How can we help?
A few months ago, I e-mailed several missionaries asking for their ideas about assembly support of missionaries. Their ages ranged from missionaries in their first year of service to one sister in her 90’s. I received 47 pieces of e-mail in response. This is a summary of some of their suggestions. Most of the ideas below were echoed in more than one letter.
Keep in contact
We need to honestly assess our personal and corporate interest in missions and ask the Lord to burden us as needed. • Missionaries especially want to hear what ways people are praying for them. • Send pictures, church bulletins, and prayer chain e-mails. • Getting copies of ordinary assembly news (births, marriages, deaths, dinners, who spoke on what, etc.) is very much appreciated. • Technology (e.g. Skype, phone cards) makes regular phone calls inexpensive, if not free. Appoint someone to make regular calls to the missionary. • Replace prayer newsletters with a monthly recorded phone call or a live phone or internet discussion during the prayer meting. • Have someone in the assembly visit the missionary once every few years to observe the work personally. • Get to know the country the missionary is serving in, and the work they are doing. • Send a card and stamped envelope around the assembly. Have someone new write the card each month.
Minister to missionary children
Send birthday cards and presents. One brother said that the most touching gift they ever received was a birthday card with $10 in it for their daughter. • Have assembly children write missionary children. • When children reach high school age, they will need a computer. • How will missionaries pay for college? (CMML has a fund that believers can contribute to for this purpose.) • Missionary children may not get a chance to see family members and grandparents regularly without assembly help. • The level of support and attention a missionary receives from home assemblies has a powerful effect on their children’s esteem of God and His people. • Help missions children reintegrate into “home” society. Think about drivers licenses, bank accounts, and who the MK will stay with during the weeks between returning from the field and going off to college. • Just because parents are missionaries does not mean their children will be. Moving “home” to a country where they did not grow up is a major struggle for many missionary children.
Stay in tune
Someone in the assembly should maintain regular contact with the commended worker and help the assembly keep aware of urgent prayer requests, victories, and challenges. • Missionaries should not become free agents, disconnected from assemblies. They need accountability and input, like all believers. • Missions work needs to be regularly presented to and praised before assembly children.
Some missionaries mentioned fearing to be honest and open with the believers back home. • Several missionaries recommended that families be encouraged to “adopt a missionary.” Encourage each family in the assembly to communicate with, pray for, and support a missionary on a regular basis. • Everyone in the assembly should make a point of speaking to missionaries when they visit. • Be aware that missionary work can be very lonely for a variety of reasons. • It is a false assumption that believers will simply catch-on to the need to support missions. Missionary projects, support opportunities, and fellowship in the gospel need to be repeated frequently. • Replace the old assembly missionary bulletin-board map with something that will help saints keep in tune with missions work. • Buy everyone a copy of the Missionary Prayer Handbook and show them how to use it. • Get the assembly to pray for the missionaries’ needs regularly.
When they come home
Just because missionaries return home on furlough does not mean they do not need financial support at that time.
Let them rest. Putting things in order in a foreign country prior to a long trip home can be exhausting. A couple of weeks in one place without any engagements can be extremely refreshing. • Have a designated home gathering or lunch where everyone can visit the missionary for a time of sharing and catching up, rather than having the missionary travel all over town. • Provide a furnished place for missionaries to stay on furlough, along with a vehicle. • Who ministers spiritually to missionaries if they are constantly putting out?
Outreach and ministry tools
Does your missionary need translation equipment, books, computer software, medical equipment, vehicles, printing materials, textile materials, well-digging, or construction equipment? • Some missionaries can be funded to set up clinics, schools, and training centers that will draw vast numbers of locals to their doors if believers back here are willing to fellowship in that type of work.
Medical issues
Some missionaries simply skip health care for financial reasons. Is your assembly willing to purchase it for them? Assembly Care can help in this area. • Medical coverage when missionaries return on furlough is a big concern for many. • If missionaries are in primitive areas, look into what you can do to make phone-based medical advice available to them from a doctor friend or an actual service.
Older missionaries
Most missionaries have no retirement plan and are unsure what will happen to them during this period in their life. Assemblies should not overlook the support of retired missionaries. • Elders should be ready to talk with the missionary to see if the assembly can or should help with the work once the missionary retires. • Help the missionary learn in advance about what living arrangements are available to them when they come home in their old age.
• Contact CMML or Assembly Care about what you can do to support retirement homes that serve missionaries.
Know their cost of living
Encourage the missionary to honestly share about the cost of living and inflation in their region. (e.g. gas is about $7-10 a gallon in some countries.) • Know the exchange rate and what your currency will buy in the missionary’s country. Your gifts may not be buying as much as you imagine they could. • Remind believers that some missionaries live in huge cities, not jungle huts. In some cases, their expenses are higher than yours. • Visas for missionaries in Asia and the Middle East may be very costly, especially when they must be bought regularly for a full family. • Help the missionary purchase a specific item or expense on a regular basis: travel, auto insurance, outreach literature, home repairs, tools, car repairs, clothing or furniture.
Giving
As assemblies change leadership, some older missionaries are being forgotten because new leaders don’t know them. • Brand new missionaries may be less well-known and less supported. • If second-hand offerings were not pleasing to God in Leviticus, then we should be careful before developing the mindset that missionaries should always receive hand-me-downs. • Preach about giving to commended workers as much as you preach about the need for them to trust God for support. Scripture teaches both sides of the same coin. • One brother mentioned that another worker’s children had said that they never wanted to be missionaries because it meant “you had to be poor.” • Some missionaries publicize their needs; others would never dream of doing so. Consider carefully which of these two courses of action you want to reward. • A helpful question is, “What does this worker need to be effective in doing what God has called him/her to do?” • Some believers think CMML or Bible colleges pay missionaries. Teach new believers and growing children about their responsibility to support workers. • While it is fine for elders to coordinate giving with missionaries, this should not result in ignorance on the part of believers as to missionaries needs or how their gifts are being used.
General advice
“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6:21). • Do we have a heart for missions? • Local assembly leaders should regularly remind assemblies of helpful tools: the Missionary Prayer Handbook, Missions magazine, Voice of the Martyrs magazine, missions books and publications. • Do not allow your assemblies to develop a sectarian denominational approach about missionaries from other local churches. • Pray and then inform the missionaries about how you are praying and what you are praying for. • Indifference to missions has much to do with ignorance. • Missionaries are human. They make mistakes. They get discouraged. Take their feelings into consideration. • Do not expect the missionary to accomplish that which only God can do. • Sending the missionary some solid Christian books can be a tremendous help and encouragement, especially for those missionaries who have no access to Bible bookstores.
• Assemblies need to take their commendation of the missionary or worker seriously and not forget about them after they have sent them out to the work to which the Lord has called them.
• One contributor sent a rich three-page letter outlined under these helpful categories: prayer support, financial support, e-mail support, care package support, support with your talents, visitation support, health and education support, sacrificial support.
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