A rationale for how we support our missionaries
Click to download a sermon given by Dr. Gordon Hugenberger at the ACMC conference in 2010, "The Local Church in Missions."
On November 4, 1997, the Missions Committee of Park Street Church voted unanimously to adopt a new policy that is intended to radically strengthen the relationship between our church and our active missionaries. Within a mutually agreeable time frame, we will work to redefine our relationship with our active missionaries so that they will be considered as members of our church’s ministerial staff, except that they will be seconded to their various missionary organizations, other than during furloughs.
This change obviously signals a paradigm shift in how we conceive of our relationship to our missionaries. Whether one identifies a modern missionary as the equivalent of an “evangelist,” an “apostle,” or any of the other gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, the Word of God views these gifted individuals as genuine members of a local body of Christ. They are not independent contractors, whom church members can choose to support or not. Rather, as members of a body of Christ, missionaries have a legitimate claim through Christ on the ongoing sacrificial love, support, and mutual accountability of their church family. Fellow church members are the ones who know the missionaries the best and were directed by the Spirit to set them apart for the work to which the Lord called them (cf. Acts 13:2, where Barnabas and Saul, who were already serving as effective missionaries to Antioch, were commissioned for a new phase in their ministries beyond Antioch).
In view of this, our policy will be to provide full financial support (or at least 80% support) for our missionaries, just as we would for any other member of our ministerial staff. In turn, as with any other member of our staff it will be expected that our missionaries will consider Park Street Church to be their home church. Accordingly, it is hoped that our missionaries will take an active interest in the life of the church, pray for its members and ministries, and cultivate close personal relationships, as they are able, with other members of the staff and with members of the church as a whole. Further, without diminishing the indispensable role of missions agencies, it is expected that our missionaries would seek to involve Park Street Church in any and all major decisions that affect their ministries. Finally, when they are not away on the field, missionaries should normally spend their furloughs at Park Street Church. Although missionaries would be free for outside speaking engagements, etc., as required by their missions agencies, furloughs should be designed mainly for rest, time with family, further study, writing, and significant fellowship and ministry at Park Street Church, in keeping with the missionary’s gifts.
What has prompted this change in policy?
Older missionaries will recognize that this “new” policy is largely a return to the practice of Park Street Church at the height of its missions program in the early years of Dr. Ockenga. At that time Park Street Church typically provided full financial support to the missionaries it sent out. Later, increased administrative costs for missions agencies, inflation, and diminished missions giving here at the church combined to force an adjustment in that original policy. Rather than reduce the number of missionaries being supported, it was decided to reduce the amount of support to be offered to each missionary. This erosion of support has continued to the present, when the level of financial support for our 37 active missionaries (excluding Rev. Joseph Sabounji, our Minister to Internationals) is now, on average, a mere 15% of what our missionaries require. Consequently, most of our missionaries have to maintain relationships with a large number of supporting churches, which are often spread out over a vast geographical area. Missiologists have long lamented the obvious inefficiency, impracticality, and inadequacy of such a system of support.
An acute manifestation of these difficulties is seen in the contemporary practice of the “furlough.” Rather than refreshing and strengthening the missionary and providing needed opportunities for further training, furloughs, or “home ministry assignments,” all too often feel like a rat race. In an attempt to shore up tenuous support from a large array of churches, the missionary has to contend with the stress of constant travel, meetings, and speaking engagements, often away from his or her family. Not surprisingly, many excellent missionaries have been diverted from the field by the understandable attraction of salaried ministries that don’t require this kind of exhausting deputation.
The results of the modern furlough are no less frustrating for the supporting churches. Although the pastor or a host family may have the privilege of less formal conversation and prayer with the missionary, contact with the church as a whole is generally restricted to a cameo appearance at a Sunday service, one or two presentations, and a covered dish supper. Consequently, the church fails to move beyond a superficial knowledge of its missionaries or their needs and joys. This would be fine, if we did not believe in prayer. But since we do, and since we believe that God answers prayers that well up from passionate hearts, rather than merely agile lips, the problem could not be more grave. As we readily observe in our own lives, a lack of intimate knowledge and sincere love invariably leads to a lack of ardent prayer. On the other hand, no matter how undisciplined our devotional lives may seem, most of us will get down and stay down on our knees when those we love, such as a spouse or our children, are in great need.
Jesus declared, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). We seem to be intent on defying this principle when we expect churches to have their hearts with a missionary, in whose ministry they are investing at such a meager level.
Apart from texts such as 1 Corinthians 12, is there any other Scriptural support for this new model for the relationship between Park Street Church and its missionaries?
Although the Scriptural evidence is more suggestive than definitive, Paul’s relationship with the church at Antioch at first, and later with the church at Philippi, and finally with the church at Rome appears to offer at least a partial model for the kind of relationship we are seeking. Whether or not they provided financial support, the church at Antioch played a pivotal role in sending Paul out on his first missionary journey (Acts 13:1-3). It is to be noted, as mentioned above, that Paul was already an effective missionary to Antioch, long before he was sent out as missionary from Antioch.
Subsequently, when Paul’s work was completed he returned to Antioch. In contrast to our practice, where missionaries typically return to their sending church for only a brief visit, Paul “stayed there a long time with the disciples” (Acts 14:28). Indeed, Paul and Barnabas continued to minister at Antioch, teaching and preaching the Word of the Lord (Acts 15:35). When it was time for Paul to leave again, he was “commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord” (Acts 15:40, cf. 14:26). At the conclusion of his second missionary journey, once again Paul returned to Antioch “spending some time” there (Acts 18:22f.). The appearance of this same phrase, “some time,” in 1 Corinthians 16:7 suggests that this was not merely a fleeting visit to Antioch: “I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.”
Perhaps because of the impracticality of maintaining support from a base as far removed as Antioch, it appears that the church at Philippi, the first church in Europe to be founded by the apostle, provided him with a forward base of support. Paul stresses in Philippians 1:5 how he prayed for this church with joy “because of your partnership [koinwniva] in the gospel from the first day until now.” In no other epistle does Paul refer to the presence of a similar “partnership.” Indeed, in Philippians 4:15f. Paul elaborates:
“Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared [koinwnevw] with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid again and again when I was in need.”
The letter to the Philippians offers ample testimony to the quality of this partnership which went well beyond mere financial support to include, on the part of the church, prayers (1:19) and the sending of Epaphroditus to help Paul (2:25ff.; 4:18) and, on the part of Paul, intense love (1:7-8), prayers (1:3-11), a desire to return to the Philippians (1:25, 27), the sending of Timothy to gain firsthand information, and intimate knowledge of the church such that Paul could address many specific needs, including the need for Euodia and Syntyche to be reconciled (4:2ff.).
Although it cannot be established with certainty, many scholars consider it likely that at least one purpose for Paul’s highly theological letter to the Romans was to secure the heartfelt support of the Roman church for Paul’s gospel. Paul’s hope was that the Roman church would provide yet another forward base of support, this time for Paul’s intended ministry to Spain: “... since I have been longing for many years to see you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to visit you while passing through and to have you assist me [propevmpw] on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while” (Romans 15:23f.). The term Paul employs for “assist” became a regular technical term for missionary support. C.E.B. Cranfield, William Hendriksen, and Douglas Moo, among others, claim that here in Romans 15 it encompasses a broad range of needful logistical and material support (finance, transport, escort, counsel, prayer, etc.).
We take comfort, however, in the admonition of the evangelist John Haggai, who once said: “Attempt something so great for God that it’s doomed to failure unless God be in it.”
