Updated June 27, 2005 (first published in O Timothy magazine April 1994) (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) -

The American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC), at its annual meeting in October 1993, passed a resolution on missions which caught my eye. I am going to take the liberty to reword it slightly to give a clearer expression to the phrasing. Following is an excerpt for this resolution:

“The indigenous church policy has been diminishing over recent years. The self-governing, self- propagating principle is no longer a policy and practice, but has degenerated to a mere objective. We believe the New Testament teaches that from the beginning a mission agency should cause the nationals to provide their own expenses, build their own buildings, and propagate the Gospel themselves. Some agencies are involved in massive give-away programs.”

A recent article in Christianity Today (a magazine we do not recommend) focused on this same problem. Consider an excerpt:

“’Thank You for Not Coming’ read the headline in a full-page ad in Christianity Today. It was a promotional piece urging us to send money, not missionaries, to foreign countries. The rationale was clear: ‘In most cases, sending just a portion of our surplus--$50, $100 each month--will provide support for one full-time national worker.’ … More than 140 missions organizations are now built on the premise of gathering and sending money, not people. Partners International, the largest of the money-gathering agencies, currently supports 3,300 full-time workers in over 50 countries.

“[C]hurches and church leaders that secure a financial pipeline to the United States soon become mired in an ecclesiastical welfare state, because the send-money approach, rather than strengthening the souls of national churches, keeps congregations from becoming self-governing and self-supporting. The recipients often suffer in the following ways:

“Believers learn to depend neither on God nor on themselves. Because they have no need to give sacrificially of their own resources (however meager they may be), they never gain a sense of ownership. This postpones the day of true indigenization.

“Leaders become preoccupied with raising North American funds. On a trip I took to India, I was overwhelmed by the many church leaders who ‘worked’ me for a dollar connection. Such a ministry orientation inevitably weakens faith, corrupts pure motives, and compromises leadership integrity. Also, leaders who can’t get connected to the pipeline become demoralized.

“Believers sue believers. In India, I was astounded to find few churches or ministries that WEREN’T in the courts over property purchased using American dollars.

“An independent, higher class of Christian workers arises whose stylish lifestyles are envied by ‘unconnected’ believers. It is little surprise that motivation for ‘spiritual growth’ soon is driven by something less than a hunger after righteousness.

“Recipients become ungrateful. ‘Sure, you gave us something, but look how much money you still have!’ Or, ‘It’s not yours anyway; you owe it to us.’ When I was president at Columbia International University, I knew something was bothering some of the African pastors studying with us. We discovered it was money. Though none of them could have been there without the great generosity of sponsoring mission agencies and the school, several recounted how they were owed so much more” (Robertson McQuilkin, “Stop Sending Money!” Christianity Today, March 1, 1999, pp. 57-58).

We have long been aware of this problem, and it is serious and widespread, not only in mission board work but in independent work as well. It is not uncommon for missionaries to support national preachers perpetually. They support them during their Bible training, providing food and lodging and using them as evangelists during their training years. Then they hire them as pastors and evangelists after they are trained. These national preachers remain dependent for support year after year upon the missionary and his supporting churches in another part of the world. The missionary also raises the money from North American churches to build church houses in other lands. The same method is followed by nationals who spend a lot of time in North America raising funds for their “poor brethren” back home.

Many of them are professional money raisers. I have met dozens of them. I remember talking to an Indian national who was doing this several years ago. We were at a missionary conference and he had shown slides of the dozens of churches he and “his men” had started. The size of the work was impressive, but the evangelists and pastors were mostly, if not entirely, on his payroll. I asked him privately how long these national churches had been dependent on North American funds. He said many years. I asked why the churches didn’t support their own work. His reply was the same tired old story. “The people are too poor to support their own works.”

“I WANT A JOB”

During our fourteen years of missionary work, we have frequently been approached by men who were looking for a “job” as a preacher. They were accustomed to being hired by the parachurch ministries and by the denominational ministries--even by independent Baptist missionaries--and they think we might give them a better deal. I have always tried to explain to these men that the ministry is not a job; it is a calling. A God-called preacher will preach and serve God whether he is paid for it or not! I know the realities of money. I know it takes money to live in this world. I know very well that the Bible says the workman is worthy of his hire, but the Bible emphasizes that the preacher’s MOTIVE must not be for money. “... not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind” (1 Pet. 5:2). The man who is merely seeking a JOB as a preacher is not a God-called preacher--whether he is Indian, American, African, or Romanian.

WELFARE MISSIONS PRODUCES WEAK CHURCHES

It is not surprising that the national churches established upon this weak and unscriptural missionary welfare principle never seem to become fully self-supporting. Once they learn to put the hand out in a pitiful welfare manner, they become a bottomless pit for the absorption of foreign funds. I have received countless letters from men in Africa and Asia requesting every sort of thing. They ask for literature, for Bibles, for cassette players, for videos, for clothes, for money. It is usually the same story. “I love your ministry; I am a poor helpless person; send me stuff.” I don’t mind people who ask for help, and I don’t mind helping people. I have given away many books and dollars through the years. I have given away computers and bicycles and motorcycles and musical instruments. I don’t mind sincere people asking for help. What I do mind is poor mouthing and “Christian crooks.” I mind it when people write to me and claim they are too poor to pay anything and DON’T EVEN OFFER TO HELP AS MUCH AS THEY CAN. I mind it when people EXPECT, even DEMAND that someone else to pay their way in life. Even a poor person can offer to pay something or to exchange his services or to pay in several small sums, etc. A sincere Christian will do this. He will not poor mouth. I also mind it when “Christian crooks” try to manipulate me. One man in Africa wrote and said he had been blessed through my books and had started a “David Cloud church.” Another wrote and said he had been convicted by my books and had withdrawn his congregation from a cult in which he was a leader, and now he needed my help to start an “O Timothy church.” (That is the name of my monthly magazine.) I assume I was supposed to be so impressed that I would start funding these fellows. I didn’t. I was only impressed by their deceptive cleverness!

“WE ARE TOO POOR TO SUPPORT THE WORK”

The excuse for welfare missions is always the poverty of the national people, whether they be East Europeans or Asians or Africans or Mexicans or Central and South Americans. The people supposedly are too poor and downtrodden to be expected to support their own churches.

This simply is not true. Any people in any part of the world can support a church on their own wage scale. They might not be able to build an American-style church building, but they don’t need an American-style church building! If they live in grass huts, they need a grass hut church house. If they live in adobe dwellings, that is the kind of church house they need. If the average wage of the congregation is $30 a month, their pastor can be supported for something like that same pay scale, and that is what he should live on if he is their pastor. It only takes 10 tithing families who make $30 a month to support a pastor on that same fiscal level. Another 10 families in that same congregation can support a missionary full-time to their own people on that same wage scale. This Bible principle works regardless of the income level of the people involved. It works, because it is God’s way.

By the way, the average monthly wage figures often do not take into consideration such things as farms and gardens. For example, in the 1990s I made a preaching trip to Slovakia. While it is true that the average wage is very small, it is also true that practically every family grows a wealth of food and flowers on every inch of ground available. There is a large underground economy. The churches there can give the pastors and evangelists all sorts of foodstuffs in addition to the tithes of the people’s incomes. The same is true in many poor countries.

Someone might protest, “This is easy for you to say, because you don’t know what it is like to work among poor people.” The fact is that we have lived and worked for 14 years in South Asia, in one of the ten poorest nations in the world. By the grace of God, we pioneered fundamental Baptist missionary work in that land, and at the end of our first 10 years there we had the joy of leaving a church behind that was truly self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. About three years after we left, the people sacrificed and built their own building without our help. Writing of the people’s sacrifice at that time, the pastor said: “They gave their golden ornaments, motorcyles, money. Children gave their bicycles and their private money.” The pastor sold his own motorcycle and put the money into the building. This congregation of “poor people” supports its own pastor and other preachers and have started several other churches, all with their own tithes and offerings.

Those who want to argue with me about these principles will need to demonstrate to me that they have produced truly self-supporting-self-governing, self-propagating churches in a poor part of the world. If they are still supporting the work with foreign funds, they cannot demonstrate that. Until those foreign funds are removed, it is impossible to know the character of that work. It might appear to be very prosperous, biblically sound, and spiritually sincere; but the proof will be evident only when the foreign money is removed.

IF THE WORK IS OF GOD, HE WILL SUPPLY

Christians don’t ever need to poor mouth! We are children of the King of kings and Lord of lords, and though we don’t yet enjoy full possession of our inheritance, we should never talk like the work of God is about to go out of business or that we are poor and underprovisioned. The apostles never talked like that. Paul certain did not. The Psalmist did not, either.

“I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Psalm 37:25).

Did the Lord Jesus Christ not say, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”?

God has promised to meet our needs, and when we poor mouth (I have been guilty of it at times, and have just as many times confessed it as sin) we are slandering God and denying His promises. The following sayings were produced by servants of the Lord who have observed His faithfulness:

“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s provision.”

“Where God leads, God supplies.”

“What God orders He will pay for.”

One of the important lessons in serving the Lord is the lesson of living by faith; and one’s faith must be in God. And the lessons of faith do not come easily; faith is always tested.

Ever since God saved and called me, I have set out to do His will, and I have never sat back and waited until someone financed me. I have sought the help of God’s people, but I have not felt dependent upon such help. I am dependent on God and one way or the other, He will provide if it truly is His work. When we knew that the Lord wanted us to go to South Asia, we began immediately to do what was necessary to get there quickly. We gave up our rental place and literally started driving up the highway looking for meetings. We were in Florida at the time, and I determined to return to Tennessee where we knew more pastors. We left my hometown in Lakeland, Florida, without enough money even to drive to our first destination, which was Chattanooga. It was Wednesday. We stopped that afternoon at a little church several miles up the road and met a pastor who had used my study on rock music (which was the first book I had printed). He did not know that I was coming until I drove up to his doorstep, but he invited me to preach that night, and the little love offering from that service got us to Chattanooga! Once there, we started getting meetings. Just as things were looking good, the car almost burned up! I came out of a hardware store in Tracy City, Tennessee, and smoke was billowing out from under the hood of our car. All of the wiring had burned up from the battery to the dashboard! We had no money to fix it and no insurance that would cover it. That was a Saturday. I borrowed a car from a friend to get to my scheduled meeting the next morning and I told the church what had happened. A man stood up in the back of the congregation and announced that he could fix the problem because he had worked for years installing wiring systems in that type of car. The next day he and another man went to a junkyard, removed the wiring from a junk car and re-installed it in our car that same day. We were back on the road within three days. Where God leads, He supplies.

Seven months later we were starting our work in South Asia! One mission board had counseled me that I needed to wait and complete a master’s degree and raise thus and thus amount of money (to help support them as well as our work!), but we were convinced the Lord wanted us to get to South Asia quickly. As it turned out, we only had 10 years there before a change in visa laws forced us to leave. If we had waited another four or five years we would not have had enough time to establish a strong church and a literature ministry in that land. I am thankful for Maranatha Baptist Missions in Natchez, Mississippi (the late James Crumpton and Mel Rutter). They accepted us and did not try to interpose a body of manmade regulations upon us. They also taught us the indigenous principle of missionary work and would not allow missionaries to raise money to build church buildings. Eventually we left Maranatha to work directly out of our home church, but I am thankful for what they taught me in that area.

Admittedly, we did not have a lot of money those first few years. I could not even afford a bicycle the first year or so. We did not ship any household goods whatsoever from the States. We did not have a refrigerator for several years. We did not have heat in our house. For the first few years, we had only a little single-burner kerosene stove to cook on, and no oven. We didn’t own an automobile during all of our years there. We couldn’t afford one, but it really didn’t matter. We got along with public transportation and the second-hand motorcycle I eventually purchased. Let me emphasize, though, that we STILL lived better than most of the people we were witnessing to.

Every time I have made a major step of faith in the ministry, I have always lacked the funds to do what I felt the Lord was leading me to do. For example, when I felt the Lord leading me to start publishing a monthly magazine for preachers in the early 1980s, I did not wait until I had raised a budget for that ministry. I began doing what I believed the Lord was leading me to do, and I trusted Him to supply for it month by month, AND HE HAS DONE SO FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS WITH NO ADVERTISING INCOME!

I’m not trying to use myself as the example of how to do great missionary work. I made many mistakes, and I have failed in many ways. The success of my missionary work is more attributable to the godly people who have helped me than to anything I have done. I am simply saying that our dependency must be in God, not man, and if God calls a man, he had better be about God’s business one way or the other and not sitting around waiting for someone to “properly” fund him. I am convinced that the man that sits around waiting to be hired or funded by someone else is not a God-called man.

When I began to have a burden to write and distribute little testimonies and sermons the first few months after my conversion in 1973, I did not have the “proper resources.” I did not have any money for printing, nor did I have any printing skills, but I didn’t sit back and wait for money. I went ahead and wrote some reports on rock music and other subjects; then I took what I did have, a typewriter, and I spent many hours a week typing out my reports using carbon copies. I distributed these to people in my hometown. At the same time I was praying for the Lord to open a way for me to have them printed. About a month later I got a job working as an apprentice offset printer, and soon the boss let me use the equipment on my lunch breaks to print my booklets. And that is how Way of Life Literature started.

God asked Moses what he had in his hand. It was only a stick, but with God behind it, it was enough! When Christ wanted to feed the multitude, He asked the disciples what they had, and though it was only a few loaves and fishes, it was enough!

These are lessons that every God-called preacher must learn for himself, but the unwise use of missionary funds can actually hinder the process.

WHAT ARE SOME GUIDELINES?

The following are some simple guidelines for promoting indigenous missionary work.

TEACH THE CHURCH MEMBERS TO GIVE AND TO SUPPORT THEIR OWN WORK, AND DO NOT USE FOREIGN FUNDS IN ANY MANNER THAT WOULD HINDER THEIR GIVING OR DETRACT FROM THE WORK BECOMING SELF-SUPPORTING. I have already described earlier the self-supporting church we started in South Asia. That did not happen by accident. We taught the people to give tithes and offerings to God. We taught them that it was their responsibility before God to support His work. We showed them God’s promises to bless those who give. We guarded against our own natural impulses to support that work financially in ways that might weaken it. We did not raise foreign missions money for property or buildings. We weighed each decision in light of what would best help the church become self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. For example, the church paid its own rent out of its tithes and offerings while we were there, almost from the beginning of its existence. Even while we were building the church up from scratch, it was supporting the man who eventually was ordained as its pastor. At first, of course, he was only paid a part-time wage, but this gradually increased. His salary was never paid by us or by North American churches. When we left, the church simply continued doing what it had been doing all along. Nothing changed.

Poor people can be taught to give. They need to give and to support their own work, first, because that is God’s plan, and secondly, because God blesses them when they give.

“Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again” (Luke 6:38).

“But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6).

“Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine” (Prov. 3:9-10).

People need to be taught to look to God rather than to America or England or to some other wealthy nation. It is simpler and easier and quicker to give a man a fish than to teach him how to fish, but the one who has been taught to catch his own fish will not become perpetually dependent upon an outside benefactor.

A missionary has to be extremely cautious about how he uses money. It is similar to the responsibility we have with our children. It is a natural impulse of loving parents to want to give their children things, but it is often better not to give them something. They have to learn to make their own way in life before God, or they will never be mature. They have to be allowed to learn the hard lessons of life, even those very difficult but very important lessons of HARD WORK and of DOING WITHOUT EVERYTHING ONE WANTS and of GETTING ONESELF OUT OF TROUBLE! It is extremely difficult for parents to have to stand by and observe their children learning these lessons. It is much easier, humanly speaking, to intervene and to give them too much, help them too much, make too many decisions for them.

Exactly the same principle operates in church planting. The “parent” missionary must severely guard against his natural tendency of supporting everything and doing everything himself.

When I had been in South Asia for about three years, I held a Bible conference and invited some men up from a neighboring country. They wrote to explain that they were too poor to pay their own way, and requested that I send them travel money. I wrote back and said they should pray to God and get Him to provide their needs. The result was they came to the conference at their own expense and even gave me, the “rich American,” a love offering! It could have paid their way, but it was better for them to learn to trust God for their needs and to stop poor mouthing.

DON’T HIRE PASTORS AND EVANGELISTS. Those who want to avoid building welfare churches will avoid hiring pastors and evangelists. It is a great temptation to do so, because it appears to be a way to hurry the work along; but in the end it becomes a great hindrance to making the churches self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. As long as foreign money is involved, the missionary will not fully know the heart of the men he is supporting. Only when the money is cut off will this become evident. Do they change their doctrine in order to get support from some other group? Do they quit the ministry when there is no easy money? These decisions will only be evident when the missionary money stops flowing. Human nature is very clever, and it can pretend to be many things to further its own self-interest. Men in poor places like India and parts of Africa will gladly put on the garb of a fundamentalist or a Baptist or a “King James man” or whatever they need to be in order to be hired. Consider the testimony cited earlier of an American Bible college president who visited India: “On a trip I took to India, I was overwhelmed by the many church leaders who ‘worked’ me for a dollar connection.” I have had the same experience during my years in that part of the world. Missionaries are wise if the don’t hire national preachers. Instead they work hard to build a church and as God adds to it, they teach the new Christians to give tithes and offerings to support their own work from the very beginning. As the tithes and offerings of this growing congregation increase, the church can gradually assume the support of its own preachers.

A missionary work done on this basis will probably not proceed as quickly as it would if the missionary hires a bunch of national Bible school students and national preachers, but it will produce more sincere fruit in the long term.

DON’T BUILD BUILDINGS. Those who want to avoid building welfare churches will especially avoid financing buildings for the churches. A church that is not capable of building its own building has one of two problems: (1) It is not yet established enough to have its own building, or (2) The church members are welfare types who do not have the spiritual authenticity to sacrifice and support for their own ministry. If a missionary builds the church’s building, the people will never consider it their own. They will not learn to sacrifice. They will not learn to trust God for miracles. They will perpetually be on the dole.

I don’t believe it is wrong, necessarily, for other churches to give a helping hand in completing a building that believers have started and mostly finished by themselves. Churches help other churches in North America at times, and I believe they should. It is a natural expression of Christian love. There are always great dangers in these areas, though, particularly when dealing with very poor parts of the world. Any such decision must be made with great caution. Just as the welfare state produces a permanent dependent class of people, welfare missions produces weak, dependent churches.

MARK IT DOWN; A CHURCH THAT DOES NOT SACRIFICE TO SUPPORT ITS OWN PASTORS AND TO BUILD ITS OWN BUILDINGS WILL NOT APPRECIATE NOR FIGHT IN DEFENSE OF THAT WORK WHEN THE MONEY STOPS FLOWING.

PRINCIPLES, NOT LAWS

Let me close by stressing that these are very difficult areas of decision. I am convinced that guidelines in the area of missions giving and inter-church assistance should not be LAWS which we lay down, but must be governed by WISE PRINCIPLES derived from the Word of God and mature Christian experience, and separately applied case by case as the Holy Spirit leads. The only divine laws the churches have are those expressly given in the Word of God.

We also are reminded that each church is autonomous before God under its One Head, Jesus Christ, and all of these decisions must be made before Him and are answerable to Him alone.

In writing this article, my intention is not to be a critic, but to be a helper by encouraging missionaries to be wise in the use of foreign funds. My earnest desire is not to hinder God’s work but to further it.