1. A young man known to me has just completed high school and is now ready to embark on tertiary education. I met him when he was about fourteen years old; he drifted into the church one day, and became attached to it. I don’t know whether he professed faith before he started getting involved with the church or if it happened after his involvement; but he’s been getting involved with various activities within the church. His original plan was, after leaving school, to train for the ministry, and he was being mentored by the assistant minister. However, since then, through his involvement with a youth ministry in town, he’s committed himself to them and has been accepted as a full-time trainee. With the encouragement and backing of the assistant minister, he has sent out a flyer to the congregation asking them to support him financially so that he can take up this ministry.
He is 19 years old and has no experience of the world; he has never worked in a job, never had to pay rent or a mortgage, never had to make his own way through life, never had a wife or children to support and care for – all his needs have been met by his parents and he’s never known what it is to worry about a single need. And now he wants to upgrade to a larger income source, and depend on the congregation to supply his lifestyle choice. However, the congregation consists very largely of senior people who live on their old-age pensions and what little savings they’ve managed to accrue over a lifetime of working. For many of them there is no spare cash to support yet another “missionary”.
2. Another church I was involved with financially supported a young woman not of our congregation, whose mission field was Catholics in Ireland, a bogus mission field if ever there was one. She had uprooted her home in Australia and gone to Ireland and attached herself to a Baptist church there so that she could “witness to” Catholics. Her new life there was no different to a life she would have lived in Australia, being involved in a local church in Dublin and witnessing to Catholics, just like any of the other members of that or any evangelical church. The difference is that all the other church members, both there and in our church, worked in a job to support ourselves. Yet she was able to travel overseas and live in another culture very little removed from her own so, and comfortable, and not have to pay for it. All she had to do to maintain the flow of funds into her bank account was to visit the churches that supported her every two or three years and give them a glowing report of her “ministry”.
Unfortunately, the report I heard when she was addressing us and showing her slides wasn’t that glowing; I couldn’t see why she needed financial support to do something full-time that every other Christian does part-time while working in a job; and I couldn’t see why she would think of herself as some kind of missionary, because she was just an ordinary Baptist Christian involved with a normal suburban Baptist church in Dublin, and her life was no different to a normal evangelical Christian anywhere in the West. She had simply transplanted her life from Australia to Ireland and was receiving financial support from Australian Christians at home to do so, justifying it by styling herself as a missionary.
If she’d stayed in her local church in Australia, she could still have witnessed to Catholics if she really had a burden for them, because we have Catholics here too; and she could have done it at her own expense as part of her service to God, and under the direction and guidance of her own pastor.
Are Catholics more “lost” in Dublin than they are in Australia? Is there something wrong with the evangelical church in Dublin to which she’s attached herself that it needs a young single woman to come from Australia to “witness” to Catholics in their back yard? Can’t any of their church members do that? I’m quite sure they didn’t call her to that work, as she wouldn’t have even been known outside her own circle of family and friends in Australia.
3. When I was doing my degree at theological college in 2005, I met many young people who planned to go into some kind of “full-time ministry” within Australia, with some kind of parachurch organization when they left college. This, of course, would mean that they would be seeking financial support from their long-suffering churches and “support friends”. There were other students there who were training in fields such as youth or children’s ministry, and their hope was to get a paid position at a local church. In most of the churches I’ve ever been part of, the children’s and youth ministries have been conducted by congregational members.
4. When I was at theological college a missionary family who had trained at this institution had returned to Australia on furlough, and the husband was addressing the students at a meeting convened for the purpose, telling us of his work in North India, and how difficult it is. He expressed his frustration because most new Australian missionaries go to the South where they’re not really needed. There is already a lot of “mission activity” being conducted in the area with the help of indigenous churches; consequently, the south of India is a popular “mission field” for soft western Christians due to its being a relatively easy stint. But the real and urgent need is in the Muslim north. But very few missionaries go there because it is difficult and even dangerous – but isn’t that precisely where the gospel is needed?
Most missionaries are sincere, but….
I’m not saying that most people who want to serve in any kind of evangelistic or pastoral role aren’t sincere, and that they’ll go anywhere they think God is “calling” them. No doubt they look to him to provide for the means to fulfil the calling he has “laid on them”. And that may well mean that that support comes from a willing church or group of people or churches, particularly so when the man is called as pastor of a church. Such support is often the only way missionaries to other countries and cultures can succeed. But I’m not referring to such people in this article.
However, there are people such as I’ve mentioned above whose preferred method of income is receiving it freely from other people. Perhaps a small number of those who want to do “full-time service” choose this career path because they don’t have the courage to face life and join the workforce, as the world is a bit intimidating to them. They might have difficulty relating to others, but feel more comfortable and confident in a church situation because Christians are more tolerant and they accept social misfits more readily.
And perhaps others are simply lazy and don’t want their lives to be regimented doing a 9-5 job, being told what to do or else face the consequences; if they can find a place in a church in another country and culture, so much the better. For others, it may be that they just want to live in a cosy Christian bubble, surrounded by Christians. So, a nice stay in a local church with a friendly environment and all expenses paid is a good option; justify it with a religious gloss, and it’s the perfect scam!
In the Middle Ages the common people constantly had to support fat, lazy, friars who chose no other means of support than begging. These professional mendicants took an oath of poverty and renunciation of property, choosing to live on the goodwill and practical support of those who worked hard for a living. And they lived very comfortably by doing so, more so than their long-suffering donors. It doesn’t seem like much has changed.
Far too many Christians think they can choose a cushy lifestyle and expect their brothers and sisters to support them in it; but this is so clearly against biblical teaching. The Apostle Paul wrote “Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat” (2 Thess 3:7-10 NRSV).
There is a case for financial support….
When Jesus sent out The Seventy, his instructions were that they should receive support from those amongst whom they worked (Luke 10:7). And Paul’s instructions to Timothy were “.…for the scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves to be paid’” (1 Tim 5:18 NRSV).
…but there are boundaries
But I’m against this rising tide of Christian moochers who presume upon their fellow Christians to support them in a life which has a religious garb but is in fact a lifestyle choice with the pious title of “mission”. Most of the “work” they do and need finances for is simply that which they ought to be doing as part of their work in their local church, expecting neither reward nor praise from men but from Jesus himself. And the churches and Christians on whom they rely should be telling them to get a job and earn an honest living (1 Thess 4:11-12).
The problem with independent para-church groups….
This situation also highlights the fact that it is the Church’s responsibility to send out missionaries and workers. If there weren’t so many missionary organizations and other para-church bodies, there wouldn’t be so much finance being siphoned off from the churches’ income in order to support various individuals and independent organisations; and the Church would be better able to fulfil its purpose of sending the gospel into the world. As it is, church members now find themselves in the position of contributing regularly to their local church while also feeling burdened or pressured to contribute to various para-church missions or overseas works, or just individuals here and there who “feel called” to some kind of Christian “full-time service”. And the churches themselves are contributing to various independent missions and Christian groups which are not accountable to anyone but themselves, and therefore they (the church) have no say as to what these groups teach or how they spend their money.
…..and independent theological colleges
It doesn’t help when theological and/or bible colleges insist that their students who go on short term missions locally or internationally are told not to pay their own way but must find full financial support from churches and/or individual Christians, as happened in Morling (Baptist) Theological College where I studied. Thus, a major part of their training for missionary work consists in learning how to sponge off long-suffering Christians. This faulty principle also encourages churches to opt out of their responsibility to overseas missions and local evangelisation, leaving it up to para-church missions, evangelistic, and bible translation organisations, to do the work for them.
So, when somebody asks the church to support them in their desire to work full-time for the Lord, perhaps should be questioned closely and ask them the nature of their call and why, as their first option, they can’t support themselves as they do the work of the Lord. Working for the Lord by faith shouldn’t mean that the Christian worker’s first step is to garner support from a group of people and/or a church or churches; their first priority should be that they get a job and support themselves as they work, all the time trusting God to provide. And if the work grows, and the load with it, then they can consult the leadership of the church, set before them the situation, and await their decision. But they must be prepared to be accountable to those who do contribute to their ministry, and be conscientious that they use their money in the most productive way they can.