Missionary Confidential

Next up in Question Week:

Are you completely fundraised or are you a “tentmaker” (do you support yourself with an income or form of work outside of ministry or missions)?

We’re an odd breed on this one, as we are actually both. Sometimes the mix of each changes, but it’s been this way the whole time here. A huge part of why we need the income from our business back in the States is the exchange rate from the Dollar is brutal, so we’re shaving a third to one-half of our value when we use it over here, hence the need for a huge amount of money despite living modestly. However, because we rely on the fundraised part of our income as well, we still get to do all the communication, interaction, and “dog and pony” show to supporting churches.

This week is Question Week.

Are you sent by a mission agency or by your home church?

I ask this purely out of curiosity.  We are sent by our home church, but in our mission field we find that most missionaries are sent by a mission agency.  What’s interesting to me is that when we were doing our research and trying to figure out how we’d get to Western Europe, we had an almost impossible time finding mission organisations that were willing to send anyone (not just us) to our field, claiming that the “lack of return” on the money needed to live in one of the most expensive countries in Europe was the issue.

One of the more popular search terms that this blog receives is “short-term missions”. I recently stumbled across a very well-written article in the online publication Wrecked For The Ordinary that candidly addresses some of the reasons that issues arise during short-term missions, diplomatically terming it “missions mismatch”.  The article also offers three steps that one should review, including questions to honestly answer.

Selecting a Short-Term Missions Experience

Editor’s Note: Please welcome our new contributor, D. Simon, to the blog. If you have a written piece about general missions issues and would like to be considered for a Guest Blog Post to the site, please contact us on our About page.

Being sent to the mission field by my home church, I don’t have the mission agency experience that most missionaries probably have. So I have a question, do mission agencies train their missionaries on how to deliver a fundraising presentation?

Perhaps I should back up for a moment to explain why I ask. I am called a missionary by many because I am serving in a foreign field, sent by my home church, and supported by churches and individuals in my home country. However my role is essentially the same as it would be if I was still in my home country; I am a pastor. The church I serve was started over a hundred years ago by a national and from what I can discern, I am the first person to pastor it from the States.

Last Sunday morning I had an interesting experience. We had a national who is on furlough from his mission field speaking at our church. Here I am the foreign pastor, listening to the “pitch” being given by a local in my mission field who is heading back to his mission field. That in itself was an odd experience.

I was looking forward to his presentation and was very interested in learning more. While I wish I could say it was informative and captivating, I’m afraid it was neither, but it was a very long fifty minutes. There were stats, stats, and more stats, but no personal stories from this family that had already spent four years in their field. After fifty minutes I knew very little about what he does, and absolutely nothing about his needs, financial or otherwise.

This experience made me wonder, did his mission agency prepare him for this?   » Read the rest of this entry «

Continuing with Question Week:

Do we obsess too much about details in ministry?

Here’s what I’ve noticed: over the years, both in the States and now in the mission field, there seems to be an attitude of having to do things a certain way to attract people to church/Christ, or it won’t happen at all. For instance, an emphasis on only a certain style of worship, or the way that all churches are now encouraged to join Facebook and constantly Twitter. Or the importance placed upon incredibly high production values on Sunday, such as laser lights, full rock band and video production for the sermon.  There is an underlying attitude that if your church gathering doesn’t tick all the right boxes, there’s no way that people will come to your church—or even come to Christ.

But the reality is that people do on both accounts, even when things don’t seem perfect to us. I remember some of the services in our ministry history that didn’t go right because something electronic broke down were often times the most poignant as there was a simplicity to them. I’m not arguing against excellence, planning or doing a half-baked job (for a great post on how we may be taking excellence too far, see this blog post from Collide Magazine). I just notice the attitude among ministries both in the States and in my mission field that if you can’t do a “big thing” in church service, then don’t do it at all. Yet in unglamourous industrial estates or in peeling, dilapidated stone churches there are people finding Christ for the first time.

Those who are originally from countries other than the States, is this a specific cultural thing coming from America or is it more pervasive in Christianity throughout all cultures?