Q: How do I raise prayer and financial support?

Raising support is difficult for most people. Your mission will have information, advice and perhaps even training in this area. Talking to your pastor and church missions committee may also help you develop a more positive attitude for support raising.

For many missionaries, if they don't have the support, they don't go to the field. If you keep that in mind, then raising support is just another step to getting to where you believe the Lord wants you. Talking about needs and asking for support is a difficult thing. But then, speaking about Christ to the lost can be just as difficult. Support raising, then, is one way to help you develop an ability to talk about something difficult with someone who may or may not be positive in their response.

Traditionally there are three different models of fundraising. In practice, these three models become intermingled depending on a person's circumstances and personality. In this interview, a young couple talks about how they approached raising support for a one-year stint in Africa.



Source:
http://preparingtogo.com/videos/how-did-you-raise-support/

My answer to this question comes from the Bible in Romans 10:14-15b "How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?" Paul's Jewish roots are showing in his method of teaching through asking questions. You see three groups of people here: the unsaved, the senders and the goers. The missionary is the goer and has to communicate between the other two groups. Just like we must prepare ourselves with the message to take to the field, we must prepare our communication with the senders.

We must be sent. Raising support is part of your job. I believe "where God guides he provides." Yet just like I learned how to preach, I had to learn how to raise support. The way I have raised support is by prayer and communication. First, pray and find out what God wants you to do. Then through prayer apply His promises to those needs. Second, in an honest up-front way, share with your home church and prayer partners what you intend to do and what you need to get the job done. I have never begged for money. I have found that after praying about my needs, church leaders and supporters usually ask what I needed. Sometimes the Lord gives me creative ideas to share those needs in a newsletter or other communication with my support team. The key is not to be afraid.

When God started calling me to missions, it took me a very long time to listen. I'd left college with an honors degree and excellent references and was looking for a teaching job. After months of applications, interviews, and near misses, I gave into the "still small voice" and wrote to a missions group for information about teaching positions they had.

When the information pack arrived a few days later, I looked through it and was horrified to learn that I would have to raise personal support. I thought through my list of family and friends. Many had just left college as I had and were struggling to pay off student loans. Some were newly married and taking on the responsibilities of mortgages and other home costs. There was no one I felt I could ask for money, so I filed the papers under the bed and tried to forget about it.

I told my parents my new plan for the next two years, filled out the application forms, and let all my family and friends know. My dad and I began to dream up creative schemes for fundraising-donor dinners, bake sales, craft sales. I took a Christmas job in a shop to help pay off my school debt. In the early summer, my church let me have a table at the Village Festival to sell some of my unwanted belongings to raise money. Several people gave me one-time gifts, and offers of monthly support began to filter in.

There were no miraculous meetings, no huge, unexpected donations, but many small gifts, often from people I hardly knew. Before my dad and I had a chance to put any of our plans into action, I added up how much I had, how much had been promised, and what I had managed to save from my job. I discovered that slowly, quietly, and unobtrusively God had provided exactly the total I needed for my two-year commitment.

I always knew He could do it but never really believed He would do it for me. I have now been in missions for five years, and God has continued to provide for my needs, plus a few "wants" on the side! More than that, He has broadened my horizons beyond my imagination and allowed me to be part of His plan in many people's lives.

Excerpted from pp. 186ff in the book Scaling the Wall: overcoming obstacles to missions involvement by Kathy Hicks.

Over 20 years ago I quit my job as a pharmacist to join Campus Crusade for Christ. I needed to raise today's equivalent of $2,300 per month plus some one time needs to work with high school students in Minneapolis (I am from North Dakota). I somewhat naively thought that the Lord could bring these pledges together in about 30 days. Praise God, he did exactly that! And my home church pledged nothing that first year.

One thing I recall is that I had been giving generously to different mission organizations in the previous three years, above the tithe to my church. The Scripture applies, "Give and it will be given to you..."

WEC's tradition of "trusting God alone" for provision comes from Scriptures and the influence of the life of George Muller. In the 1800's, Muller was guided by God to begin an orphanage in Bristol, England, by faith in the promises of God. He made no appeal for funds, but rather sought God to move in people's hearts so they would give toward the care of the orphans. Muller's testimony to God's faithful provision influenced Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, and later C.T.Studd, founder of WEC, who began his missions career with Taylor in China.

Reflect on the words of Muller: "Over the years the Lord has faithfully taken care of us financially in our work of caring for the orphans by constantly raising up new supporters. God's promise is that they that trust in the Lord shall never be confounded. . . for one reason or another were we to lean upon man we would inevitably be disappointed; but, in leaning upon the living God alone, moment by moment, we are beyond disappointment and beyond being forsaken because of death, or of not having enough to live on or enough love or because of the needs of other works also requiring support. How precious to have learned to stand with God alone in the world, and yet to be happy and confident, and to know that 'no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.' "

Some who read or hear of Muller's adventures of faith say, "Oh, he had a very special gift of faith, but I couldn't live like that!" Muller argues, "It is the selfsame faith which is found in every believer. . . Oh, I plead with you, do not think me an extraordinary believer, having privileges above others of God's dear children, which they cannot have, nor look on my way of acting as something that would not do for other believers. . Do but stand still in the hour of trial, and you will see the help of God if you trust in Him."

My first encouragement to you would be to not feel guilty or condemned about this question! (There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit - Rom. 8:1) The question of support is a valid one and God DOES want you to give it some prayer and some thought. The devil knows that without support, you cannot go to the field, and will not give the Gospel to those who are lost and dying.

My second encouragement to you is to PRAY PRAY PRAY!! Our God is the ULTIMATE PROVIDER. Remember that churches, organizations, and people are only the tools that God uses to get you what you need, but HE is the one that sends, and HE is the one that provides. If you haven't prayed, if you haven't spoken with the Ultimate Provider, you cannot expect for the churches, organizations, and people to get you what you need. Only God can do that.

Now, I'm going to tell you how I raised my support without realizing I was raising support. All I did was get excited about what God was doing in my life. That's all. If God has truly called you, and has put the passion in your heart to do what He's called you to do, then talk about it! Be like Jeremiah who could not contain what God was saying and doing, but said it was like a fire shut up in his bones, and it just had to come out! (Jer. 20:9)

I started telling everyone I knew about how God had called me to Mexico as a missionary. When you are excited and passionate about something, it somehow finds its way into every conversation. I wasn't even thinking about support when I was doing this, I just was so passionate about what God was doing that I couldn't stop talking about it.

One evening, I was working as a waitress at a local restaurant, and I was speaking to my table about what God was doing in my life. It turned out that the gentleman and his wife were pastors of a church all the way across the country, and they were searching for missionaries to support. Just because of my passion, and my desire to communicate to others what God was doing, that one church now fully supports me (and has been for over a year) on the field here in Mexico.

Prayer and Passion. Those are the two things that I had, and those are the two things that God used to get me what I needed. Remember, it's all Him. He is the only One you need, because He will be the One who brings all the other pieces together for you. If He has called you, He will provide for you to go where He's called you to.

My prayers go up for all of you, and I ask that God would make your paths straight, and order all of your steps. May Jesus' name be made great in all the earth.