Their
role in the Great Commission is to go
and take the gospel to other nations. For the rest of us, our role is to send them. They go, we send. And as John
the Apostle says in 3 John 6-8, we are to “send them on their journey in a
manner worthy of God.” John continues, “For they have gone out for the sake of
the name...Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be
fellow workers for the truth.”
As fellow
workers, there are two key ways we can help send and sustain missionaries: by
caring for the person and by supporting their work.
Caring for the Person
Because
missionaries are ordinary people, we can care for them just like we do any other
person. We can encourage them, love them, pray for them, spend time with them,
contribute to their needs, celebrate with them and weep with them.
But, while
their identity may be ordinary, the context of their life is not. The extraordinary call on their life to
leave the comforts and close community of home and move to a spiritually
neutral or even spiritually unwelcoming people for the sake of the gospel means
their ordinary day is not like any ordinary day. This means we’ll be extending
very ordinary care to people in very extraordinary environments. We will
constantly need to ask, “How do we love and support someone in a high-pressure
environment 10,000 miles away?”
Here are a few suggestions:
Get acquainted. Share yourself even as you learn about them.
Ask. Ask them how you can best care for
them. Sometimes what we think would be helpful may not fit their context.
Communicate often. How about sending a
quick prayer or a quick hello over email?
Respond
to their newsletters. It’s tremendously encouraging. Your response doesn’t have
to be long, just respond.
Pray with them
and encourage them. Pray for their strength, for their affections and for
fearless love for those they’re ministering to. Pray for God to move mightily.
Encourage them in the Word. Remind them of God’s faithfulness.
Send care packages.
Visit. Few things are
more loving and encouraging than face-to-face. Consider a short-term mission
trip to see and support their ministry firsthand.
Supporting Their Work
We
can support the work of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances by two essential
practices: praying and giving. Prayer is essential, as only God can bring
people from death to life. Finances are essential, as sending a missionary to live
in another country and providing for their ministry costs money.
Final
Thoughts
John the Apostle goes so far as to call missionary supporters
“fellow workers in the truth” (3 John 6-8). The apostle Paul calls them, “partners
in the gospel” (Phil. 1:5, 4:15-20). Be encouraged that your role among the
nations as a missionary supporter is never second-class. Support your
missionary well, in a manner worthy of God. Finally, remember that a happy,
healthy missionary is not the only goal of missionary care. A well-cared for
and fully supplied missionary is our hope, but our greater hope is that by
partnering with our missionaries as fellow workers, we will make more disciples
together than either of us could on our own. May God use our ordinary efforts
to build an extraordinary partnership between those who send and those who go.