Church Plants and Missions: A Framework: Benefits; Time Off

Benefits

• We encourage our missionaries to attend continuing education at least once at year, to be paid for out of the work fund.

I began this series pointing out the failure of many churches and many missionaries to keep up with the latest methods and research on how to do missions. Missionaries need continuing education — just as do preachers and elders — except more so, because missionaries are often all alone, far removed from other opportunities to keep up. Amazon doesn’t deliver to the African bush.

• The missionary will maintain family health insurance coverage for himself or herself and his or her family, including medical evacuation insurance.

We’ve learned about the importance of this from experience. We’ve had missionaries — short and long term — suffer severe medical conditions. We had a college-age volunteer nearly die from malaria contracted in Africa and have to be airlifted to the US. We had the baby of a East European missionary come down with a severe illness requiring treatment in the US.

For most Americans, it’s unthinkable not to have health insurance, but missionaries are often very young and glad to take risks. It shouldn’t be a choice, because if they do get ill, the church will feel obligated to pay their bills. So the insurance is simply a prudent way for the church to manage its risk.

Health insurance decisions are complicated by the fact that many nations have socialized health care, and depending on the form of the missionary’s visa, he may well qualify for local, socialized care — which might be quite good and might be quite awful.

• In cases of political unrest, the missionary should take the measures he or she deems appropriate to the safety of his or her family.  We will bear the expense of any relocation due to disturbances of this sort.
• Should personal tragedy befall the missionary, such as serious illness or the death of an immediate family member, we will provide any necessary travel expense not covered by insurance.

What happens if a missionary family with small children find themselves in the midst of anti-American riots? What if his mother dies in the US? The missionary is rarely paid well enough to cover these risks. Therefore, the sponsoring church should consider what commitment to make on these questions.

I think that even if the church has to pass the hat to raise the money, the missionary’s expenses should be covered. It’s how I’d want to be treated.

Time off

• We will agree with the missionary on a furlough schedule every-other year when he or she will return to the USA to visit this church, other supporting congregations, and his or her family.
• The missionary may celebrate appropriate local and US holidays and, in years the missionary doesn’t take a US furlough, may take annual paid vacations as agreed with the missions team.
• At least one week of each furlough (to include two Sundays) will be spent at the University Church.  We will bear the cost of economy airline transportation round trip to Birmingham or Atlanta.

Most missionaries come back to the US every other year or so. We’ve pretty much settled on every-other year. When the missionary is in the US, he or she needs to visit us as sponsoring congregation and may need to vist some other major donors. Certainly, the missionary should be allowed time to visit family.

The key here is that the sponsoring church should manage the process. As much as the missionary will want to spend time with family, his long-term support will depend on building and maintaining relationships with sponsoring churches. The missionary must spend enough time with sponsoring churches, at sufficiently convenient times, to let the churches do their jobs.

On the other hand, churches who write relatively small checks shouldn’t expect to get a week with the missionary. There’s just not enough time. If the churches wish, they can travel to meet with the missionary at the sponsoring church or other convenient locations.

Now, my thinking is that the missionary should spend time with the sponsoring church’s children and teens. Of course, he must spend some time with leadership and others. Just don’t leave out the kids. I think our children should be raised to see missionaries and other workers in the Kingdom as heroes.