Here’s a local church sending question – one that is only important if you are dealing with it.

The question – What if my church wants to send our own missionaries without the aid of a mission sending agency?

Many churches come from a tradition that believes this is the best way to send and support missionaries.  No question – missions is the responsibility of the Local Church.  No question – when a small or large church takes complete responsibility for the sending, the financial supporting, the field mentoring, the financial oversight, the transportation and housing needs, the ministry guidance and the spiritual support of a missionary family thousands of miles from the US, there are issues to address.

I’ve been in a setting in which missionaries felt called to go, they were qualified, but for some reason were not able to join one of the existing mission agencies.  That fact alone is worthy of asking some serious questions.  Why wouldn’t this  individual go with one of multiple excellent sending agencies? Why aren’t they qualified to go with an agency?

There are clearly situations in which a particular project really merits the local church sending their own team.  That decision is wrought with potential land-mines.  That decision can also be a tremendous means to involve the church in a great way than ever before.  With everything riding on the church’s effectiveness to send, support, pray and engage the missionaries and their ministry – opportunities abound for the entire church to get involved.

My own experience with local-church sending outside of a partnership with an existing sending/supporting agency/partner is this –  only experienced, mature, cross-cultural workers should endeavor such an effort.

Why?  Here’s two reasons that I recommend when sending as a local church, to make sure you partner your chruch’s missionaries with great field partners.

1. Cross-cultural learning requires guidance, accountability, and repeated encouragement from someone who has experienced the value of going deep into the language and culture.  Even the best North American mission leader, committee, or pastor doesn’t have the time and touch to constantly monitor and encourage an inexperienced missionary to make steady progress in appropriate cross-cultural learning.  As an experienced missionary who can speak a second and third language fluently, I was never able to insure that the missionaries our church sent separate from a partnering agency ever learned the language.  Even today they continue to use a translator and thus will never be able to communicate deep spiritual truths in the heart language of their audience.  This, in my view is one of the greatest tragedies and greatest risks to the spread of the gospel through a means that indigenous communities can understood.  It’s a fallacy to think that getting the gospel out there is enough. The message must be communicate not only through intelligible words, by means of messengers that understand the subtle non-verbal communication that often carries more weight than words.

2. Isolation, personal spiritual crisis, and marriage and family issues are nearly impossible to monitor and support without lots of opportunities for presence and touch.  I’ve had the unfortunate responsibility as mission pastor to travel from North America to Asia to meet with a family whose marriage fell apart on the mission field.  The warning signs were apparent to many, but there was no one on the field who was responsible for sharing those concerns with their sending church. In fact, there were two sending churches and both of us assumed the other was doing their part.  We failed and the children and marriage suffered the loss.  Avoidable, personal tragedy is too easy without hands-on care.  Add to that the fact that the right agency might have better screened the couple and rejected them, encouraging them to stay and work on their marriage.  In our case, the couple was connected to people of influence in the church, which made it nearly impossible to not send them.

Not every story ends in tragedy so that my message is not “Don’t Do This.”  Rather, my advice is when a local church sends, do it right. Don’t send novice missionaries on your own.  Don’t send any missionaries without some kind of prearranged field support system.

This subject was raised by a pastor who recently wrote a group of us and asked for policies and procedures related to local church sending absent from an agency.

Gary Coombs is the Mission Pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, CA.  Gary’s church is diligently seeking to be an effective sending church.  He sent a copy of his church’s sendingagencypolicy for local-church-sent and supported missionaries.  Thanks Gary for allowing us to make your guidelines available.  If any of you have similar documents to share – please jump in and pass them on so the rest of us can benefit from your experience.  That’s code for “we want to steal your ideas.”  It’s for the kingdom!

Take advantage of more from mission leaders by checking out the resources and links on missionleader.com.  If you have a resource you would like to share with others and you are willing to give them away on this site, please send them my way and I’ll post them for others to “borrow.”

Mark Morris