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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 54 54 Doing Mission Together the Dominicans and the Franciscans, came into being in the 1200s. The Jesuits, who have been among the most determined of the missionary orders, were founded in the 1500s. One question a person needs to ask is: What are the mission sodalities in the community of which I am a part? If there are none, there may not be much involvement in global mission. If there is a mission sodality in your church, why did it come into being and how does it relate to the church today? Specialized Agencies While some sodalities have been integrated into church structures, others have been very independent. Among the independent ones are parachurch organizations like Wycliffe Bible Translators, Gospel Recordings, and Greater Europe Mission. Although most specialized support agencies that have sprung up focusing on one particular area of ministry—literature, medical work, or missionary aviation—are independent, a lot of networking with denominational agencies goes on. These independent agencies are often called parachurch organizations because they see themselves as coming alongside churches to aid them. Thus a denominational mission board may use Missionary Aviation Fellowship for transportation into remote areas while it enlists the help of Scripture Gift Mission or Bibles for the World to provide Bibles and Scripture portions for evangelism and discipleship. At the same time, it may be partnering with Trans-World Radio to follow up on listeners who respond to broadcasts as well as using Campus Crusade’s JESUS film and Evange-Cubes from E3 Resources. A denominational mission working in impoverished areas may cooperate with Compassion International to provide meal programs for at-risk children and with World Vision in village health-care programs. That resulting health-care ministry may get medical supplies through MAP International, formerly Medical Assistance Programs. The denominational board might interface with World Neighbors in community development projects. In the wake of natural disasters, mission boards often partner with groups like Heart to Heart and World Relief to give help to devastated areas. A study of one’s mission board should include a look at the organizations with which it networks and which may even be supported by people in one’s own church. Financing Coupled to the structure issue is the question of financial resources and how those are raised and spent. Fund-raising and administration of finances differs from mission board to mission board. A thorough study of one’s own mission organization will find out the means of raising funds and look at how the support system for missionaries is structured. Using diverse sources of
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 55 Doing Mission Together 55 funding has been a characteristic of global mission from the beginning. The apostle Paul put together a mobile missionary team that was partially funded by existing local churches. For instance, in Romans 15:24, when Paul said he hoped to have the Roman Christians “assist me on my journey there,” he seemed to be asking for material help for a planned trip to Spain. However, according to Acts 18:3, the missionary journeys of Paul and his group were funded in part by their own tentmaking work. Some of the first Protestant missionaries were sent out by government money. In the early 1700s the Danish Halle mission was initiated and paid for by the King of Denmark. That was not an infinitely reproducible model. While Danish government sponsorship did get Ziegenbalg and Plutschau and others to India, government funding had obvious limitations and would today be unthinkable for Christian missionary work. The Moravians did things differently. Most of the early Moravian missionaries went out as tentmaker missionaries, earning much of their livelihood with their own hands with limited dependence on the brotherhood back home. It was a system that enabled the Moravians to send as much as 10 percent of their total membership into missionary service. The word tentmaking is used because the apostle Paul, as has been noted, earned some of his living making tents on his church-planting missionary trips. Using that tentmaking model to finance world mission ventures reflected Moravian ecclesiology because that movement did not have a professional paid ministry even in its home churches. The 1800s saw a wave of start-ups of faith mission agencies, many of them taking inspiration from Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission. These were independent mission organizations not tied to a denomination or group of churches. Though faith mission is a bit of a misnomer since all mission groups plan and run by faith, the name has endured. In almost all faith <strong>missions</strong>, individual missionaries and often even headquarters personnel have to marshal their own financial support. Very few actually follow Taylor’s principle of never asking anyone for money, something he picked up from his contemporary George Mueller. Mueller is famous for praying in support for his orphanages in England. Believing that mission is ultimately God’s work, Taylor’s support principle became: “God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.” 3 Those faith groups that follow Taylor’s principle never mention their financial needs; they talk about their work but leave it to the Holy Spirit to touch people’s hearts to fund their ministry. Denominational missionary organizations generally fund their operations in one of two ways: individual support raising or a cooperative central fund. Those that use individual support raising follow variations of models used by faith <strong>missions</strong> in which individual missionaries raise their own support. In one
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