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Support for Missionaries: Suggestions for Best Practices

 The best approach for churches supporting missionaries is to support missionaries, not projects, places, peoples, etc.  Such a statement seems obvious at one level, and yet it is quite challenging at other levels.  So many churches get excited about particular projects, like reaching unreached people, or feeding the hungry, or Bible translation.  This is, of course, exactly what missionary efforts entail, so why not make this the object of missions?  The answer is in Acts 13.2.

Now, we cannot build a theology of mission support around a single verse.  Yet I do want to challenge what many churches think of about mission support with this verse.  Acts 13.2 reads: 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'  We have here a word from the Holy Spirit after a time of worshipping the Lord and fasting--a time of seeking God.  Drawing near to God, God responds with a call to mission.

Yet the clarity of this call is not a project, not a place, and not a particular group of people in the world.  It is a call to separate two from the brethren already in ministries of prophecy and teaching in Antioch to do what the Holy Spirit will direct them to do.  The church's role is to recognise through spiritual insight that these have a calling on their lives.  The Antioch church did not set up rules about what ministry Paul and Barnabas were to do.  They were called to recognise the missionaries, not the ministries and the logistics of mission.  The Spirit identified Paul and Barnabas as the missionaries to be supported from the church, and the church was to support them in whatever they did.

Was this a mission to the people of Crete?  That is where Paul and Barnabas first went.  As soon as a church like Antioch might have begun to identify this mission as a 'missionaries to Crete' mission, Paul and Barnabas were already writing back to the church from Lydia, or Galatia, or somewhere else in Asia Minor.  Later, as soon as Paul might have written back to say that the Lord had directed him to remain in Corinth and they identified his ministry as a ministry to Corinth, Paul was making plans to go to Ephesus.

My point is that the job of the local church is to recognise whom God has called and to stand with and support such people in ministry--the mission to which the Spirit calls them.  The job of the local church is to assess character and calling, competence and capability of missionaries.

Mission statistics get in the way of calling.  One might well have evaluated the mission statistics of Bithynia with Paul only to find that the Lord directed Paul to go to Macedonia instead.  Statistics are interesting, but the question is, 'Where does the Holy Spirit want this missionary to go now to do what?'

Over the years, we have ministered in many places.  Our ministries have been fairly consistent in teaching at various levels in various places, as well as prayer, Bible study groups, women's ministries, and tutoring.  We never could have or would have planned to work with the people or the places that we did.  Some supporting churches would drop us once we moved to a different area or once they changed the focus of ministry that they wanted to support.  Few churches supported us because they sought the direction of the Spirit for whom He was sending to do the work to which He had called us.

My hope is that more churches do as the Church at Antioch did.  Get to know your missionaries.  Support them.  Pray for clarity about whom the Spirit is calling into mission work. Get out of the way of defining what the mission should be.  Support the missionaries.  Sure, make sure that they are capable and that they have good character, that they are spiritually mature and educated for the work.  Yet, stay out of planning from afar what needs doing in the field.  You support the missionaries themselves.

Paul was a missionary a number of times and sometimes for years from prison.  Who ever would have identified prison as a place for a missionary?  Paul often had frustration in evangelism and then with churches he established.  He sometimes had opposition from false teachers or unworthy brethren.  Thankfully, the Church at Antioch did not have e-mail to keep checking on his ministry and to reassess whether to continue their support!  If they did, though, I might say that these spiritually mature brethren would have said, 'we support Paul in the ministry to which the Spirit has called him'.

Many commentators think that Onesimus was a runaway slave who found Paul in prison and whom Paul converted.  I do not think so, although nobody knows.  I think it more likely that his master, Philemon, sent Onesimus to Paul as a way of supporting him in prison.  Onesimus became the object of Paul's ministry to the point that Paul could say that he was now improved, should be set free, and was a brother in the flesh and in the Lord (v. 16).  Philemon supported the missionary in a way that brings a frown to our 21st century faces, but Paul turned it into a blessing: a polite request to free a slave.

There are various ways to support missionaries.  First, get to know them and stay in touch with them.  Do not wait for newsletters, sitting in the US counting how many general newsletters the missionary sends each year.  Write to them, call them, email them.  Second, pray for them--seriously.  Do not simply pray through a prayer letter or over a list of supported missionaries.  That is fine to do, of course.  Yet it lacks intimacy.  Get behind the general prayer letters or newsletters to know the details, sometimes not willingly shared.  Don't expect letters like Paul's, dealing with the dirty details and frustrations of ministry.  The church will want some encouraging word about their investment from a newsletter, but the real things to pray about are hard to put into a newsletter.  Find out how to pray for your missionaries' real needs.  Third, do not hang over the missionaries' heads some notion you have about what or where to send mission support--to this project or that people.  Support the missionaries themselves as people God has called into ministry.  Fourth, do not make the missionary feel like a beggar, needing to ask for support.  Do not give them a little support like someone gives a beggar spare change.  Get behind them, bless them, be their support.  If God has called them to ministry, He has also called you, the church, to be their support.  Finally, and this runs throughout my comments here, keep things personal.  Do away with paper reports.  Send an Onesimus or an Epaphroditus over to help rather than send an online annual report to fill out.

Comments

Mark said…
As a former missionary in Kenya -- probably the most over-missionaried county in the world-- I may have seen every imaginable model. I concur with your emphasis on supporting the people over the projects. Missionaries should be tightly connected with their home church. I favor denominational support over one congregation sending and supporting. The latter is too unstable and vulnerable to pastoral or committee changes. Missionaries should be fully funded without bearing the burden, and temptations that come with support-raising. As with church-planting, don't do it unless you have the funding.
7 January 2026 at 23:43
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