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One Church's Task Force Approach to Missions

By Dean Merrill

Missions? Yes sirree. It's one of those mom-flag-and-apple-pie endeavors that every pastor salutes. No minister, regardless of how harried his or her schedule or how penniless the church treasury, would say a word against raising money and prayer support for world evangelism. It's right there in the Bible. It's also a given for any self-respecting congregation, large or small.

The only trouble is, how do you make missions soar when your "to do" list is already running off the bottom of the page? What pastor has time to read all that mail, take all those beseeching phone calls from eager itinerants, do the foreign and home missions paperwork, think up splashy promotions every fall, and lift members' eyes beyond their own city limits?

Running a missions program in a local church is not simple. You can't whip it together in one-half hour on Thursday afternoon once a month and see glorious success. There are too many parts, too many interlocking dynamics, too many complications waiting to swallow you.

That's why sharing the load with a group of committed laypeople who truly care about reaching the lost is a good idea. In our church the concept took the shape of an International Ministries Task Force. This group came alongside our senior pastor Bob Towell at the beginning of 1992 to reignite the church's anemic missionary vision.

WHAT'S ALL THIS PAPER?

I remember the first time I stopped by the church office to pick up the accumulated missions mail. A stack 6 inches high was sliding off the ledge onto the floor--newsletters and envelopes of all sizes and shapes, some with postmarks up to 4 months old. We obviously hadn't done a very good job recently of attending to our missionaries.

In the launch meeting the previous Saturday morning, our task force of 15 had sculpted a brave purpose statement: "We exist to inform, challenge, and involve the entire congregation in fulfilling the Great Commission and responding to the needs of hurting people through praying, giving, and going." Clearly, we needed to start by informing ourselves.

Another couple, my wife, and I armed ourselves with four strong letter openers and waded in. We soon realized we had a mixture of material from not only old friends but other missionaries we'd never heard of. We sorted them into two piles, dubbing one Our Missionaries, and the other the Wannabes.

We also realized something else: Nobody was going to plow through this much reading month after month. We had to pare it down to a manageable size. So we divided up the names alphabetically among the four of us, and by the next month's IMTF meeting, we had collaborated on a six-page briefing report that boiled down the essence of each missionary's activities and needs.

Now more than 5 years later, this format continues to serve the group. It is handed out to the IMTF members the Sunday prior to the next session so they can come to the meeting already briefed. Besides the assorted field reports, a special section presents prayer needs, and another gives financial projects in need of funding.

CLEANING UP OUR ACT

Meanwhile, others on the task force were discovering their own areas needing attention. A roster of names we actually supported each month revealed some people we hadn't heard from in a long time.

We also noticed that our pledges, accumulated randomly over the years as various missionaries had come through, were off balance: We had six commitments to Africa and only one to all of Asia. We determined to shore up our Asian attention in the months ahead.

It was exciting to gather each month on a Monday or Tuesday night and begin taking serious care of this important area of the church. The main elements of the evening are the same today as they were in the beginning:

• Prayer. Members intercede for current needs of our missionaries and hot spots in the U.S. and around the world.
• Approval of minutes.
• Financial report. The amount of faith promise money that came in the previous month determines how much can be disbursed later in the evening.
• Verbal review of the briefing report. Members ask questions about various missionaries, comment on particular missionary news items that moved them, and suggest ways to help.
• Event planning. Members map out details for missions trips, fund-raisers, speakers, and the annual conference during this planning time.
• Review of standing commitments. A ledger shows which missionaries are receiving how much from us on a monthly basis and when that commitment should be reviewed. By policy, pledges to overseas individuals are made till the next furlough, while those to organizations and stateside recipients are made 12 months at a time. At each meeting decisions are made to continue pledges, increase support, add additional pledges, or drop pledges. If the task force feels in the dark about a given ministry because of lack of communication, we don't hesitate to put the dollars elsewhere.
  
  Technically, the task force cannot make these decisions in isolation; all spending matters must go to the board of deacons for final action. But what the task force recommends normally prevails.
• Giving to special projects. This is overwhelmingly viewed as the fun part of the meeting. The group recommends grants to various outreaches, campaigns, building construction, and equipment purchases all around the world, based on what we learned in the monthly briefing report. All suggestions go onto a list, and then the chairperson calls for votes on each appropriation. If a particularly high dollar figure doesn't pass, members are free to propose a more modest amount for a second vote.
  
  All of this is constrained, of course, by the available cash in the world ministries account. (A policy requires a $2,000 reserve at all times so that monthly pledges could be met even if giving were to take a nosedive for some reason. But the general desire is to not let missions dollars gather moss; get them to the fields as quickly as possible.)

LESS WORK FOR THE PASTOR

"This is the first time in my ministry I've worked with such a structure," Pastor Towell said, "and I love it. It gets more people involved in the vision."

What if a pastor said, "Sounds like more bureaucracy to me. I'd rather keep things simple and handle this area myself."

"My feeling is just the opposite," Towell said. "This system relieves my workload. And the missionaries love it too. When they call I can quickly say, 'You know, we have a task force that deals with all of this. Send your information, and they'll consider it at their next meeting.'

"I've had missionaries express amazement at this. They say things like 'Thank you so much for even taking my phone call.' The reason I took the call, of course, was that I knew I had an answer all ready, and it wasn't just a brush-off; their interests really would be heard by the task force."

Sometimes missionaries are encouraged to show up in person at the task force meeting. This makes the night even more invigorating; members get to catch the missionary's vision in an up-close, personal way and are able to ask penetrating questions. This works out serendipitously for the missionaries too. They are able to do something productive on a Monday or Tuesday night rather than just waiting for the next church service. Our church has at times made major funding commitments based on this kind of interchange alone, without a Sunday visit from the missionary.

OWNING THE OUTREACH

Overall, a missions task force has a nonmeasurable but still important effect on the congregation's view of missions: It's not just the pastor's thing. People start to think of world evangelism as their own, knowing that it ranks high with their fellow lay friends. The words we and our are heard much more often.

And in time, this shows up in the offering plate. We didn't form the IMTF just to boost income. We had a broader purpose in mind. But the numbers have, in fact, turned out to be dramatic. Annual average adult giving was $109 in 1991 and now averages over $650 per adult attender.

"It has been sort of like lighting a pilot light," David Burdine, IMTF cochairman, said. "The enthusiasm in the core group spreads. Naturally, every task force member has a different circle of friends in the church. So there's a compounding effect as the missions vision heats up throughout the entire congregation."

What is even more remarkable is that this surge has occurred while the general fund was also digging itself out of a hole. Mortgage payments had been spotty throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s. But our attention to missions was not viewed as a rival of the mortgage need but rather as a step of faith. God ended up blessing both accounts simultaneously.

World missions is not just an arcane enterprise for the professional clergy to run while the laity watch quietly and pay the bills. It's a great commission to us all. The more people know, and the more they're allowed to affect the outcomes, the more they care and the greater the impact.

Dean Merril is vice president and publisher for the International Bible Society. He and his family attend Living Springs Worship Centre (formerly First Assembly of God), Colorado Springs, Colorado.