Glen Davis

I some­times con­cep­tu­al­ize mis­sions as a stool sup­port­ed by three legs: pro­claimers, providers, and pray-ers (or for a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent set of labels we could use inter­ces­sion, invest­ment, and involve­ment). With­out any one of these legs, mis­sions sim­ply can­not be sus­tained.

Which leads into my point… you may have noticed that we pre­fer the term ‘part­ner’ to ‘donor’ in our con­ver­sa­tions and in our writ­ing. This pref­er­ence emerged from a study of how min­istry was fund­ed in the Bible. A crys­tal-clear con­vic­tion emerged: God con­sid­ers those who con­tribute finan­cial­ly to min­istry to have a share in that min­istry! Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, 3 John 8:

There­fore we ought to sup­port such peo­ple, so that we may become co-work­ers with the truth.

Echo­ing the same theme, Paul says the Philip­pi­ans are shar­ing in the gospel (Philip­pi­ans 1.5).

This is why we talk about build­ing a sup­port team rather than rais­ing funds. The empha­sis is on the rela­tion­ships and not on the mon­ey.

Even more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, how­ev­er, it forces us to remem­ber that those who decide to aid us finan­cial­ly are, in actu­al­i­ty, join­ing us in our min­istry: they become co-work­ers with us.

How so? Think of it this way: your mon­ey is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of your life: it is what you get in exchange for time at work. By giv­ing of that, it is as though you were tak­ing time and serv­ing on the mis­sion field!

It’s kind of amaz­ing when you think about it. We all have a part to play in the King­dom of God. Some of us work in office build­ings, some of us work in homes, and some of us work in church­es, but we all work togeth­er. All are nec­es­sary for God’s work to go for­ward.

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.

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.

DISCLAIMER: this infor­ma­tion is on our web­site because some peo­ple actu­al­ly come here look­ing for it. Oth­er peo­ple get hor­ri­bly offend­ed at the men­tion of mon­ey and dona­tions online. If you’re not of the for­mer, chill. Just fil­ter out this mes­sage and look at some of the more enter­tain­ing stuff on this site.

When they left to tell oth­ers about the Lord, they decid­ed not to accept help from any­one who was­n’t a fol­low­er. We must sup­port peo­ple like them, so that we can take part in what they are doing to spread the truth. 3 John 7–8, CEV

We’d love to have you join our part­ner­ship team! If you any ques­tions about why we raise funds this way, check out our answers to com­mon ques­tions about sup­port-rais­ing and our essay on the Bib­li­cal basis for finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing mis­sion­ar­ies.

1) jun­gle cubs down­load Decide on the amount you would like to give ($50, $75 or $100 a month is typ­i­cal) and whether you plan to give month­ly, year­ly, or at some oth­er
rate. If you’re inter­est­ed in mak­ing a spe­cial gift, you can do that as well!

2) Print and fill out this form (small PDF, around 100k).

3) Give online or make a check out to the Gen­er­al Coun­cil of the Assem­blies of God, and write Account #2650299 in the memo field of your check. If you’d like, you can eas­i­ly set up your pledge as a month­ly cred­it card trans­ac­tion (the form is a lit­tle con­fus­ing: leave any fields you don’t under­stand blank except ledger–write 2650299 in that col­umn).

4) Mail your check to

Chi Alpha Account #2650299 1445 N Boonville Ave Spring­field, MO 65802

That account num­ber is very impor­tant! With­out it, it will be much hard­er
for them to process your infor­ma­tion. Thank you very much, and please
don’t for­get to pray for us!