Faith-Support

What Do You Mean When You Say You Live By “Faith-Support”?

Over the years one of the issues that keeps on reoccurring with most of our family, friends, and even our supporting churches is the question of what it means to live by “faith support”. My father-in-law has never been able to figure this out. Recently, he asked me again when I would get a “real job”? Of course he means a job that pays a set hourly wage and is much more predictable in terms of income. It doesn’t communicate at all for me to say I do work on the average 50 hours a week on Youth With A Mission related issues. And when I explain that YWAM doesn’t pay me to do this, but in effect I pay myself to do it, my very real job with very real challenges seems all the more incomprehensible.

So, how did this system come about? And is it working for us? The faith-support mission system is a product from the era of missions called the modern missions movement (less than 200 years old). “Faith-support” means depending on God alone to supply all our needs by trusting in Him. Of course all Christians in effect do this whether they are in missions or are making a living in a variety of manners. Missions of this ilk rest on several foundational values that make it distinct from the normal manner of making a living.

The first distinguishing feature is that dependency on God is generally channeled by people through obedience to the Holy Spirit to other people. While the amazing manna-type provision is often used to capture the drama of God providing, the actual provision literally “from heaven” is rare. We have a couple of stories about manna, but only a couple in 30 years of ministry. Therefore being dependant on God has both a vertical relational quality directly to God, and a horizontal relationship quality with others (His family-the Church). Practically speaking, this means that both God and others need to value what a person is doing for God. The Bible is clear that anyone ministering the gospel is worthy of their hire and that making a living by the gospel is a permissible pattern for living (see 1Tim. 5:17-18 and 1 Cor. 9:14). Paul and Barnabas circumvented the typical pattern of the New Testament by working in the marketplace in conjunction with their ministry. This type of “tent-making” is a modern adaptation in self-supporting missionary endeavors.

A secondary assumption of faith-support is that the recipient prays to God as the principle means of soliciting funds. George Mueller and Hudson Taylor are two of the famous ministry pioneers that advocated this type of methodology. I know of very few who still actually adhere to this method exclusively. Most people in ministry write newsletters with the dual intention of establishing their credibility in ministry and as a way to let people know their financial challenges with the hope that people are moved by the Spirit to give.

In Youth With A Mission we have as one of our founding values a statement that guides the financial needs of both our ministry centers and our staffs’ personal support:

“Value # 16 YWAM is called to a relationship-based support system, depending upon God and His people for financial provision, both corporately and individually. We believe that relationship-based support promotes responsibility, accountability, communication, and mutual prayer. It involves the donor as a partner in ministry. As God and others have been generous toward us, so we desire to be generous. YWAMers give themselves, their time and talents to God through the mission with no expectation of remuneration.”

In effect this value has been instrumental in YWAM growing to both the size and scope of its’ worldwide ministry. In many ways the genius of this system places the faith back on the individuals involved and their relationships, not on some corporate entity. Hence the support base for YWAM is very broad and worldwide. An old adage often equates ones strengths with counterbalancing weaknesses. And this is definitely a challenge in the YWAM systems as well. Many of our staff not only have the challenge of learning how to minister the gospel, but also learning how to make such a support- system work for them. Recently, someone with a large sum of money that they wanted to invest in the kingdom was speaking with me. I assured this person that I knew of over 50 missionaries in my district that had inadequate support and that were worthy of support. Without a relationship with the staff in question the donor preferred to invest in a project. And while the project is worthy of kingdom investment this underscores the challenges YWAM staff face. Without long-term support we will not have “ministers of the gospel” available over the long-haul for ministry into the peoples of this world and the desperate needs many of them face daily.

So, is this system working for us? While I am not trying to be deliberately vague, the system does work, and it also does not. Let me explain. When I take a long-term perspective and look back over 30 years of living like this, it has worked well. We have raised a family in this milieu, sacrificed much, grown in grace and knowledge of the kingdom, and overcome many financial challenges. On the downside however, it has never gotten easier, in fact it is in many ways it harder today than it has been in the past. Giving patterns have steadily eroded over the past decade as one generation merges into the next. In addition there is simply less disposable income from both individuals and churches to under-gird the mission and ministry enterprises. This is because in many places the church is actually in decline, a new generation does not have the same financial concerns as the past, and there is simply more out there to invest in.

Sandy has been working full-time in the community for the past ten years. This is one way we have been able to manage. Her income has been off-set by educational costs for all four of us. I (Paul) have depended on faith-support, honorariums for speaking, growing raspberries, and small district office budget to make ends meet on the ministry front. So, we have survived. This past summer we launched-out with Sandy working with an agency doing part-time counselling and also part-time in YWAM facilitating Member-Care (a resource ministry to provide professional counselling for staff without paying remuneration). One thing we did not anticipate was that most of her counselees checked out for the summer, no counselees- no paycheck. While we were able to see her do more Member Care at our staff conference, a week of staff training, and a recent marriage retreat, we have not seen an increase on the faith-support side to off-set the increase in ministry. So in the long-run for both of us operating in this realm we need to raise our support level. We also need to see an increase from a broader base to warrant our joint involvement as we project into the future.

Meanwhile we do have the longevity of churches and individuals being consistent in our support. We are extremely grateful for this provision. Now it seems we need to garner the faith to launch a new initiative to raise our support income for both of us to be involved. Our goal in the next year will be to increase our support so that Sandy can be involved half-time. Future goals will be to increase her involvement to full-time. At this stage we are soliciting prayer support from all to move forward in this endeavor.

“For a wide door for effective service has opened for us…” 1Cor. 16:9a