Hi. Would you mind if we suspended normalcy for a moment and talked about something we don’t talk about? In fact, it’s such awkwardness, that I think it will require two posts to cover.
If you do mind, because you already have enough awkward in your life, please go do some self-care instead of reading this. Pour a glass of wine, turn on some smooth jazz, maybe read an old post, and I’ll see you in two weeks.
If you don’t mind, thanks for joining me in the awkward.
Let’s talk about money: specifically raising support as a missionary.
Most missionaries don’t talk about it, except to other missionaries, but the support-raising life is really strange. As in, it feels like we are aliens in normal society kind of strange.
Just to make sure we’re all on the same page of the Book of Awkward, here’s how support raising (for most missionaries) works:
- You volunteer, are called by God, or are told to become a missionary. Whether your ministry is reaching the homeless population in your own city or working with a cannibal tribe in a foreign jungle, you say yes to the task.
- You are trained, somewhere between not at all and for all eternity, on how to raise support.
- You start raising support by asking friends, family members, strangers, churches, businesses, and stray cats to give you money.
- You may or may not finish raising support, which may or may not affect whether or not you actually make it to your ministry role. Some organizations and churches require you to reach full support before you can start working, some do not. It’s a weird continuum.
Let’s start with the most mixed bag of the awkwardness, and then next week we can cover the more straightforward parts. K? Great.
“I could never do what you do.”
I hear some variation of this comment at least once a week when I’m actively raising support. It’s meant, almost always, as a commendation of my bravery and faith. Which, on the surface, I appreciate.
But it has undertones of awkwardness: First, the difference between a missionary and not a missionary is that one person has chosen to follow God to a place that requires raising support, and the other has not. The particular thing the missionary wants/feels called to do requires raising support. Christians follow God even when it is difficult, missionaries are just the ones who raise money to do it.
Second, it emphasizes the not normal-ness of asking for money, which makes it even harder to ask for money. If you said, “Hey, can I borrow your car?” and I responded with, “Sure! I’m so impressed you asked, I could never ask that of someone,” wouldn’t your first thought be, “Oh….should I not have asked?”
So in essence, when you say, “I could never raise support,” you are either telling me that you would not follow God into difficult places, or you are telling me that it’s weird that I’m asking you to support me.
The reality is that missionaries hear this so much that we become immune to it entirely, so if you’ve said this to someone recently, you don’t need to apologize. But perhaps you could switch it out next time for the more straightforward, “I’m inspired by your willingness to follow God into difficult places. I hope I would do the same if he asked it of me.”
So. Thoughts on the awkwardness so far?
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