A Glance At Both Sides Of The Same Coin
As I’ve served in cross-cultural ministry, I’ve often been struck by the incredible generosity and support of those back home. Their prayers and financial gifts have been a lifeline, enabling me to continue sharing the Gospel and serving those in need. This experience has led me to a deeper understanding of the biblical model for missions support, a model that beautifully balances faith and action.
In this article, we’ll delve into the Scriptures to uncover this model, drawing insights from the Apostle Paul’s relationship with the Philippian church. We’ll explore the vital role of both prayer and giving, and how we can all partner together to advance the gospel.
Anyone who has followed the work here for any length of time has probably read in a newsletter or a post on social media somewhere that,
“Those who pray for and give to missions play a role just as important as the missionary on the field.”
I say it often, especially when doing some speaking back home or talking missions with anyone. I say it a lot because I really believe that. The church or person who gives any amout faithfully over time, or the grandmother who wakes up early every morning to pray for the missionaries that she has pictures of or names of on her fridge. Both play a crucial role in this long-term partnership in the gospel we call mission work.
When it comes to funding a missionary, some would say very simply that if it’s God’s will, He will provide, and they take the position of not seeking to share needs or raise money. They firmly believe that in this way they are truly trusting the Lord. That’s fine, if it is their conviction, and I believe that if it’s God’s will, then He will provide too. However, oversimplifying the situation could potentially overlook a crucial aspect. Something clearly revealed in the Scriptures that should not be avoided.
We understand and believe that God has ordained all things absolutely. But He has also ordained the means by which to reach those ends. One confession puts it well when speaking on the decree of God. It says that:
“God hath decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein; nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established; in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree.”
And it wouldn’t take long reading through the epistles before you would start to notice a couple of things:
First, Paul absolutely depended on God and prayed expecting God to answer, and God often did.
At the same time, we see other examples of Paul making his needs known to the churches. He also expected the brethren to help him with his needs and the needs of others.
Both are true, and they go together.
Yes, at times he worked with his hands out of a conviction and even necessity. In Philippians he writes that at one time
“in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you alone.” (Philippians 4:15)
This is incredibly astounding! Consider the great apostle Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, the great missionary. Now consider churches that he himself and perhaps others had planted, unwilling to give or help Paul so that the gospel may go forth in other places. If we lost all of our support, and only one (fairly young) church supported us, we would have to do the same. I too have had to do quite a bit of tent making at times, at least until acquiring new mission partners to help ease the burden of new needs and to prepare for future plans we have. But that hasn´t always been the case.
One realistic downside of bivocational missionaries to consider is that it is easy to become overloaded and overwhelmed, and hence comes the possibility of becoming less effective, and their longevity on the field may then soon be in play. Unless somehow they had established in the past a business or a high-paying career before they moved to a foreign mission field, and they were able to somehow keep it going and make money for their family and ministry without sacrificing all of their time. But those are exceptions, and often bivocational missionaries usually end up spending less time working for the Lord (of course everything we do is unto the Lord, but I mean specifically mission work and ministry here) and more time working just to survive and make ends meet.
As the Lord expands our horizons, it also brings with it increased expenses and needs. In the past, I taught English at another school free of charge for almost two years. However, there are times in life and ministry when one must do what is necessary. For a brief period, I worked as a teacher at another school, and for longer periods, I directed an orphanage and taught English online to support myself. I am willing to do it and even enjoy it in many ways. Sure, it is a blessing, and the opportunities to share the gospel are many. But, family in that mix of a very demanding workload, both in ministry and another full-time job, and you will eventually have a recipe for burnout. Especially in the field where the needs are often much greater when working with the poor, and where culturally people aren’t so individualistic and private, but require much more attention and often requiring more time and resources than you have available, certainly more than most Americans do.
It is this way with ministry in many other cultures; it’s just different. And if we are honest, most people, culturally as Americans, just like their privacy and in general, are better off financially. And that’s ok. I say this to mean that just because something is common and/or easily done in the States, it doesn’t mean it will be so in a different setting. And though bivocational ministry is always difficult, it proves to be even more so where the people are poor, often sick, and in places where education can be lower. In those situations, things usually take much more time, energy, and money.
But why do some missionaries seem to always need money?
Well, first, we would certainly agree that the most loving thing we can do for a person is to share the gospel with them and point them to Christ. We wholeheartedly agree with this. Yet at the same time, it would be very unloving to preach the gospel and ignore someone’s obvious urgent, basic needs, especially if we were in any position to help them. Of course we cannot help everyone, and the “poor will always be with us.” But this is no excuse for not being as generous as possible, and we must remember that we were saved not just from something but also for something.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10
Time and time again we see in Scripture the duty of the believer to be compassionate, merciful, and generous, as we saw exemplified in the life of our Lord and the apostles and the early church. When the other Apsotles extended the right hand of fellowship to Paul and Barnabas as they were getting ready to go off to proclaim the gospel and make disciples of the gentiles, they reminded Paul of something that was important to them because it was important to God.
“Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” Galatians 2:10
In the book “Controversies in Missions,” a compilation of essays written on various controversial topics in missions, a chapter on Carl F. H. Henry’s regenerational model puts it this way:
“The particular eloquence of Henry’s position is this: one need not deny the important biblical commands regarding social justice in order to arrive at prioritism (the Gospel proclamation is the priority), and the way one does this is by understanding the full weight of the doctrine of revelation within Christian theology. When this is done, it becomes clear that there is a direct correlation between the doctrine of revelation and the priority of proclamation. However, such a prioritist position by no means renders what the Bible says about social justice as irrelevant or unimportant. In fact, the opposite is true. A high view of the doctrine of revelation, especially concerning Scripture, also gives rise to a robust social concern because the moral imperatives for God’s people are divinely revealed.”
This is in no way a “social gospel,” as some understand it. But rather biblical ministry centered on God’s revelation and the ethical demmands put on those who are transformed by the very same gospel proclamation. The latter (compassionate generosity) actually gives evidence to and establishes that the first and main thing (Gospel proclamation and salvation) truly took place to begin with. One is a priority, yet both are necessary and biblical. The author offers a very helpful illustration from everyday life to help us understand how both are necessary while rightly keeping the main thing, namely the gospel proclamation, the main thing.
“I might say that I am going to go to the bank to make a deposit and then to the post office to mail some bills. I furthermore declare that the bank is my top priority because if I do not deposit my paycheck, then the bills cannot be paid. Clearly, one has here a case of priority in which both things remain necessary. I still must deposit my check, and I still must pay my bills. Yet one of these takes priority because the second thing depends on the first thing having taken place. It is the same with evangelism and social concern. The gospel must first be preached before converts can be discipled, and, indeed, the content of Christian discipleship remains mired in obscurity apart from the proclamational foundations of the apostles and prophets, which is divine revelation. Thus, the logical priority of evangelism does not render compassion optional. It simply affirms the ultimate place of Scripture and the unequivocal role given to proclamation in the life of the church.”
Consider this text in James:
“If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.” James 2:15-17
But now back to my first point on the funding necessary in order to do both of these things:
So we have the Apostle Paul, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write and explain the mysteries of God being revealed, praying to the Sovereign Lord, and at the same time He makes his needs known to the churches and seemingly expected them to meet those needs. We see true dependence on God through prayer AND communicating to the churches his own needs and the needs of others. Why? Because He understood that the means to reach the goal of the church IS the church. Specifically, the emphasis in the NT is overwhelmingly on the local churches.
God´s people have a mission: to go and make disciples of all nations, to baptize, and to teach all that Christ has commanded. God´s people also have the real responsibility to be intentional in going, sending, praying for, and providing for that mission and showing mercy and compassion to others in the process. There are ethical demands that are put upon the believer through the commands in the NT.
While maintaining balance is not a complex task, it can be challenging for some individuals. Many people error and fall off of one side of the horse or the other. The situation is not as clear-cut as some may wish. We live in tension in this area. Consider the beautiful mystery of God’s sovereignty and the will and responsibility that man has. His decrees and His means to reach His intended purpose.
Whose mission is it? God´s.
Who has He commanded to fulfill the mission? God´s people.
Who’s doing the calling? God.
Whose Word are we preaching and teaching? God´s.
Who did He choose and inspire to write and preserve it? God´s people.
Who is the one preaching and teaching? God´s pèople.
Who is forgiving sins and doing the saving? God.
Who is being saved, and who is He using to proclaim the Gospel? God´s people.
Who is opening the minds of people, illuminating them to understand the Scriptures? God is.
Who does He use to do this? God´s people.
To whom do the cattle on a thousand hills (and everything else in the universe) belong? To God.
Who is praying and who is doing the providing? God´s people.
Who has He entrusted precious resources to, to be used for His glory? God´s people.
At the same time, who is really providing and sovereignly answering specific individual prayers of provision for His people who are doing His will on His mission? God is.
I could go on and on, but hopefully you get the point by now. His plans will be accomplished and cannot be thwarted, no doubt about that. But He has revealed and commanded how it is to be done as well. And we are very much responsible for being about the will of God in the work of the church. He will do it, and He will do it through His people. Paul knew this. But many who lean too much in either direction fall into error and become unbalanced, inconsistent, or worse, unbiblical.
To deny the real responsibility we have before Him would be somewhat foolish and would require the systematic focusing on some particular texts of Scripture while at the same time ignoring a lot of other texts. Or putting Scripture against Scripture versus putting the two things together. It would be akin to an error, as in saying, God will provide for me, but I refuse to work. Or that God will cause me to grow in knowledge, but I refuse to read or study.
For the above-mentioned reasons, we have come to the understanding that it is ok to ask for help and make needs known for us and for others. We simply say, “These are the needs; pray about helping.” If the Lord puts in someone the desire to help, then praise the Lord! We have examples of it in the Scriptures, and we simply accept it and live in the tension between the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.
There is no need to even try to reconcile the two; we see both in the Bible, and they do not oppose each other in any way. May we embrace this balance, trusting in God’s provision while actively participating in His work, just as Paul and the Philippian church did. Thank you to all who partner with us in this mission through prayer and giving. Your support is invaluable, and we are deeply grateful.
I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
-Philippians 1:3-5
Written by Antonio Salgado
Antonio serves as a director of BCM, overseeing ministry efforts in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Venezuela.
