Missions Textbook 39
Keep Your Supporting Churches Interested

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

Before we left Portland, we had spent six years attending church faithfully and investing our time and talents into working with the young people, teaching Sunday School, and Floyd preaching when he was asked. We attended the Midweek Bible Study and Prayer time, the Ladies’ Tuesday Morning Bible Study, and other irregular meetings, like picnics, weddings and funerals. We invited many in the church for Sunday lunch or other meals during the week, although it was always simple because we were poor seminary students who were going to be poor missionaries! I suspect that our participation in the life of the church played a part in how much interest our friends had in our ministry and well-being once we went to Austria.

I guess we had not really thought about the ramifications of our commitment to the church while we were doing it. We were part of a church family, and families do things together. Over the years however, we have seen a lack of this commitment, especially in young families that hope to have a church support them when they move overseas. Our church didn’t have a membership roll; we knew the members by those who showed up. We showed up.

Once we arrived in Austria, we wrote letters faithfully even to people who didn’t write back. In many of my letters, I informed Sue that after the six-page letter I wrote to her, I still had twelve more letters to write that month. And remember, we were still writing by hand or on a typewriter, buying stamps, addressing envelopes, and taking them to the post office.

Floyd had never been a letter-writer, but from the moment he hit European soil, he became a faithful correspondent with all the people who wrote to us, prayed for us, and sent us money. Nowadays, many mission organizations handle the missionary’s finances, and they even write the thank-you notes – along with tax-deductible receipts – to the donors. To this day, we encourage new missionaries to take seriously personally expressing gratitude to their donors, even if the mission organization also does it. Now that we are back in the States and supporting young missionaries, I am often disappointed that the only thank-you we receive is a standard form letter from the mission agency.

The key to a good missionary letter is stories: funny stories, poignant stories, inspiring stories, family stories, even a few discouraging stories. We knew which missionary letters we enjoyed receiving and which ones we found boring or didn’t read at all. Floyd left out the spiritual talk, assuming that every donor would have read his Bible that day and didn’t need a devotional from Floyd. Then he would tell stories about the people we were working with and ask for prayer for them. Generally, he didn’t disguise their names; he wrote letters as if our Austrian friends were going to read what he wrote about them. Floyd also wrote about the culture and the things we were learning about communicating the Gospel to people who had never read it. We assured supporters that they were a vital part of the ministry, and people were coming to the Lord because they were keeping us in Graz.

We were able to plan our home assignments so we could spend most of our time in Portland. Over the years, we gathered interested supporters all over North America – and even a few in Great Britain, but we felt our greatest loyalty belonged to the dear friends who had sent us to Austria, prayed for us every week, and put their hard-earned money into the missionary offering. We wanted to give back to them, and the form that took was giving them our time and love, teaching them the things God was teaching us, and inspiring their young people to do great things for God. Floyd wrote this about our life in Austria:

“I personally am enjoying myself more than ever. To me it’s a real thrill and joy to challenge unbelievers with the claims of Christ. I’ve never done it so intensely before as I am now. There’s really nothing to compare it with. An absolute, truthful Message, a personal relationship with the one and only God, a mission of eternal worth and consequences, and daily assignments of fascinating variety – all with the availability of incredible power – the Spirit of God Himself. It’s not even an option to think about quitting.”

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

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