YOUR MISSION'S BUDGET

Growing a Missions Budget $1 at a time.
"Start small, grow big." There is a youtube.com video from a sociology company that demonstrates a very simple concept:  people engage small before they go big.  In the study people were asked to place a large sign in their front yard.  The majority of people refused the offer.  But when people were asked to place a small sign in their yard, the majority accepted.  Later, the same people were asked to replace their small sign with the larger, and the majority of people gladly did this.

The $1 pledge:  The perfect time to pledge support to a missionary is when they visit your church and presents their ministry.  Have missionary "pledge" cards preprinted an available in the pews.  Encourage your congregation to consider adding $1 per month to their current missions giving in support of visiting missionary.

The missionary will leave your church with a pledge and your missions program will have grown. Over the course of the year a church will be able to add a number of missionaries to their support and the congregation's missions giving will have slowly and incrementally grown.  An additional benefit will be the increased "ownership" of investment by individuals in the ministries that God has moved their hearts to support.  It is much easier to give to a specific need that to a general missions fund.

This particular methodology removes the stress of missions giving from the pastor while placing the burden directly on the parishioner.  The downside to this methodology is twofold: 

1) Since the missionaries support is directly connected to the monthly giving of the individual, there is the potential that his support will vary from month to month.  This can have dramatic effect upon the missionary in the field.  

2) The financial accounting of this model can be laborious.  When a person gives a designated offering, the IRS requires the offering to go where it was designated.  Supporting 50 missionaries with small designated offerings from perhaps 100 parishioners can require a substantial investment of time each month.

 

RESOURCES

Missions Strategy

The Missionary's Budget

Keys to Helping the Itinerant Missionary

Your Missions Budget

Growing a Missions Budget $1 at a Time

Keys to Successful Missions Convention

Bridging the Generation Gap in Missions