand the Gospel message and are able to share their own Christ-centered testimony.
  • Teach the Bible foundationally so that children know God’s person, purpose, plan, people, and process.
  • Teach God’s global vision and purpose of the Church.
    Bring missionaries to speak to children about the unreached world. 
  • Pray together for missionaries you support and the people they work to reach.
  • Keep children up to date on progress and answers to their prayers.
  • Show, read, or encourage them to read and watch missionary stories and biographies. 
  • Help the children plan to embrace and befriend Third Culture Kids when your missionaries return to your area.
  • Many of these things can be done with youth and young adults, too.

Rallying. This is about keeping people informed about missions in your church. 

  • What missions events are coming up?
  • Where are the prayer requests?
  • What are the answers to prayer?
  • When will your missionaries be coming to the community?
  • What are the opportunities to serve locally or abroad?
  • How can we encourage missionaries overseas?

Sending. Does your church participate in missions or engage in missionary work? 

  • An active role in sending missionaries to people who have no other way to learn about Jesus takes work. Who is willing to do the work? 
  • Gathering prayer requests and praying.
  • Taking the time to discover the answers to prayer.
  • Presenting information to the church.
  • Intentionally discipling people to engage in career missions.
  • Teaching the whole congregation foundationally to know God’s person, purpose, plan, people, and processes.
  • Screening potential candidates for missions. 
  • Reviewing and acting on missions requests.

Videos of Missionaries in Support Roles

What You Can Do

Next Step: 

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