A guest post! I am very excited that someone was willing to post here; may this be the first of many. If you are interested, please let me know. This post is written by a friend in missions whose name can't be mentioned.
I've recently started working with an international missions organization as their student missions director. It has been an absolute blast seeing how God is working in young people and raising them up to be missionaries. Interacting with students and hearing their passions, experiences, and ideas has been exhilarating but along with the job comes hearing about the fears and worries students bring with them to the world of missions.
Missions comes with so many potentially terrifying components: new country, new culture, new language, new people, new home, and on and on and on. But the one I most frequently hear about is the issue of money and missions. As a student studying missions, I know this topic was the one that most scared/frustrated me. I would hear how much it costs to go to the field and could not fathom where those funds would come from. Sure, missions agencies would explain how they raised funds and that, though it took time, it was possible. But it frustrated me hearing how it could take years to find churches and people that would help.
So I did what any creative, independent, mistrusting young person would do: I started planning how I could get that money myself. I didn't think I could rely on the church to help me get to the field and then found a million ways to rationalize the flaws of the church support method so that I could go to the field without the church's apparent poverty holding me back. I thought of saving up money in the states and maybe finding a secular job I could do as tent-making on the field (you know like Paul did!…on a few occasions…).* I did an international internship and even saw first hand that I could not rely on the church as much as the missionaries had suggested I should. I had to foot around 50% of the bill that summer and the other 50% was mostly family members. Unfortunately I am not an isolated incident, these plans and ideas are popping up more and more as I talk to students and prospective missionaries.
I say all of this to show that there is a huge disconnect between the church and missions and a large part of that disconnect is just paper with presidents' faces on it. That disconnect has resulted in a new generation of willing missionaries having little to no faith nor trust in the local church to step up and send them. The fact that new volunteers' plan A is to work outside of the local church clearly shows that many new missionaries start their path toward the field with the assumption that the local church is a fan of missions but rarely a participant.
I mentioned earlier, rather satirically, that the church has an "apparent poverty." This is obviously not true since churches tend to be some of the nicest, most ornate, and well kept pieces of property in the USA. So the American church as a whole is by no means broke except for the areas it has driven itself into debt through building projects and other huge in-house projects. Because of this apparent wealth, new missionaries have developed a mistrust of the local church because though there appears to be funds for every kind of in-house program and amenity, very rarely are finances not "too tight" to be able to help the missionary.
This is my request of the local church (and it's members): if you have money and resources, give when needs are presented with a balance of discernment and generosity. In Acts the Christians "gave as they saw need" and some sold what they had to give so that there was no needy people among them. So why is it that the church then, which was not even considerably close to being as wealthy as the American church is today, was able to fund ministry so freely and generously when today we can't hardly imagine parting with $25, $50, $100 a month to send workers into the unreached places of the planet in accordance with Christ's final command before He ascended.
So, church, if members of Christ's body are willing to go, help them. Put their ministry needs before your personal desires for a nice this or bigger that.
"Seek first the Kingdom"
*I am not condemning tent-making ministries, I am however worried that the motives behind pursuing them are based out of fear/mistrust of the church's ability/willingness to help them. I think there is a lot of merit in combining some platform ministry with the support of local churches.*
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