October 18, 2006 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

I received the following note pertaining to the Way of Life church directory:

Hey preacher, I just want to say shame on the brethren who do not want to help missionaries by not listing their churches. This listing really helps us. Tell those so called preachers with their good spirits to get out of the ministry if they do not want to help. I am a former pastor of 20 years now going to the field. What is happening to us when we do not want to help?

REPLY FROM BROTHER CLOUD

Hello. Thank you for taking the time to comment on the church directory.

I am an independent Baptist foreign missionary and I believe in churches directly supporting missionaries, but I don't believe in a missionary support system whereby complete strangers routinely contact complete strangers seeking support. Under such conditions missionaries begin to be looked upon as common beggars regardless of how hard the pastors try not to do so.

If churches would tend to support fewer missionaries for significantly more amounts and become more personally involved with their missionaries, missionaries would not have to travel tens of thousands of miles and speak in hundreds of churches to get their support.

If churches support missionaries an average of $50 per month (and that is probably close to the average today; it was more like $25 per month in 1978 when I was first on deputation) and if a missionary needs $3000 per month in support, that means he must find 60 churches to support him and to do that he must ordinarily visit 200 or more. (If he needs $4000 or $5000, which is not uncommon for missions work in some parts of the world, the number of supporting churches increases to 80 and 100, with the need to visit 275 to 350 churches.) That means he must contact a lot of strangers, because few missionaries personally know 200 to 350 pastors. Think, too, of the vast amount of money that is spent traveling to that many churches over a period of 3 and more years (and multiply that times the number of IB missionaries)! That is a vast amount of money that could be spent on missionary work overseas instead of on the stateside deputation rat race.

If the average amount of support were raised just to $250, the previously mentioned missionary would only need to find 12 churches to support him and to do that would only require visiting 40 or so churches. It is not uncommon for a missionary to know that many pastors personally or least to know of that many through intimate contacts such as his own pastor. Thus he would not have to contact hundreds of complete strangers. In fact, the dynamics change dramatically at every level when the number is reduced this much (from needing 60 supporting churches to needing only 12). If a missionary only needs the support of 12 churches, he can oftentimes find that quickly by seeking the help of churches that know him well.

If the average support were $250 that would still mean that a significant number of churches would still be involved in the support of each missionary, so that their work would not be in danger of collapsing financially in the event that one or two churches stopped supporting them.

Candidly, I believe the typical IB missionary deputation and support system is strange and unreasonable and unnecessarily wasteful and has no biblical basis, and I truly wonder where it got started and why it is perpetuated.

May the Lord richly bless and use you.

In Christ, Bro. Cloud