Torch, Spring 1980

pastors, however, are now advocating a plan for deputation that would eliminate some of the problems we have discussed and result in better stewardship of time and money. It is a simple plan, but, because the present deputation practice has been around for so long, it will take considerable time and effort on the parts of both the missionaries and local churches to implement. The first part of this plan involves distance: • Let the missionary seek and trust God for the supply of his support and other needs from local churches within a radius of 100 miles from his home· church. In an area that has a good number of Bible-believing churches, this could easily be done. A variation of this step would be to limit deputation travels to the state in which the missionary's home church is located, or to the region (involving several neighboring states) if the churches are more sparsely situated. • Let local churches support missionaries whose home church is within 100 miles of them. Exceptions could be made for a mission representative or a specialized ministry. The second part of the plan involves steps to improve the stewardship of money: • Let the churches seek to support their missionaries for not less than $100 a month for each missionary/missionary family and aim to eventually raise the support to $250 a month. Taking the annual budget of a local church and dividing it into ten- and twenty-dollar units in order to support as many missionaries as funds will allow might produce impressive statistics, but it certainly does not promote sound stewardship. • Let local churches send their missionary support to the mission agency quarterly rather than monthly. This change alone could save the mission over half the amount spent for accounting costs. • Let churches seek to exchange some missionary interests in order to support fewer missionaries for larger amounts. For example, let's say there are two missionaries, one from the east coast and one from the west coast. Both are equally supported by two churches also at opposite ends of the country. If each church would drop support for the far away missionary and add that amount to the support given to its nearby missionary, a happy balance would result. Each church would be supporting a nearby missionary for twice the amount. Such a plan offers advantages to both the missionary, and the local church. It means that the missionary could serve in and minister to his supporting churches more frequently. He would have more opportunity for close, extended contact with individual families in the churches. It would provide him with more consistent prayer support, for the people in the supporting churches would get to know the missionary, his work and his burdens more intimately. It would give the missionary more time for rest and spiritual refreshment. To return to our earlier hypothetical example, adoption of such a plan would mean our missionary would spend only six months on the road to raise his support, instead of 27 months. Rather than spending $15,000 to cover eighty-five thousand deputation miles, he would spend only $1,800 to cover ten thousand miles. The nineteen hundred hours behind the wheel of his car would be reduced to only 200 hours. Instead of spending $22,500 to live and maintain his family during deputation, he would spend $5,000. Imagine saving nearly $30,000 in deputation expenses, over sixteen hundred hours of unproductive time, and seventy-five hundred miles of driving. The dollars saved could buy and ship the missionary's equipment, pay the passage cost to the field, and support him and his family on the field for over one year! What can you, as a pastor or church member, do to help bring about these changes? You could bring this matter to the missions committee or the deacon board for discussion. Church members could be informed of this problem and encouraged to institute a new missions policy in the church as outlined above. Mission agencies are ready to assist churches in such a changeover. There are things that can be done now. With God's help, let us determine to make deputation a delight for our missionaries, not a drain; a replenishing of their material, physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, not a depletion of them. Mr. Durham is an Associate Professor of Bible and Greek in the Biblical Education Department at Cedarville College. He formerly served as a missionary to the Philippines. 7