Questions About Support-Raising

Assem­blies of God mis­sion­ar­ies are not allowed to begin their mis­sion until they have assem­bled a team of church­es and indi­vid­u­als will­ing to fund their min­istry. This often con­fus­es peo­ple, so I thought I’d answer what I per­ceive to be the com­mon ques­tions.

Can You Just Give Me a Quick Expla­na­tion?

There is a con­sis­tent prin­ci­ple taught in the Scrip­tures: min­is­ters should be paid by the peo­ple of God. In this regard, there are two broad cat­e­gories of min­is­ters: pas­tors, who are paid by the local con­gre­ga­tions they serve, and mis­sion­ar­ies, who are paid by oth­ers than the ones they are min­is­ter­ing to.

Chi Alpha cam­pus work­ers are mis­sion­ar­ies. The rea­son for this is very sim­ple: col­lege stu­dents don’t have any mon­ey! In addi­tion, the col­lege scene in Amer­i­can is as pagan as any place on earth, so there are few who would be will­ing to pay Chris­t­ian work­ers even if they did have the resources to do so.

For this rea­son, then, Chi Alpha cam­pus work­ers are required to build a sup­port team to aid them in their min­istry. Part of that sup­port is prayer, part of it is emo­tion­al sup­port, and part of it is finan­cial sup­port.

Is this Bib­li­cal?

Yes! For more detail, read our essay on The Bib­li­cal Basis for Sup­port-Rais­ing.

Why does­n’t the church pay you?

The church is pay­ing us. The church is not a build­ing; the church is peo­ple!

Ha, ha. So why does­n’t your denom­i­na­tion pay you a salary?

• If the denom­i­na­tion salaries mis­sion­ar­ies, the mon­ey has to come from somewhere–and that some­where is the church­es. Effec­tive­ly, it becomes a tax on church­es.
• His­tor­i­cal­ly, denom­i­na­tions that tax church­es this way have very few missionaries–nobody likes to pay tax­es, not even church­es. Rais­ing sup­port by con­tact­ing friends and fam­i­ly is a far more effec­tive strat­e­gy. Plus, it’s the Bib­li­cal method!
• It’s a scal­able sys­tem. Every new mis­sion­ary is required to go and gen­er­ate the funds nec­es­sary for their own min­istry. No mat­ter how many mis­sion­ar­ies we have, we can always have more because there’s no fixed allot­ment that all the mis­sion­ar­ies have to com­pete for scraps of.
• Rais­ing sup­port requires that a min­ster build a net­work of rela­tion­ships which keep him account­able and moti­vate him to work dili­gent­ly. If you know that your best friend is pay­ing part of your salary, you’re much less inclined to goof off.
• Mis­sion­ar­ies beget mis­sion­ar­ies! Most mis­sion­ar­ies become mis­sion­ar­ies through con­tact with anoth­er mis­sion­ary. Sup­port-rais­ing forces mis­sion­ar­ies to devel­op rela­tion­ships that ulti­mate­ly result in the pro­duc­tion of new mis­sion­ar­ies.

Why do you have to raise your full bud­get first?

Because the Assem­blies of God wants long-term suc­cess­es, not one-shot won­ders. If mis­sion­ar­ies reach their fields before they raise their full sup­port, they are much more like­ly to fail their task. They become con­sumed with their work, and they even­tu­al­ly reach a point where they must either quit, get a part-time job, or live in unhealthy con­di­tions. None of these things is con­ducive to long-term min­istry. By forc­ing mis­sion­ar­ies to raise their bud­get in full, the A/G con­tributes great­ly to their longevi­ty in min­istry. By con­tribut­ing to longevi­ty they con­tribute to effec­tive­ness.

Longevi­ty aside, insuf­fi­cient fund­ing has imme­di­ate impli­ca­tions. With­out a full bud­get our abil­i­ty to min­is­ter is lit­er­al­ly com­pro­mised. Our mis­sion­ary bud­get is not just our salary! It’s actu­al­ly the full orga­ni­za­tion­al bud­get for our min­istry. Out of that bud­get, a cer­tain amount goes to our salary and the rest goes toward work expens­es: with­out those funds min­istry oppor­tu­ni­ties have to be passed up. Like every­thing else, min­istry requires mon­ey.

Who over­sees the finances?

We are account­able to Assem­blies of God US Mis­sions. All funds are rout­ed through them in order to pro­vide finan­cial over­sight for the mis­sion­ar­ies.

How do I begin sup­port­ing your min­istry?

Just fol­low these instruc­tions.