Missionary Presentation Training

Posted by D. Simon on May 18, 2009

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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? Does it know what he was sharing? Does it have anything in place to help their missionaries prepare and fine-tune their presentations? Do they provide any training to help them deliver in a clear and cohesive way?

I’m sad for him because I think he lost an opportunity. An opportunity to help us understand his needs, to understand how to pray for him and his family, and to understand how we might support him in his field.

Is this an area where mission agencies need to do more, or was this an isolated incident?