We don't send North Americans - we just support indigenous Third World pastors

[Edward]

I am not convinced that the 19th century model for missions is the best approach in most circumstances, particularly given the widespread anti-American sentiment abroad. It might be necessary for a limited time for an American to proclaim the gospel in a dry area until locals can be identified and trained, but the program should be started with an exit strategy already in place. As quickly as possible, the Americans should transition to a training/mentoring role.

As to specific problems identified above, I would note two things - any mission agency should have a program for audit and internal review - 'trust but verify'. And if you dug deep enough, one could probably find examples of waste, fraud, and abuse in American led programs as well as the indigenous programs. Any missions program should always be concerned about the cost of auditing versus the cost of not auditing.

---------- Post added at 09:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:09 AM ----------

This is interesting. When I first started looking into missions, most of the teams/locations I considered were specifically in need of pastors. Not being an ordained pastor myself, my options were somewhat limited to more urban sites.

Have you looked at Mission Aviation Fellowship - they are more support oriented.

 

[Tripel]

[/COLOR]

This is interesting. When I first started looking into missions, most of the teams/locations I considered were specifically in need of pastors. Not being an ordained pastor myself, my options were somewhat limited to more urban sites.

Have you looked at Mission Aviation Fellowship - they are more support oriented.

I should probably clarify that I was not intending to be critical with that statement. Rather, it was an agreement with Pergamum that there really is a need for more ordained ministers going into long-term missions. I've just found it interesting how specific a particular team's needs are. A team in Latin America may need pastors to help plant new rural churches, but then there are other teams that already have a pastor or two and make it known that they are particularly not wanting any more pastors.

I'm blessed to be joining an urban-based team that has needs I can help meet.

 

[Pergamum]

I am not convinced that the 19th century model for missions is the best approach in most circumstances, particularly given the widespread anti-American sentiment abroad. It might be necessary for a limited time for an American to proclaim the gospel in a dry area until locals can be identified and trained, but the program should be started with an exit strategy already in place. As quickly as possible, the Americans should transition to a training/mentoring role.

As to specific problems identified above, I would note two things - any mission agency should have a program for audit and internal review - 'trust but verify'. And if you dug deep enough, one could probably find examples of waste, fraud, and abuse in American led programs as well as the indigenous programs. Any missions program should always be concerned about the cost of auditing versus the cost of not auditing.

---------- Post added at 09:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:09 AM ----------

This is interesting. When I first started looking into missions, most of the teams/locations I considered were specifically in need of pastors. Not being an ordained pastor myself, my options were somewhat limited to more urban sites.

Have you looked at Mission Aviation Fellowship - they are more support oriented.

Yes, agreed.

In most places, the Westerner is already in the training/mentoring role, facilitating from behind instead of always being the "Face" of the effort. Leadership-training or Leadership-Development seems to be the watchword in missions today, especially in areas where there is anti-Americanism at work. Tom Steffen wrote a decent book on this, entitled, "The Facilitator Era" and his previous book "Passing the Baton" is also a good summary of the approach which you outlined above, of trying to equip locals asap to do the work (The Workers are in the Harvest); we want to make disciples who can make disciples, like II Tim. 2:2 explains, teaching others who can teach others in a self-replicating manner and making our work multiplicational.


Most evangelical missions have pretty good auditing mechanisms at work. My complaint with my own org is that they are too careful and I cannot spend money like I would want to without proving the worth of a project. For instance, I designated funds for a prosthetic leg for a guy last year who was forced to have an amputation, but given other more dire emergency sicknesses, I never spend the money designated for the prostheses on the leg but instead medivac'd an evangelist that got attacked by a wild pig instead and used the funds to pay for surgeries for him. So, every penny of that money must still be accounted for and taken out of my personal funds unless I can prove it was spent for other worthy ministry-type expanses. And receipts are sometimes hard to get in some Third World areas. So, their level of scrutiny is quite detailed and I think my org can honestly say to donors that they are using funds well and according to stated purposes. They keep me accountable because I am less of a details-oriented person. My org belongs to the ECFA or whatever that group is called (Evangelical Counsel of Financial Accountability I think is the name) and their scores can be rsearched online every year I believe. In general, mission orgs are much more accountable than your average local church.

As far as waste, fraud and abuse in missions and the church, I am sure we could start another thread on that. Compared with US churches, I see relatively little waste or fraud among my missionary peers here, most are under-supported while their congregations back home enjoy big buildings and TIVO and fresh food. I do see falsely positive reports from missionaries, however, perhaps becuase they are so hungry for success that they sometimes report results over-optimistically.