Sending church: Keep talking

I have some friends whom I think do an incredible job with having on-going communication with their sending churches. Their secret is to allot time each week to develop partnerships and communicate both formally and informally. It’s on their calendar.

Exactly how you communicate is up to you.

• Write updates to an e-mail distribution list. I like this idea, and always make a point to reply personally to those who respond to my general letter. If you need to keep security in mind, you can send your e-mail to a person who then distributes it for you. I also use a “Bcc” to not show everyone on the list who I am sending the update to. It additionally helps curtail those who “reply to all” when they get an e-mail from you.
• Print and mail a newsletter, though I think the number of people who do this has greatly declined in recent years with such connectivity through the Internet. In my family’s case, some of our supporters print out our e-mail updates and send them to others who do not use computers.
• Create a private Facebook group where you can tell your advocates about prayer requests as they come up or message the entire group at one time.
• Write short Twitter updates. I use this for general requests, and not so much for extremely personal ones.
• Sign up for a YouTube account and upload short videos about your work.
• Insert the above-mentioned social networking tools into your blog or Web site for your advocates to connect with you at their conveniences. Again, you have to decide how public you desire your work to be.
• Conduct Skype calls with churches during morning services or with small groups. I hear more and more about workers doing this, and think it’s a great way to have a presence in a church on a regular basis and be visibly in front of people while on the field.

I am also a huge fan of the sending church having a designated advocate who regularly communicates with their missionaries. I am finding many churches have a staff member or lay person who is the main contact for the overseas workers, which ensures on-going connectivity between the two parties. If you have regular communication with the advocate, then information about your work spreads quickly. I know some people who have advocates in several churches, so the worker spends time communicating with these individuals, knowing they will tell their story to others.

Also, if the worker overseas and his/her sending church regularly communicate, then it is quite natural for the worker to connect and share with the church when he/she returns home.

A few months ago I was in an American church listening to a couple of missionaries give a report about their work in a far off land. They wore “normal” clothes and had videos and photos embedded in their slide show—much different from how I remember missionaries giving reports when I was a kid. As I observed all this, I wondered, “How did Paul and Barnabas report back to their church?”

In Acts 14:24-28 we read about these two men returning to Antioch. They had been traveling, seen people come to faith, made disciples, seen churches planted, fulfilled the work for that trip and witnessed God move in some amazing and powerful ways.

They had stories to tell. So they gathered the church and told them about all God had done with them.

I like how Paul and Barnabas took the initiative with that meeting. I sometimes laugh to myself at the thought of a worker calling home to his/her church and saying, “Scratch the programming ideas for this week, we are going to meet this Sunday and talk about my mission work.”

Honestly, it can be a challenge today to report back to your church(es). Yet we must.

I had the opportunity to talk with cross-cultural workers during a “back pack” trip across Europe and noted that some seem to have more accountability than others regarding their sending churches. Those with strong accountability seemed to have a clearer understanding of their purpose once on the field, while the strong sending churches seemed to have more involvement in the worker’s church-planting strategy.

Other reasons for on-going conversations include telling the stories of the work on the field; letting the church know how the workers are doing; encouraging the worker; encouraging the church; receiving the workers in joy and honor; and giving praise for what God has done.

In case I haven’t made this clear yet, let me say it again–the church and missionary should have an on-going relationship.

If you’re a cross-cultural worker who does not have a sending church and would like one, leave a comment or contact me on my blog or Twitter. A church may be looking to adopt missionaries as its own sent.

Written by Larry McCrary. Larry and his family have lived in Europe since 2001, and have been involved in church planting both in the United States and in Europe. Larry is co-founder of The Upstream Collective, and is passionate about seeing the church think and act as a missionary both in its community and internationally. Larry blogs and tweets as part of an effort to influence the conversation of missions.