Comments on: The Coming Evangelical Missions Meltdown… or?

By: David & Mitzu

David & Mitzu — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:40:45 +0000

I have just found your site and appreciate very much this discussion. We spend part of our year in the US saving so that we can support and go back to our mission centers/churches in the Philippines. We have noticed that support is a miracle and has mostly come from individuals.

By: Ted

Ted — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:56:52 +0000

Greg,

It’s my impression that most churches simply aren’t in a position to really assess the impact of finances being pumped into a ministry. Most longer-term missionaries just start getting it around 6 or 7 years in the culture, in my experience. It’s hard to imagine that church, with mostly lay leadership, are able to assess this. One way that churches have sought to overcome this problem is to focus on partner churches within the culture. It’s a great idea and one that should be one part of a church’s outreach portfolio.

- Ted

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:52:28 +0000

Great read, Ted. Any thoughts on the “short term blessing/long term curse” nature of financial giving to national churches or movements? How well do N.Am. churches understand the implications of their giving?

By: dpeach

dpeach — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:33:18 +0000

Great stuff Ted. I love the idea of supporting nationals, but there is not much sacrifice, nor real commitment to the task when all we send is money. Actually putting ouselves out there on the field is when we get a sense of dedication to the cause.

I currently work with a sending church and have the majority of my support through various churches, but even in my circles where traditionally all the support has come through churches I am starting to see more and more individual support being discussed.

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:46:56 +0000

Excellent input. I do wonder if the whole “sending church” idea will go away. I am having one of our staff members run the numbers of the percentage of church support a typical missionary receives versus individual support (this will be over a 12 year period, I think). I have a hunch that the funding for missionaries is coming more and more from individuals and less from churches. It might be that agencies have to ask themselves about how serious they take the sending church idea.

By: Marti

Marti — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:42:51 +0000

There’s a lot here Ted, but I’ll start with responding to a point from the top of your post. What healthy/painful changes await, in the relationship between evangelical mission agencies & members, and megachurches? A month or so ago a few coworkers and I listened to the webinar on megachurches. Not sure if that’s the one you’re referring to. The presenter was trying to keep it as positive as possible, and there was little opportunity to interact, but you could almost feel the tension anyway… the megachurches show strong preferences for doing certain kinds of ministry, and in many ways we rejoice that they care, and recognize we need to find ways to work hand and hand and respond to those priorities.

But some of the ways megachurches work are pretty discouraging. This becomes painful, because, as I’ve observed, one key step for most colleagues who make it to the field as a church planter (often planting churches that are VERY different from those back home), is, get involved in and supported by a megachurch. Neighborhood Baptist or Emerging House Church just aren’t going to be able to send you out, you have to go to Faith Community Megachurch to get to the field. I could be wrong about that, but I’ve seen it happen a lot.