Missionary Support from Churches

My family supports a number of missionaries financially. We have done this or many years. We think it is an important role for people to have in the work of the Gospel message. For a lot of missionaries they only get paid based on the financial support that they raise. This involves a lot of work on their part. They have to reach out to individuals, like my family, to see if they would be willing to give monthly, yearly, etc. to them so they can do their job. Sometimes they can’t get enough people to give to them and they have to have second (or third) jobs as well. This takes away from their ability to do their “God” job. As a result they also reach out to churches for finically support as well.

I was talking with a missionary we support recently and he was telling me about a church that supports them, and I he said something very interesting to me about the church. He told me that the church would support them finically, but that they weren’t allowed to then ask anyone in the church to directly support them financially. I thought this was quite odd. Why would a church not want their missionaries to get more support? We talked about it, and he told me the church was concerned that if people give directly to a missionary then they might give less to the church. Does this seem selfish to any of you? I think it does. I get where the church is coming from, but at the same time doesn’t it depend on where the heart of giving is coming from? He also mentioned that some of the churches they support them also don’t acknowledge their missionaries at all in the church. There is no mention of them in service, no signs/posters in the church, not even anything on their website. That makes even less sense to me. Wouldn’t you want your church to know about the missionaries the church is supporting? I always liked know about the areas/regions/people that are being supported. In fact this aided my wife and I when we left our first church. We decided that we would continue to support some of the missionaries we had met at the church directly. Once we joined a new church we still continued to support those missionaries, and we also gave to the church we were going to. In the past we would have earmarked a portion of of church giving to be for missionaries, and what we did is we just lowered that amount giving to the church by what we were personally giving to missionaries. As a result the church isn’t getting any less from us than they would have otherwise. It is true that the church can’t then decide how to use that portion of money for their missionaries (or at all since it is just a request as to where to use the money), but the money is still being used to spread the love of Christ, and the rest we give can be used to pay bills.

I know that my family isn’t like a lot of church going people. A lot just give into a general fund and let the church take care of everything on their end. There are a lot of people that don’t care about supporting missionaries specifically. But I think that getting to know the missionaries that a church supports is important. And I think that all churches should call out and mention them on occasion. We have attended a church that would have a missionary of the month to highlight. The church I grew up in would have a missions festival every year on a given Sunday and the missionaries that were supported by the church could have a booth to talk about their ministry and show off things. It was really cool. That ended long ago, but it was something that was fun, educational, and allowed everyone to learn about the people doing the work that the church was supporting outside the church. Who wouldn’t want to learn about that?

To all of you church goers out there that are reading this – do you know any of the missionaries your church supports? If not, ask about it. See if you can get in touch with them. Even if you don’t want to (or can’t) financially support them I am sure they would appreciate your prayers and even a simple thank you for your work email or call.

I am thinking that I may add missionaries to my blogs this year. I can reach out to them and ask them to provide something about who they are, their ministry, and how to reach them. Who knows maybe one of you (my readers) will see a connection with one of them and decide to help them out with prayer or more. I am sure they could use it.