The Biblical Model for Funding Missionary Work

A sum­ma­ry of the bib­li­cal prece­dents for mis­sion­ar­ies solic­it­ing funds so that they can devote them­selves to full-time min­istry.

How should mis­sion­ar­ies be paid? Bib­li­cal­ly, there can be only one answer to this ques­tion. As Paul says, the Lord has com­mand­ed that those who pro­claim the gospel should get their liv­ing by the gospel (1 Cor 9.14). The teach­ing is very explic­it. There are many exam­ples of this prin­ci­ple being prac­ticed in the Scrip­tures. Here are just a few:

  • First and most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Jesus’ min­istry was fund­ed by some of those who heard Him (Luke 8.1–3), and He taught the dis­ci­ples to rely on oth­ers while min­is­ter­ing (Matthew 10.5–15).
  • Sec­ond, Paul request­ed that the Roman church finan­cial­ly sup­port Phoebe, one of the min­is­ters at Cenchrae. (Romans 16.1–2)
  • Third, Paul him­self received sup­port and was grate­ful for the sup­port he received: Philip­pi­ans 4.10–20 (peo­ple fre­quent­ly assume that Paul always sup­port­ed him­self by mak­ing tents. Actu­al­ly, that was the sec­ond-best option for him. See Acts 18.1–5, where Paul began by mak­ing tents and quit as soon as it was finan­cial­ly fea­si­ble to do so. See 1 Corinthi­ans 9.1–18, where Paul’s whole point is that the Corinthi­ans owed him sup­port: he con­cludes the let­ter by telling them that he hopes to stop by and that he hopes they will pro­vide for him to fin­ish his jour­ney in 1 Cor 16.5–6. Also see Romans 15.20–24, where Paul asks a church he has nev­er vis­it­ed before to fund him on his jour­ney to Spain.) In addi­tion, Paul explic­it­ly teach­es in Gala­tians 6.6 that Chris­tians are oblig­at­ed to pro­vide for the needs of min­is­ters.
  • Fourth, the apos­tle John encour­aged his friend to sup­port a band of mis­sion­ar­ies in 3 John 5–8.
  • Fifth, the whole Levit­i­cal sys­tem in the Old Tes­ta­ment (the Levites were min­is­ters) is pred­i­cat­ed on the finan­cial sup­port of min­is­ters by the rest of God’s peo­ple (Num­bers 18.21–24 is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ple). See Nehemi­ah 13.4–11 for how out­raged Nehemi­ah was that the Levites had to go earn wages in anoth­er fash­ion.

In sum­ma­ry, there is an extreme­ly strong Bib­li­cal case for mis­sion­ar­ies rais­ing finan­cial sup­port from the Body of Christ.

Which bring me to my point: we’re mis­sion­ar­ies and we need your part­ner­ship! If you’d like to sup­port our min­istry finan­cial­ly, here’s how.

Inci­den­tal­ly, the word that we pre­fer to use when dis­cussing finan­cial sup­port­ers is part­ner. That word was cho­sen very care­ful­ly. If you’re curi­ous, read about how mis­sions is real­ly a part­ner­ship

If you still have unan­swered ques­tions about sup­port­ing mis­sion­ar­ies, you might be inter­est­ed in our answers to com­mon ques­tions about sup­port­ing mis­sion­ar­ies.

15 thoughts on “The Biblical Model for Funding Missionary Work”

  1. Great site!

    Spelling error thought you’d want to know about:
    “min­sters” should be “min­is­ters”

    God Bless.

    Reply

  2. Greet­ings from Colom­bia, S.A. my broth­er!

    I hope that you are well…and assume that you are very busy as Christ­mas approach­es. I love this time of year, don’t you?

    Let me intro­duce myself. My name is Paul Robin­son, an AG mis­sion­ary in Colom­bia, South Amer­i­ca. Just recent­ly I was prepar­ing to give a work­shop regard­ing the Bib­li­cal Mod­el for fundrais­ing to some short-term mis­sion­ary teach­ers at a school here when two vet­er­an mis­sion­ary teach­ers (who were offend­ed by this) want­ed to school me in the cor­rect Bib­li­cal Mod­el.

    Any­way, I was­n’t going to enter­tain this because it would only be divi­sive — and there is no need for this. You see, these two teach­ers are from an orga­ni­za­tion that does­n’t raise sup­port like we (AG) and oth­ers raise sup­port, and appar­ent­ly they think that we “beg” for sup­port and this is not “Bib­li­cal.” Crazy, huh?

    So, in short, I just want­ed to thank you for the fine work you did regard­ing this.

    Have the best Christ­mas ever…and may He lead you into this New Year with a fresh joy, bold­ness, and perspective…carry on!

    A fel­low bold ser­vant,
    Paul Robin­son

    Reply

  3. I’m very glad I could serve. If you ever need to teach on this again, the finest book I know of is Scott Mor­ton’s “Fund­ing Your Min­istry Whether You’re Gift­ed or Not”. It includes much Bib­li­cal and prac­ti­cal mate­r­i­al, although some of the prac­ti­cal stuff is very Amer­i­can and might not trans­late well into var­i­ous for­eign con­texts.

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  4. I am a mis­sion­ary last 8 years and I am work­ing with out finan­cial sup­port. I have to raise my sup­port. I am work­ing in a mis­sion as an accoun­tant. I belong to that coun­try there church is not edu­cat­ed to sup­port the peo­ple. I am pray­ing for my finan­cial sup­port. Could you help me How can I raise my sup­port.

    Reply

  5. I agree with some of what you’ve said; but I won­der, what about Paul’s tent-mak­ing? Is that a 2nd Bib­li­cal mod­el of mis­sion­ary fund­ing?

    Reply

    1. Susan — yes. It is the back­up mod­el pre­sent­ed in the Bible, but the pre­ferred method always seems to be rely­ing on the gen­eros­i­ty of God’s peo­ple. I tried to address this in the third bul­let point. I can elab­o­rate if my com­ments were unclear.

      Reply

  6. I write to agree with you on the bib­li­cal mod­el for sup­port­ing mission(aries). How­ev­er, if you are pio­neer­ing a work, like we are doing in Cameroon, Africa,“tent-making” would be a sen­si­ble option with­out exter­nal fund­ing.

    Reply

  7. I am Williamson work­ing in mis­sions in Cen­tral and Lua­pu­la Provinces of Zam­bia, Africa.
    indeed Mis­sion­ar­ies need a lot of sup­port and encour­age­ments. Most chris­tians or local church­es do not sup­port mis­sions and mis­sion­ar­ies.
    I would like to be of help in teach­ing local church­es in Mis­sion and how they can be part­ners in mis­sions work.
    I want to learn from you.

    Reply

  9. Great arti­cle. Very enlight­ning. I believe it takes being in the shoes of a min­is­ter to be able to under­stand these chal­lenges from a min­is­ter’s per­spec­tive.

    Reply

  10. Hi, I see the last per­son com­ment­ed on the year 2012. I was research­ing on the Bib­li­cal way Jesus fund­ed His min­istry as well as Paul and I love your arti­cle. I just start­ed preach­ing to Schools in Kenya. I was think­ing of what to do to raise mon­ey because I have this lots of things to do for God , like fel­low­ships but no mon­ey. I am stu­dent to make it a bit fun­ny. I believe that God is able to pro­vide for the work­ing of my assign­ment as he has always done. I wish to encour­age all min­is­ters to seek God deep­er and believe that He will meet all needs. God is able to do above all that we can even imag­ine.
    God bless
    Thank you.

    Reply

  11. Although I agree that the mod­el is sound. I can not find where Paul kept pay­ing the staff, took out loans for pur­chas­ing land and hired help to main­tain the church­es he start­ed. Your per­son­al needs as a mis­sion­ary are often con­fused with min­istry needs. Do mis­sion­ar­ies real­ly need $30,000.00 a year to live on or are they includ­ing cash for con­struc­tion, build­ings for church­es to dupli­cate the mod­el back home. A mis­sion­ary who does not have a busi­ness plan on how to sup­port their work will be ter­ri­bly shocked after being on the field for more than five years.
    Bless­ings

    Jon Hut­ton

    Reply

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