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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 56 56 Doing Mission Together variation, friends and family members commit so much per month or year to that missionary. Other missionaries trying to raise support concentrate on cultivating a group of supporting churches, each of which pledges annual financial support to particular missionaries. Usually a minimal support level is set by a mission agency for all its missionaries with newly appointed missionaries having to secure pledges or commitments that total at least that much before they leave for the field. In the individual support system, the missionary’s home office sometimes takes out an administrative overhead percentage of what each missionary raises. Often new appointees are given two years or so to raise their support. If they are unable to do so within the specified time period, their appointment expires or is rescinded. If the monthly or yearly income of missionaries being supported in this system falls below a set minimum, those missionaries often must return to their home country to raise additional pledges or commitments. While being supported by particular individuals and local churches does create special bonds between missionaries and their supporters, fall-off in support for a missionary in this system can occur when a supporting church changes pastors or has a significant turnover in membership and new leaders have a different set of missionaries they want to support. In other denominational mission agencies, missionaries do not raise their own individual support but are instead supported from a cooperative central fund that cares for all the missionaries of that agency or board. To create that centralized fund, local churches in such denominations commit to giving a percentage of their total income to world evangelism, in some cases “a tithe of the tithe.” During periods of home assignment, missionaries from these denominations generally speak in many more local churches than do those trying to raise their own support. One reason for this is the need for local churches to encounter individual missionaries face-to-face since their funding is not tied to particular missionaries but is going to support all of that denomination’s mission force. As such missionaries travel around speaking, they may have special projects for which they will receive offerings. However, their major objective in speaking in churches is to promote the entire missionary force of their denomination or board. For needs other than personnel support, mission organizations will often take special offerings that appeal to a variety of motives. In her denomination Elizabeth Vennum began an annual offering for global construction projects with the slogan “Giving up a want to meet a need.” Using that slogan, she asked women to put off buying a new dress or a bottle of perfume in order to give money to the construction offering. In one December compassionate ministry offering promotion, people are urged to give based on how many pairs of shoes they own, how many light bulbs they have in their home, and how many trips to the grocery store they make in an average week.
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 57 Structure Issues Doing Mission Together 57 Gathering the Harvest Another reason Christian mission efforts have been more than making holes in water is that they have generally been done in the context of a sending community seeking to create other communities. To be sure, there are stories of resolute individuals who have valiantly set out to try to bring God’s justice and shalom to the world all by themselves. However, in missionary deployment, God’s call is only one ingredient of the recipe. Other ingredients include the sending church making sure there are supporting supply lines in place, systems of accountability, and structures to guarantee long-term continuity. The difference that working within a structure can make in long-term results can be seen in the ministry of two men in Great Britain in the 1700s. John Wesley and George Whitefield were two well-known evangelists of that era. While Wesley is widely talked about today, George Whitefield is little remembered although it is said that during his lifetime he preached to more people face-to-face than did John Wesley. Accounting for the difference between the residual effects of Wesley’s ministry and those of George Whitefield may be Wesley’s creation of a follow-up system within the context of a faith community. Though Whitefield was seemingly more successful in attracting crowds than Wesley, Whitefield did not provide for long-term follow-up of converts. He preached and called for decisions but left follow-up to other people. After Wesley’s death, the Methodist movement he began and organized lived on. After Whitefield’s death, it soon became hard to point to any discernible long-term impact of his ministry. Research on a mission board or agency should ask what is done to guarantee long-term continuity of the work of that board or agency. It is very risky to gauge the effectiveness of evangelism by raw numbers of conversions without taking into account the structures being organized to carry on outreach and discipleship ministries. Indeed, in the first few centuries of Christianity, benchmarks other than raw numbers of conversions were often used for gauging mission success. One marker of successful mission work in Early Church history was the appointing of an indigenous bishop. The appointment of a local leader as a bishop was a signal that evangelistic outreach had been fruitful and leaders were emerging who could oversee churches. End Result Although missionaries are one of the most visible elements of global mission efforts, they are not the most important element of the mission enterprise. The key issue is not even the number of converts or their quality. The most important bottom line involves the clusters of churches that result from the
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