Missionary Support: Inviting and Partnering with Missionaries

The worst question I've heard of on a missionary questionnaire is, "If you lived in our area, would you attend this church?"

>>would you attend this church?<<

Having served on missions committees before, I understand the intent behind that question, even if it comes off as awkward and not easy to answer when formulated that way. We always asked missionaries seeking support if they would be able to agree with our doctrinal statement.

I understand that there are lots of reasons that churches are chosen and attended, particularly if there is more than one good church in the area. However, the intent behind that question would normally be to find out if the missionary seeking support is in substantial agreement with the church’s beliefs and mission. We asked the question we did, because we wanted to spend our limited support money wisely, and we also believed that any missionary seeking support should not be doing so from a church it would not agree with doctrinally. From our point of view, it would be better for the missionary to be upfront with us during the deputation process than to suffer a loss of support later when we realize that we could not in good conscience agree to continue to support them in the direction that they were going. That would be doubly true if they hid their true beliefs from us beforehand.

Whenever a missionary presented to us, either on a weekend or during a missions conference, we were mindful of how stressful and tiring those times were for the missionaries, particularly when the whole family was in attendance, and we went out of our way to avoid “gotcha” questions and situations. Still, we had to do our due diligence, and finding out if a missionary could be comfortable attending our church (belief-wise) is part of that.

This missionary has churches in the same area that are 1) KJVO and women don't wear pants, 2) NKJV and women do wear pants, 3) traditional in worship, 4) contemporary in worship, 5) Calvinistic-leaning, 6) anti-Calvinism. He was in sufficient doctrinal agreement with all the churches to do the missionary work God called Him to do, but was not in enough agreement to say to all of them, "If I lived here, I'd attend this church."

>>He was in sufficient doctrinal agreement with all the churches to do the missionary work God called Him to do, but was not in enough agreement to say to all of them, “If I lived here, I’d attend this church.”<<

I generally agree with what you are saying, which is why we asked missionaries about doctrine, rather than “would you attend our church?”.

One of your issues was KJVO. When I first joined my previous church’s missions committee, the church already had missionaries who were KJVO. I wasn’t interested in removing them from support, though their position did lead to some interesting and somewhat awkward conversations when they were home on deputation. At that time, we did still mostly use the KJV from the pulpit, but it was not at all exclusive. However, over the years I’ve been a Christian, I’ve come to the conclusion that that issue is doctrinal enough to warrant not partnering together with men or ministries that hold opposite positions on that issue. If I were on the missions committee at my current church, I’d recommend against supporting new KJVO missionaries (and I’m KJVP myself, while my church, like many or most non-KJVO churches today, uses ESV or CSB).

As to worship styles, while I don’t consider that an issue on par with doctrine, many do, as you can see by the discussions here on SI regarding music. While I attend a church with very traditional worship, when considering a missionary, I would want to know how they would work in their chosen field country rather than what they would do in the U.S. In many Western countries, of course, there is still a noticeable divide between traditional and contemporary, but in many countries, having seen videos of how churches worship there, I’d have a hard time trying to line up the worship in that country with either a traditional or contemporary approach here. If I believed, after talking with the missionary, that they will fit in properly in their new country, and take the worship of God seriously, I’d be much less interested in asking them about traditional/contemporary worship styles.

All that to say — churches must be selective in the missionaries they support, and they have to have ways to make that determination, while missionaries generally want to appeal to the widest selection of churches that they believe they could in good conscience partner with. I’m not saying that’s dishonest at all, but it does mean that their goals and the goals of the church are not always the same, even when the overriding goal of both is the spread of the Gospel in the world. I would agree that churches should be more careful in how they approach this.