Missions Policies Matter: A Key to Missionary Effectiveness
STATEMENT
Sending churches should have robust policies for partnerships with missionaries on the field, guided by the following principles:
1. Known to and affirmed by the congregation
2. Strategic placement
3. Faithful ministry
4. Fruitful ministry
5. Intentional end of service
Are Policies Necessary?
My friend, the newly installed pastor of a dying downtown church, faced such withering problems he fretted that he was destined to go down with the ship. Yet my determined friend committed to stay; he preached the gospel, prayed fervently, and loved the (elderly) congregation with all he had. By God’s grace, the congregation turned from what seemed to be a shipwreck into the vibrant, healthy church it is today.
Early in this church revitalization the pastor pressed the church leaders about the missionaries supported by the church. This raised some uncomfortable questions. Who were these people? Did anybody from the church visit them on the field? Why were we supporting them? What are they doing? Do they agree with the aims our church set in missions? Come to think of it, what are our aims in missions? Nobody seemed to know. The fact that the missionaries wanted to be on the field and were willing to go seemed like good enough reasons to keep supporting them.
We can be sympathetic with these churches. They want to honor the sacrifices missionaries are willing to make. They don’t want to quench a zeal for the nations by asking difficult questions. After all, isn’t there a mission agency overseeing things?
Unfortunately, this posture has led churches to continue supporting missionaries regardless of gospel impact, mission alignment, or even meaningful relationships. They support these missionaries simply because they historically have.
In many cases, a church will send a missionary because the missionary has a relationship with a pastor or church member. But in a transient world these relational connections can be lost. Pastors take new jobs, members move, and meaningful relationships are lost, too.
At other times, churches support missionaries who are no longer serving in a place the church would see as strategic or needed.
Yes, mission agencies can be helpful in missionary partnerships, but agencies do not relieve a church of its stewardship responsibility. This responsibility includes making wise and sometimes hard decisions about existing partnerships.
What’s needed is straightforward and robust policies that govern ongoing partnerships between the church and missionaries.
A church that spends time developing missions policies will direct new missionaries to strategic places aligned with the church’s priorities. Once on the field, the missionary will clearly understand what is required for an ongoing relationship with the church. When the day comes for the missionary to return from the field, the church will have laid out a clear pathway for helping the missionary’s end of service.
The following five areas should shape a church’s policies for a missionary.
1. Known and Affirmed by the Congregation
The first order is to establish clear “partnership policies” that ensure the missionary remains known to the congregation and allows a congregation to affirm the missionary’s ongoing work.
This is best accomplished in four ways.
Involvement in the Church
The best way for a congregation to know a future missionary is for that person to be a part of the church staff or internship. If a church is unwilling to put a person on their church staff, the likelihood is that they should not go to the mission field. If this strategy is impractical (say the church is too small) look for other ways to involve a missionary candidate in the life of your church.
Reporting
Policies should ensure that missionary partnerships are regularly assessed. Regular missionary prayer letters are helpful. Annual reports do not burden the missionary but can actually be a blessing to the missionary’s ministry as the missionary takes time to reflect on what God has done over the year. Zoom calls with church members and committees can be more helpful for relationship building.
Visits to the Field
It can be hugely encouraging for missionaries to receive visits from sending church leaders or members. Short-term trips and visits can build strong relational bonds, but should aim at serving the missionary and building relationships rather than the missionary serving the partner church’s discipleship goals. Visits to the field are the most valuable way to build and maintain trust and to assess the missionary’s work.
Stateside Visits by the Missionary
Much of this depends on the support a church offers its missionaries, but if your church is a key financial partner or sending church, it would not be unreasonable to expect the missionary to visit stateside every other year with a focus on rest and strengthening relationships.
2. Strategic Placement
Policies for strategic areas of missionary work can also help a church steward missionary resources. No church can have missionaries everywhere doing everything. Focusing on strategic places for missionary work can ensure churches have the right relationships with missionaries they support even before they leave for the field.
A church would do well to think through questions like:
- Is the missionary placement strategic for the unreached or the unengaged?
- Will the missionary merely be duplicating work already done by others in a specific locale?
- How will this placement help strengthen or plant local churches?
Every church should think through places in the world that have the greatest need for gospel proclamation. Having a strategic placement policy helps you decide where the majority of support should go and if an existing missionary is in line with the desires of your church.
3. Faithful Ministry
Personal Fidelity
Missionaries are often given hero status in the church. We want to recognize and honor men and women whose lives reflect Christlike sacrifice and love, but we also must be careful not to assume all missionaries deserve this kind of honor. Unfortunately, it’s far too common to see missionaries who are no longer faithful to their gospel ministry yet remain among the nations. Sometimes, it is simply a matter of burnout. They have lost their gospel zeal. Sometimes, missionaries fall into patterns of sin that compromise their witness. In other, more tragic times, missionaries walk away from the faith because, like Demas, they loved the world (2 Timothy 4:10).
It might seem strange that these missionaries, especially the ones who have deconstructed, remain on the field. There are many reasons they do so. Some will stay because they don’t want to disrupt their children’s school. Many do not have the education or skills that translate into an attractive resumé and stay because they don’t know how they will provide for themselves financially if they leave the field. There is sympathy to be given; many people have sacrificed careers and opportunities for mission work. Yet, God calls each of us to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to us (Matthew 25:14-30). Continuing to give money and invest other resources into people who are not pressing on in ministry is not good stewardship.
Biblical Fidelity
Churches should never abdicate their responsibility to hold missionaries to biblical fidelity.
So, for example, is the missionary using strategies that build a work of wood, hay, or straw that, in the end, goes up in smoke and proves worthless, or is it a work of pure gold that will last (1 Corinthians 3:10-15)?
One might think that good initial vetting of missionaries would prevent supporting unfaithful ministries and strategies, but that isn’t always true. Churches must guard the Great Commission by questioning unbiblical strategies and encouraging missionaries to remain faithful to gospel-centered mission work, especially those tempted to depart from good theological methods for more anthropologically-driven ones.
Like good practitioners in any field, missionaries are keen to continue learning and trying new things. But often, the new shiny strategies that seem to be bearing the most fruit are the ones that compromise on biblical doctrine and practice. Numbers cannot trump faithfulness to Scripture, and a church is responsible for helping their missionaries remain biblically faithful. Too often, churches allow missionaries to do things a church would never do in its local context.
Partnerships with good mission agencies can help churches assess the faithfulness of missionaries but can never be a replacement for their relationship and assessment with a local church. Sadly, many mission agencies do not carefully define which strategies and methods they allow their missionaries to implement. Further, there are times when mission agencies have been complicit in leaving people on the mission field beyond their time. Therefore, churches need strong policies that help define what is and is not faithful ministry and how faithfulness can be assessed.
4. Fruitful Ministry
A missionary family had spent years in the Middle East attempting to find their ministry. They moved between countries. They attempted to engage different people groups. They tried developing new strategies. They threw lots of things at the wall, but nothing stuck. Their overseas ministry showed little direction and less fruit. Fellow missionaries questioned the family’s helpfulness to the cause and some were concerned about their presence. Yet, they stayed because churches continued to support them.
Missionaries occasionally change location and ministry focus, but a church should not feel required to transition with them. One missionary couple left an unreached location in Asia during Covid to settle into a European city where they hoped to connect with expats Asians. The cost of living increased significantly, and access to the people they hoped to minister among became more difficult. Further, they moved to a city with many healthy churches and ministry resources. The consequence of a change like this is much easier to assess when policies governing such things are already clearly defined.
Related to faithfulness is fruitfulness. The reality is that some people are gifted for international ministry, and some are not. Some people are zealous for international ministry, and some are not. Sometimes, we find someone who is zealous for international ministry but not gifted. Such a person probably isn’t going to have a fruitful ministry. As Mack Stiles frequently says, “Buying a plane ticket doesn’t make you a missionary.” Ideally, the sending process would prevent an ungifted missionary from going to the field. But sometimes they make it, and it is the church’s stewardship responsibility to continue to assess fruitfulness or potential fruitfulness of a missionary they send.
Of course, any discussion of assessing fruitfulness must have all the necessary caveats of God’s sovereignty, not man’s. As the Apostle Paul makes clear of ministry: he planted, but God made it grow (1 Corinthians 3:6). We must also recognize that sometimes fruit is slow growing. There are testimonies of faithful missionaries laboring for years in hard places before seeing any fruit of conversion. William Carey, the father of modern missions, worked for seven years in India before baptizing his first convert. Therefore, we must be careful in how we assess fruitfulness. Demanding instant fruit would be unfaithful to Scripture and tempt missionaries to unfaithful methods.
There are times when a lack of fruitfulness is more apparent. A young missionary family moved to a European ghetto hoping to see a church planted there. After several years, they had not produced a church nor seen anyone confess Christ. Moreover, they had yet to build any meaningful relationships. They were not learning a language. They had little to report from their time other than the trials they had experienced and the prayer walks they had taken. After some time, their sending church rightly reassessed the partnership - not because they couldn’t show a church or a convert, but because they couldn’t offer any meaningful progress. In some ways, fruitfulness might be assessed in growth. Is a missionary growing in language competency? Can a missionary show that they are developing meaningful relationships? Is there some growth to account for a missionary’s time on the field?
5. Intentional End of Service
Finally, it would be unloving to a missionary to have policies assessing faithfulness and fruitfulness in ministry without policies addressing end-of-service issues. End-of-service policies help the church know when to end a missionary relationship and how to do so lovingly.
Intentional end-of-service policies begin with policies governing the financial support of sent missionaries. Missionaries are often unprepared to return from the field because they have not invested in relocation or retirement. Many of these issues can be avoided by helping missionaries pre-plan financially.
Reestablishing life in their home country can be daunting. This can especially be the case for older missionaries. Churches should have policies that help bring these missionaries home–not just relocation funds but also emotional support for what can be a difficult transition.
End-of-service policies must define how to help missionaries reacclimate to their native country. Often, churches abandon returning missionaries to fend for themselves. Churches that have been in partnership for years are suddenly focused on others. So, churches should be prepared to help with policies that spell out what a missionary can expect regarding financial help, housing, and counseling.
Ending missionary service can be especially difficult when, on certain occasions, a church must tell a missionary that they will end the partnership due to faithlessness or fruitlessness. Policies that are already established, clear, and adequately communicated can soften the blow of these painful conversations. Struggling missionaries can be brought home in a loving and supportive manner.
Sometimes, it isn’t a struggling missionary that needs to be brought home, but a fruitful one. When is the task complete? When is it better for the local ministry to move on without the influence of the missionary? These, too, can be tricky things for a missionary to assess. In many cases, a mission agency will have a voice in such situations, but churches should not neglect their responsibility to help their missionaries with clear policies.
Healthy, biblical missions require a meaningful relationship between sending churches and their missionaries. Those relationships will not develop and maintain accidentally. It takes serious intentionality, and the burden should be on churches. It is a matter of brotherly love, financial stewardship, and gospel fidelity; and a robust set of missions policies will set the framework for such relationships.
