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Missionary Support

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pops

New Member
I was hesitant to use this title because of all the discussions going on about word usage and meaning etc... But folks humor me and just deal with it!
The missionaries that we support are almost all under funded. How about the ones you or your church supports what is their funding status? I know one missionary who's funding is reduced when they come back to the USA for what ever reason! NOT a good thing in my view. But now to my point I would like you to consider increasing your missionary support by $10.00 per month or add a new missionary to your support group. These little bits help and do add up. Can you afford .033 cents per day?
I remember once I started supporting a new missions family with this little amount but do you know what - it was just what they needed to complete their funding requirements and go to the Philippines.
 
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annsni

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Our church does missionary support differently than many churches. We ask the missionary what their need is and we'll pay that. For some, they are supported by other churches and so it's not their full support, and some have churches where they are now that do their full support. Another difference is that a good portion of our missionaries are home grown. We have a missions pastor to take care of all of the missionaries and he's intimately involved in each of their ministries. It's a neat way to do it, IMO.
 
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pops

New Member
Annsi:
Is your churches missionary support on a one time basis or continuing? The reason I ask is because you said you ask this missionary how much they need and then give it to them. If a missionary is just starting out this could be a lot of money per year and I would not like to be supported solely by one church. What is the process for considering a new missionary? Your church sounds like it is fairly large and large means time time and more time even before they know if they are going to be allowed to speak and then there are budget considerations etc...
A smaller church can sometimes react faster and a individual/family can react even faster! That is why I suggested that the readers of this post consider helping to support a missionary - even just $.30 per day is a start and I think this is within reason for anybody.
 
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annsni

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
pops - The kind of support I was talking about is ongoing. For our own homegrown missionaries, we ask what kind of support they'll need per month and we try to give them that amount. This way they won't have to worry about doing any kind of fundraising and such. If anyone wishes to donate to them individually, that's wonderful but we try to make it that they are free to do their work rather than having to do fundraising.

As I said, we have a missions pastor who has a missions budget and he doesn't have to get a whole lot of approvals to give money when needed. Of course he's overseen by the administrative pastor (who's an accountant by former trade) and all of our finances are audited each year by an independent auditor AND the congregation can see where money is spent when they ask. But if a missionary calls and says "We have need of X amount of dollars due to an emergency", all the missions pastor needs to do is speak to the senior pastor and the administrative pastor to get it approved. No need for boards or budget worries.

To be considered as a missionary, I think the mission would be one that would be either from a home grown missionary (as I said, we have numerous ones), or a missionary who we end up having a close relationship with. We started a mission in Cuba to help build a seminary and we've since added a few of their pastors to our missionary team (not for full support since they had other support but for partial). We added in another pastor to Italy through our missionary that we have planted there (who we had been giving full support to until they became mostly self-sufficient). We recently had a young man who went through our youth group and college group who went away and became a pastor. He and his wife felt they were called to missions in Malaysia and they came home for 3 months to his parent's house so that they could begin to find support for them to go. The first Sunday they were back at church, our missions pastor told them to meet with him that week - and we ended up fully funding them as our own home-grown missionaries. It was neat to send them out and to know them so well. Since we're an independent church, we don't have "association" missionaries so we seek them out or make them ourselves.

Hope that makes sense.
 
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pops

New Member
Annsi: You church is to be commended - May the Lord continue to Bless you!
but, there are a lot of mission organizations outside of ones church affiliation or association that are worthy. I suppose that is why some groups are changing their name to be more global in scope.

My main point however is to try and convict the readers of this thread to add a missionary to their individual giving and show how affordable it is.
 
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annsni

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Pops - I agree. It's so easy to ignore missionaries since we do not see their work but they have given up so much to be able to do the work of the Lord. We SHOULD support them in every way we can. A couple of extra dollars here and there can make a huge difference for so many of them - an extra gift above their basic support could be a special treat for them or a way for them to get a much needed item that's not in the budget. This would be a great family project - to just put a jar on the counter even to put in spare change and have the kids do some extra chores to earn money for them.

Thanks for the reminder.
 
NaasPreacher (C4K)

NaasPreacher (C4K)

Well-Known Member
I really feel for our supporting churches. The recent collapse of the US dollar has severely affected out buying power, but what are our supporting churched supposed to do? All of their forign missionaries have been affected. They surely can't afford to help them all.
 
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pops

New Member
Your right you can not support everyone but if you would just start with ONE and Annsni started with ONE and I started with another ONE that is three more than a minute ago!
I had followed my own advice I added a missionary who is new and works at a college in Mexico.
 
John of Japan

John of Japan

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Plain Old Bill said:
I have yet to meet my first wealthy missionary.
Click to expand...
The normal practice is to get rid of that wealth before becoming a missionary. :thumbs: William "Borden of Yale" was the heir to the Borden Dairy fortune. Before heading off to die for Christ in Egypt, he gave his fortune away to: China Inland Mission, Moody Bible Institute, Princeton Seminary and various other mission boards, etc.

Me? It's easy to leave it all to go to the mission field when you have no houses, land or money to start with!:laugh:
 
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