I will be teaching this week for our Mission Adventures summer program, so I won’t be writing at all this week. When I return, I hope to bring you up to date about The Dusty Cover (we are on the verge of unveiling our new logo) and some other important info. Have a gret week and please keep me in your prayers.
This evening I came across an interesting post by Mary over at One Thing Is Needed about the challenge of missionary support in the changing culture of the church. Being a missionary that relies on such support, I believe she rightly points to this change as one of the most critical questions facing the Church (in both its modality and sodality forms). Here is what Mary asks:
“I have a question that’s been in the back of my mind for a few years now. Since the face of Western church is changing and many people have left and continue to leave institutional church (IC), what does that do for missionary support? I have friends who are missionaries overseas who have either had their support cut in half or dropped altogether as their supporting churches, and consequently the budgets, have gotten smaller. How do they build their support base back up? I also have friends who have left IC and believe that God is calling them to overseas missions. Their house church just doesn’t have the financial resources that can be found in a large church. How do they raise support? As people find other expressions of the local church, are there new ways of handling missionary support? I have more questions than answers. What are your thoughts and insights?”
Here are a few of my thoughts.
Tentmaking (that is practicing a trade to finance ones own mission) is a common response to these questions. It does work in many contexts and it requires a healthy integrated, missional view of life within a culture. Living in commonality/mutuality with those to whom are called is essential, and this can help develop that. It also requires a level of creativity that can be very beneficial. However, not every culture, context or circumstance allows such options. Speaking personally, the level of work I do in my ministry could not be accomplished should I try to keep another job- even 1/4 time. It just wouldn’t work. Some missional endeavours require a more consuming involvement. This is not better nor worse than tentmaking, it is simply a reality.
Part of this challenge comes as a result of churches learning that to be missional they must connect to the communities they find ourselves in. A challenge for the truly missional church is to develop this local connectedness while maintaining (or discovering, as the case may be) the global identity that is and must be inherent to Christianity. The beautiful eschatological image of worshiping before the throne of God- with every tongue, tribe and nation- brilliantly affirms both our local identity and our unified diversity.
One of the approaches that YWAM has maintained to offset some of this is that the missionary connects individually to each supporter. While YWAM may offer the service of processing the support, the line of relationship goes from the missionary directly to the individuals or communities that support them. This brings with it other problems and some additional work, but it has helped bypass most organizational overhead and casual or habitual giving (as opposed to relational giving).
Further, even small or house churches- more specifically those Christians who are part of them- must recognize that their own lifestyles must change if the challenge to support missional endeavours is to succeed. (I should add that is also essential to support their own missional engagement). We need to be honest about the fact that most of us in the West live incredibly rich lives, especially given the level to which we fail to live practically as communities. I have learned much about living simply within community from years of being part of a missionary organization that values this. (This point deserves a post unto itself).
I should also say that, as my recent post on relational leadership touched on, when I refer to being a missionary (an awkward term weighed down by centuries of mixed history) I am not referring to a professional worker, but someone responding to a very specific spiritual vocation. The nature of this vocation may more explicitly involved in what is seen as “ministry” in the traditional Evangelical sense, but it should not be seen as having any more value than those responding to their missional vocations as teachers, plumbers, doctors, mothers, etc.
The reality is this- things are changing. Missionary support- nay, the whole concept of missions- must change as well. However, it is not about abandoning one system for another, but rather shifting and developing as is needed, led by the Spirit and fueled by the gifts He gives.
What do you think? What have you seen that works? What are your questions?
(Be sure to join the conversation over at Mary’s blog too)
This past weekend was a busy one. Missionfest Manitoba 2007 kicked off it’s weekend of speakers and workshops featuring several speakers, keynote being Steve Saint, son of martyred missionary pilot Nate Saint. It was a full and tiring weekend, but was especially interesting to watch our DTS students participate in and consider this Evangelical staple- the missions conference.
Last year I posted about my concern with the nature of Missionfest (and missions conferences in general). While I will not repeat everything, I will reaffirm that, while I have serious concerns, I still affirm the usefulness, even the importance of the missions conference. To better understand this post, I would encourage you to read last years entry first.
My main concern is the way in which missions agencies, already functioning with a tiny fraction of the Churches resources, must pay for the privilege to promote their organizations. The hundreds of browsing visitors puruse the booths, most out of casual curiousity, some considering a source for financial giving and a small number consider getting involved in missional service. In the end, most Christians get entertained and challenged by a good speaker, go home with a bag full of brochures and a few books, with little lasting impact in their lives.
Perhaps I am being cynical, but after many years of attending such events, I have seen two common assumptions towards missions too often perpetuated at such events. First is that missions is a specialty field that a few are called to. While lip service is given to the value that, as christians, we are all called to be missionaries, this is rarely fleshed out. Second is the paternalistic, transactional view of Western Christians in relationship to the “foriegn mission field”. Let me explain this one.
Far too often well intentioned financial giving to missions can promote a condescending attitude of superiority towards “needy nations”. Further, it can give donors a sense of fulfilling their missional obligation by writing a cheque. While I am not discouraging financial support to missionaries (as my wife & I rely on it), it has become, for some, a form of missional indulgences. In desperate need of essential funding, it is too easy for missionaries and agencies to fall into the trap of playing to this pattern, using fundraising techniques that reward it.
Perhaps most troubling is the way we seem to see world missions in terms of economics and investments- X dollars results in X number of souls saved. The relationship with the developing world becomes a transaction of our wealth meeting their needs resulting in our sense of missional fulfillment and affirmation. What is needed, rather, is a relationship of mutual need, support and celebration. Yes, we should give out of financial wealth, but also acknowledge the impoverishment we suffer when we situate ourselves in such terms.
A great deal of the missional movement is a healthy response to these problems. However, there comes the very serious risk of downplaying missions outside our own borders in our commitment to being missional next door. As much as we need to challenge the traditional Evangelical model of missions and missions mobilization, we also need to be intentional about not taking our efforts too far.
So I pose two questions for you:
First, without abandoning the missions conference altogether, how can we reimagine it embrace true missionality in the necessary transitional terms needed to communicate the larger established church?
Second, what does world missions and missions mobilization look like when reimagined in terms of missionality as are being articulated and explored in the emerging-missional movement?
