Creating a Missions Decision Making Funnel

As we explore what an Ideal partnership looks like for your church, there is a fundamental first step that I do not want us to miss.  When we are in a position where we are able to make choices like whether to support a missionary or not, we must pause and acknowledge our role and its significance.  Over 7 Billion people call this planet home and close to 3 Billion still have never heard the name of Jesus or have the Scriptures in their language.  That 3 Billion are considered Unreached or Unengaged.

As a church, or individual, we play a significant role in advancing the Gospel. As a Church and Missions Team, you have potential to make deep impact in advancing the Gospel in unreached countries and areas. See Team Expansion’s website for more information on Unreached People Groups.

Now that we have began to look and dream about what it would be like to boost our partnerships with missionaries from merely financial support, we must first begin by asking God to oversee all of this process.  If our first step isn’t beginning with a posture of prayer and acknowledgment that God is in control, we will spin our wheels and not make the impact we so desperately want to make on the world. 

At the close of Matthew 9, Jesus is walking from town to town teaching and healing as He goes. He saw the “harassed and helpless” and had compassion on them. Turning, he spoke a quick lesson to His disciples to, as read in the NIV, “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.” Jesus used the most extreme version of the words “Ask” and “Send Out”. Our English translation fails at ensuring we know the magnitude in which we are to pray to God that He will send out workers.  

When you look at our current landscape and realize that our world has the Unreached population as stated earlier, we must ask and plead God to go before any of our efforts in advancing the Gospel.  One church alone may never be able to reach that many individuals in a single lifetime, however, a large group of committed, focused, prayed up churches and individuals can! 

All of this information causes a person to have a sense of urgency in advancing the Gospel.  We should walk away with a burden and an aching feeling in our midsection that forces us to be a part of something greater than ourselves, being a part of the solution.  As a church, we can make strides forward in creating a more streamlined way of finding and supporting missionaries.

One way of doing that is to create a decision making funnel for your church or missions team.  Just like any funnel, something goes into the large opening at the top and is directed toward the smaller opening.  As the substance is added into the funnel, it is collected together, and moved toward the destination that the one holding the funnel dictates. 

A decision making funnel for a missions team allows the team to take every request for support from the missionaries that contact them, drop them in the top of the funnel and ideally out comes the missionaries that are a perfect match for your church and your support. 

The funnel is created by having specific conversations that lead to decisions that will allow your team to become more efficient and have a greater impact in your local community and the world.  This funnel is created by having Core Convictions, Core Focuses, Financial Support Metrics, and a Missions Handbook. 

All of these pieces of the Decision Making Funnel are clear written documents that have been created out of compassion and hours of prayer asking God for the guidance in supporting His children.

Creating something like a Decision Making Funnel will take time. It will not come about in one or two team meetings. My dad would always tell me the saying “If it is worth doing, it is worth doing well.” It is interesting to note that the first recorded version of this saying was from a father speaking to his son. If we are called to be a part of sending harvest workers into the harvest fields, we must take our responsibility and stewardship of God’s children going into the fields seriously. We must Do Missions Better!

Coming up next in this series of posts, we will start with learning about each of the elements that make up a Missions Decision Making funnel.  I want to break down each piece so that you have an understanding and what the shell of building this for your church could look like.