A decade or so ago, I was sitting in a restaurant booth with some fellow staff members of the church I had previously been on staff.  In the booth with us, was one of our missionary families that had come back in on furlough.  Most missionaries, and missions sending organizations, have some sort of regular furlough schedule where the missionaries leave the area of their ministry and travel back to their home culture for a period of time.  Often times for more support raising and vacation time. 

 
As we sat munching on our burgers and fries, many of the staff were engaging the missionary family with questions about their work and life overseas.  You know, normal stuff. What is the food like? What is the culture like?  


Then one question was asked and I may have dropped the french fry from my mouth when I heard the answer.  The questions wasn’t an egregious or inflammatory question, it was a normal run of the mill question regarding the history of the churches partnership with this particular missionary.  
The question went something like “So tell us how your relationship with our church started?” The church was large enough that not all of the staff had a deep knowledge of who our supporting missionaries were at the time so this questions isn’t out of the norm to have been asked.

Now for the shocking part, their answer.


“Well, we just started getting checks in the mail.”  
Yep, true story.  I was just as shocked as Clarke Griswold seeing Cousin Eddy standing next to him on the front lawn of their house looking at the newly installed Christmas lights.


This is only one story and hopefully, a very atypical story of how relationships start between churches and missionaries.  Although, this does shine a light on the topic of needing a better way of partnering with missionaries.  Most missions teams I have interacted with, struggle to remember how or when their church began supporting their particular missionaries.  Oftentimes, that is the case because the missionaries that are supported by the church have been in partnership with the church much longer than the volunteers have been a part of the missions team.

Moving forward, what if there was a way for your church to put specific boundaries in place that would ensure your church would not have another “We just started getting checks.” moment?  


On my next post, we will begin exploring the detailed steps in exactly how your church can do that.  Remember, these are just short quick blog posts, not the detailed road map as to how your church needs to go about defining your partnership process.  For that, I would love to help guide and ask the questions that your church or missions team needs in order to make that happen in a one on one basis. 

If you or your church are ready to take that next step, click on the Let’s Connect button at the top of the page and fill out the communication box that comes up.