Are you a church leader passionate about missions? Are you a church member curious about how to care for missionaries visiting your church?
As a missionary to Asia for twelve years now serving in my local church in the American Midwest, I too am passionate about this topic of missions. I’ve designed this series of articles to help the local church consider how they can welcome, care for, and maybe even support the missionaries that visit their church.
This series (which will be posted from time to time throughout the next year) covers the following topics:
- Part 1: Deputation and the Bible
- Part 2: Inviting and Partnering with Missionaries
- Part 3: The Challenges and Benefits of Deputation
- Part 4: Scheduling a Missionary Visit
- Part 5: Preparing for a Missionary Visit
- Part 6: Hosting a Missionary Family
- Part 7: Blessing Missionary Travelers
- Part 8: Communicating with Missionaries
What Is “Deputation”?
“Deputation” is the somewhat-outdated term for the missionary support-raising process–what some might call “pre-field ministry.” Prospective missionaries must network with likeminded churches and individuals to share their burdens for a particular field or people group and ask for both spiritual and financial support.
Deputation generally requires extensive travel for the missionaries, as it’s their responsibility to find someone—anyone!—willing to hear and invest in their ministry. It’s also often a lengthy process, lasting from several months to several years, delaying the family’s on-field ministry.
Do “Best Practices” Exist?
Depending on who you ask, missions today is either a slave to tradition or it’s dangerously vulnerable to changes in culture, technology, transportation, and the economy. Some pastors bemoan the business-model trends that some missionaries follow in their support raising, while others hurt for the missionaries who are still stuck in a deputation rut that’s been 150-years in the making.
In my family’s own preparation for the field a dozen years ago, we followed this traditional deputation model: cold calls to pastors around the country, penciled-in schedules to present our hopeful ministry to churches, and the long wait to hear whether we’d connected enough to earn the church’s partnership and support. We raised our support by the end of our first year (a.k.a. “in lightning speed”), but we also hit many bumps along the way.
It’s now my passion not only to help missionaries navigate these difficult waters, but also to help pastors and churches know how to make these water less turbulent. It’s inevitable that opinions about “best practices” for missionary deputation will differ, because each missionary, missions agency, pastor, and church differs. Still, I believe we can arrive at some basic agreements about how the local church can be involved in preparing, supporting, and sending missionaries to the field.
Is Deputation Biblical?
Before digging into the practical side of this issue (the topic of the following articles), I think it’s important first to note the biblical justification for missionary support—even if we disagree about how missionaries are expected to raise it.
In Acts 13:1-3, we see the Holy Spirit call Saul and Barnabas, arguably the first full-time foreign missionaries, to the ministry through the church at Antioch during a time of prayer and fasting. The men were immediately commissioned and sent by the church without raising financial support from elsewhere. Like many events in Acts, Paul’s example is descriptive not prescriptive: while Antioch’s method of missionary-sending might be a strong model for our churches to follow today, it does not set the precedent for how all churches in all ages must send their missionaries.
As we watch Paul’s foreign ministry progress through his journeys in Acts, we get more insights into where he got his funding. We see him, for example, work as a tentmaker, ostensibly to cover his own cost of living (Acts 18:1-4). While Paul never directly asks for money in letters to his churches, this does not mean he never asked in personal conversations—we just don’t have evidence of it. What we do see in Scripture, though, is that although Paul had the right to seek financial support (as Jesus and the other Apostles did before him, see Luke 8), he refused to accept support from and be a burden to most of the churches he communicated with (see 1Cor 9; 2Cor 11-12; 1Thes 2-3). He did receive some gifts from Macedonia (Phil 4:15), but what little support they sent only pushed him even deeper into ministry (Acts 18:5).
How Should a Missionary Make a Living?
Later articles in this series will discuss how a person’s call to the mission field isn’t simultaneously also a call to poverty. While missionaries prepare themselves to suffer in new cultures and under new regimes, there’s no reason why they can’t do so comfortably, like those ministers who remain in the home country (see for example 1Cor. 9:9-14; Gal. 6:6; 1Tim. 5:17-18).
At minimum, our missionaries should not have to spend their energies wondering how to pay this month’s bills. That leads us to ask: from where can they get their funding?
Again, people will disagree about “what’s biblical” and “what’s right” on this issue, but missionaries traditionally make their living in one of three ways: 1) they’re fully funded through financial partners; 2) they’re fully self-supported via employment on the field; 3) or they’re funded via a mixture of these two. [Note: Some organizations do pay their missionaries as employees, but this is neither traditional nor within the scope of deputation.]
It’s impractical to expect every church to send its own missionaries to the foreign field immediately without concern about funding. Most churches are unable to support their own missionaries as fully paid staff members. Some churches send multiple missionaries, while others send none. Some churches are blessed with financial surpluses, while others struggle even to pay their own pastors.
I affirm the autonomy of the local church, yet this is one instance where cooperation isn’t simply preferred but essential. Local churches must cooperate to send missionaries of like-faith to evangelize, disciple, and plant healthy churches in regions they can’t reach themselves.
Conclusion
The remaining articles in this series will discuss the practical aspects of missionary support raising, but I felt it necessary to highlight first some of the biblical justification. While the methods for missionary support raising may be open for debate, the support itself is not. Those who cannot themselves go as missionaries must pray for and financially support those who can, giving missionaries the right and responsibility to pursue such spiritual and financial support.
Photo Credit: Tim Wildsmith on unsplash
