Blog | The Upstream Collective

UPSTREAM BLOG

The Upstream Blog is published two times a week and contains content from missions leaders, pastors, missiologists, and the Upstream team on a wide variety of topics pertaining to being a sending church. Leave us some comments or questions!

Leveraging Your Missions Funds Most Effectively in a Small Church

Bradley Bell

Jul 28, 20223 min read

Leveraging Your Missions Funds Most Effectively in a Small Church

For eighteen years I spent the first hour of my day listening to country music. My mom’s alarm clock was set (loudly) to the local...

How Much Should the Sending Church Give to Their Sent Ones?

Larry McCrary

Jul 25, 20225 min read

How Much Should the Sending Church Give to Their Sent Ones?

The question of what percentage of funds a sending church should give their Sent Ones can be tricky to answer, and there is certainly no...

Marketplace Ministry from Experience, Pt. III

Shirley Ralston

Jul 20, 20225 min read

Marketplace Ministry from Experience, Pt. III

Self-Funding Missions Before and After Retirement Click here for part one of this article series and here for part two. Wise Advice When...

Marketplace Ministry from Experience, Pt. II

Shirley Ralston

Jul 18, 20226 min read

Marketplace Ministry from Experience, Pt. II

Make the Most of Your Foreign Assignment Click here for part one of this article series. Engage in Marketplace Ministry If God has led...

Marketplace Ministry from Experience, Pt. I

Shirley Ralston

Jul 14, 20224 min read

Marketplace Ministry from Experience, Pt. I

Expatriates: Our Accidental Pathway to Missions Life in the Oil Patch A poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs...

Fully Funded or Support Raised? The Pros and Cons of Each, Pt. II

Bradley Bell

Jul 11, 20226 min read

Fully Funded or Support Raised? The Pros and Cons of Each, Pt. II

I have been a support-raised missionary. It’s pretty awesome. Here are some of the challenges, along with a few pleasant surprises.

Fully Funded or Support Raised? The Pros and Cons of Each, Pt. I

Bradley Bell

Jul 7, 20226 min read

Fully Funded or Support Raised? The Pros and Cons of Each, Pt. I

Being a fully-funded missionary is pretty awesome. Here are some of the benefits, along with a few unpleasant surprises.

Bradley Bell

Jul 4, 20223 min read

A Liturgy for Raising Support

O Lord, I have set my face like flint. I am prepared to take a step out of the boat of financial certainty— at least the certainty that...

The Five Love Languages of Missionary Care

Bradley Bell

Jul 1, 20225 min read

The Five Love Languages of Missionary Care

A monkey was sitting in a tree during a typhoon. From the safety of his perch he noticed a fish that was struggling tremendously in the...

Upcoming Upstream Book: Holding the Rope

Ryan Martin

Jun 28, 20226 min read

Upcoming Upstream Book: Holding the Rope

This is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Holding the Rope: How the Local Church Can Care for Its Sent Ones by Ryan Martin, set to be...

Bradley Bell

Jun 23, 20223 min read

Sending Well: It Takes a Community

One of the biggest reasons church leaders hesitate when it comes to proactively sending their members on mission is the intimidating...

Why Church Planters Want to Do Something Bigger

Bradley Bell

Jun 20, 20224 min read

Why Church Planters Want to Do Something Bigger

In 2009, alpinists Fabrizio Zangrilli, Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, and Simone Leorin stood at the base camp of K2, the world’s second tallest...

Bradley Bell

Jun 16, 20224 min read

Developing a Church Planting DNA

The coolest thing about 1984 wasn’t just that I was born, but that it was the year of the greatest comedy-horror film of all time:...

Bradley Bell

Jun 13, 20225 min read

A Church Plant Can Be a Sending Church

Recently, I was on a personal retreat at a nearby monastery. With my Bible and journal in hand, I tiptoed away to the surrounding knobby...

10 Things You Should Think About before Planting a Church

Bradley Bell

Jun 9, 20225 min read

10 Things You Should Think About before Planting a Church

Think before you post. Just four words, but instantly you know what I’m talking about. It may sound similar to the old ways of saying it:...

Dave & Lorene Wilson

Jun 6, 20225 min read

Missionary Prayer Is Missionary Care

A Call for Churches to Care For, Not Just About, Their Missionaries Oswald Chambers once said, “Prayer does not equip us for greater...

Helping Sent Ones Work through Culture Shock

Mike Easton

Jun 2, 20224 min read

Helping Sent Ones Work through Culture Shock

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Mike Tyson I can guarantee you that, before today, we have never started an...

Chris White

May 30, 20225 min read

The Impact of the Heart Debrief

“Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place . . . They made an...

Matthew Hirt

May 23, 20225 min read

Cultural Sensitivity in the US Context

A large movie poster of Shah Rukh Khan was not what my wife and I expected to see as we walked into the movie theater in southern...

Mike Easton

May 19, 20223 min read

Developing an International Ministry

One of the incredible opportunities we have right now in America is to reach an increasing number of internationals. Immigrants,...