Creating and maintaining a sustained income steam for emerging missions is probably THE greatest challenge of the emerging mission movement. Passionate servants of Jesus Christ are called, prepared and ready to go. But the sending capacity to launch this great movement is where much attention is still needed.

Few comprehend just how large this movement really is. It spans Asia including all of China and India. It cuts across Africa and into Latin America. In between are the Islands and other parts of the world which at this point are yet to be fully engaged in world missions.

The prevailing theory is that the more affluent nations need to propel this giant forward with outside funding. In our opinion, unless this paradigm is challenged and changed, at both ends, no long lasting change will result. The West can and should contribute in appropriate ways. But sustainable income for the emerging missions movements has to be more from within than from without.

How did we get to where we are? The answer lies in understanding both the “culture of poverty” as well as the “culture of affluence.” The affluent West has assumed that the only way to get things done in the Majority World is for them to raise money from the West and send it to the Rest. With the exception of South Africa, East Asia and parts of Latin America, most missionaries coming from the Majority World come from a “culture of poverty.” In the context of poverty, when you are in deep financial need, you look for a “patron” who can help. You will hear many potential missionaries from the Majority World saying, “I would go immediately if only I had a sponsor.” They wait and wait – and nothing happens.

To get past this impasse, change is need on both sides. As long as emerging missions depend on funding from the outside, they are less likely to draw upon their own culture and resources. But once they comprehend that the chief responsibility lies within them, their Spirit-led creativity will take over and many new models of generating income will emerge. The stories of how indigenous missions have creatively funded the missionary programs in the past are many, but they need to be collected and shared more widely in the emerging mission community.

The “affluent West” needs to understand something as well. God has created every culture to be a missionary sending culture. Don Richardson led the way in helping us understand “redemptive analogies” and taught that within each culture there were stories, legends or beliefs which would help that culture understand the gospel. In the same way, we believe that God has placed workable systems within each culture that, when redeemed, enable mission to function. Financing God’s work is one of those systems. If we tap into these indigenous systems that God has already place in the culture, we will find both the capacity and sustainability that is already there. That is why we hear African leaders all over the continent saying, “Finance is NOT our biggest problem.” If all believers gave what they could for missions the windows of heaven would open and the nations of the earth would be blessed.

This leads us to the question of how outside agencies (Western or Eastern) can best serve the emerging mission movement. Our sense is that these indigenous systems for sustainable finance need to be identified and communicated widely in the Majority world. We can empower the new missions movement with information about how others are doing it already. When we discover systems that are already working we can offer to enhance those systems. Sometimes there is just some little catalytic action that we can contribute which enables a whole system to work (like maybe teaching book keeping or accounting skills). Or we can ourselves become a part of the indigenous system. If their system is to sell goat skins at Christmas time for missions – I can make an annual contribution to the mission arm of the church at Christmas season. Where ever these systems are found, we can blow on the sparks until they ignite into flame.

A second vehicle for creating sustainable income may lie in the development of entrepreneurial skills, or ongoing projects that will generate income for emerging missions. If only a tithe of the money which is given directly from the West went into this kind of capacity development, it would have reaped rich rewards by now. Finally, maybe, when emerging missionaries are trained, they need a component in their training that will help them generate income – and maybe provide a service for the communities to which they go. Much more discussion is needed on this point. We welcome any ideas.

For more on this topic: David Befus (Latin American Mission) “Where There Are No Jobs,” available from LAM