The Free-hearted Preacher
Someone recently attempted to persuade me that church planters in the United States who receive financial support from other churches are doing something unbiblical. For context, I was being told this by a missions agency director, a vocation for which there is no biblical evidence that such a vocation should be supported by churches! But I digress.
As I listened to this missions agency director, I began to feel terrible. When I was entering ministry as a church planter, someone had advised me to take support because my secular vocation required me to work on Sunday rotations and that just wouldn't do for a church planter. Consequently, I took their advice and raised support. Like Paul though, I didn't always live off of support. Much of the time, especially later on, I supported our ministry with the work of my own two hands when support ran thin.
Often I consoled myself about taking support that Paul said, "The laborer is worthy of his hire" (1 Tim. 5:18). And while I knew this to be true about my ministry work, I always felt I needed to work to support myself too. Perhaps it was masculine pride. I don't really know. But when we struggled financially, I worked more hours and my ministry efforts suffered. When we struggled less financially, I worked fewer hours and I could spend more time on ministry.
A missionary today who complains that a U.S. church planter is receiving missionary support has no biblical basis to disagree with the practice. As I've shown in Part 1, we have more of a biblical precedent for that support model than we do for missionaries in different countries taking U.S. dollars instead of indigenous support. My point is simply that there is liberty for either support practice, foreign or domestic.
The problems with support comes when a man is unwilling to work at all. And foreign missionaries can be just as guilty of this as some domestic ones. The first time inflation outpaces their support, many of them are Baptist-begging to their supporters for increases (that is not to say some of them are not legitimately in need).
Personally, I chose to work myself to bone rather than ask my supporters for more. I cut costs, often dramatically. In those years, our supporters didn't even know how much our family struggled financially. Instead of telling them we were struggling, I built a small business and took on part-time Radiology work. We sold things we had. Every time I asked the Lord for money, He gave me talents and jobs instead. I did not want to be chargeable to anyone (c.f. 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8). I know of only one time that we made a request to supporters for a personal financial need. A pastor friend found out about a need we had and asked us to put it in our report letter so his church could formally respond to it with an offering. Was that unbiblical? Not at all. What would make it unbiblical, is if I was unwilling to be industrious first. If I was unwilling to even try to take care of our needs first myself, I just could not in good conscience present that need to others.
Now, brace yourself for the big reveal here — With all that I've said about church planters being permitted to take support and offerings, you may be surprised to know that if I could do it all over again, I would probably not seek missionary financial support, at least not much. And it's not for a biblical reason, but rather a practical one.
Under missionary support, you live beneath the expectations of supporters, which are frankly often unrealistic and are a constant presence in the mind. I think I would have been happier and more at peace in some ways without that. I'm not a people pleaser. But if someone is sacrificing and giving me money to do something, I want them to know it's being done.
I don't think our supporters spent every day wringing their hands thinking about me. However, there was always the unease that when the next newsletter goes out, someone somewhere (probably many "someones") would be dissatisfied with my work and drop us. They would inevitably compare my newsletter to the one on the missions wall next to mine in which the church planter reports that they'd seen many souls saved that month, the mayor began attending, and they're purchasing land for a building project. Then they'd look back at mine and wonder what in the world I'm doing wrong, and why should they bother supporting me.
My mentors in the ministry knew me well. They knew I was doing the work. They knew I needed the support. They knew my labors and travails. And the man who trained me for ministry even said the most powerful thing perhaps anyone has ever said to me. When we left the ministry, he said, "Tom, you're the real deal. You stood for God. You're my friend, and you don't need to prove anything to me." It meant the world to hear that.
But no matter how much other supporting churches try, they will often never know you like your sending church, like your mentors do. They will never truly know you well enough to not doubt you when things don't look "successful."
Let's say you have an aggressive, achievement-oriented, accustomed-to-excelling personality (I do). Then you place yourself within a spiritually cold and hostile mission field (I did). You will suffer more than most with the agony of feeling like a disappointment... that is of course, if you have an audience of supporters. Ditch the audience, and you will have more joy in the work. It will be slower, more organic, and less funded, and that's ok. The results don't have to look a certain way for anyone at all. I knew I was successful, but I was completely reliant on everyone who supported me to have the same definition of success I did, which was rarely the case.
Some church planters need the accountability of supporters to keep them working. Personally, I don't. If you need that, good on you for having it. But, if there is ever a next time for me, I'll probably try to skip the support and just get to work under a sending church. I'll have to find a different vocation than my medical training provides, but at least I will have a free heart.
We have moved on from ministry for the time being, but not because of supporter pressure. And we would have moved regardless of the support source or the amount because we followed the Lord in moving on. But because I had supporters, I have to live the rest of my life knowing that many of those supporters probably now doubt me, my work ethic, my gifting, and even my calling. A close friend said, "It takes more courage to end a ministry than to start one." I know now that this is absolutely true. The Lord in those moments asks you to make yourself a "proverb and a byword" to your supporters when in reality, you are not. He asks you to be comfortable being considered a "John Mark" when in reality, you are not. The disappointed calls and emails I got from supporters when we left were gut-wrenching.
We followed the Lord to the ministry, and we followed Him out of it. Should the Lord ever lead me to plant a church again, you probably won't hear about it unless you're from the church that sends me out, or close to me in some other way. And that's probably better for both of us.