1 of 3

As director of Global Outreach at Wheaton Bible Church in Wheaton, Illinois, Cindy Judge leads her church in supporting career missionaries and sending short-term missions teams. She recently shared her methods of incorporating missions support into the church's budget and the congregation's life.

How do you recommend churches raise financial support for short-term missions?

A lot of churches choose "the third method" when sending people on missions trips: the individuals raise a third of the money; the group raises a third of the money; and the church pays for the last third from the budget. Though this is popular, it is not our approach. Since we support over 90 career missionaries, we don't have a budget for short-term missions. At our church, people pay for their own trips out of pocket as part of their own personal missions commitment and then many will raise support from friends and family.

Has the recent economic recession negatively affected this strategy?

Yes. We have canceled a trip that we could not fill. We have found we should be a bit more conservative with the number of trips we offer, but our church often demonstrates a larger world view and sees its need to give and work in places that suffer much more than we do. I think it's often about our perspective as we realize we are people of great privilege and wealth in terms of the rest of the world.

How does the need for individually raising funds affect the process of preparing for a trip?

Part of preparing for a trip has to do with the decision to pay for the trip as part of your own giving or to try to raise the needed funds. We provide training for raising support. A great number of people who are raising funds intentionally do so outside of the church. It's actually a form of outreach. People are incredulous that someone would take a week of vacation to go build a house in the Dominican Republic. Whole offices get involved in supporting a colleague who is going. When they return, some people are invited to put articles in their company newsletters or to give presentations on a break.

If the church doesn't fundraise, and much of the money comes from people outside the congregation, how does the congregation get involved?

The community groups or adult classes often know who in their group is going on a trip and commit to praying for those members. These groups will prepare a written prayer calendar. They then hear reports upon their return.

How do you fuel momentum for so many trips?

We've been doing short-term missions for nearly 30 years, so it's part of our church culture. In the fall we publish the trips for the coming year. We've learned that whenever we promote a trip geared toward one specific ministry group, the team fills quickly because people like to serve with their friends; when we plan a general trip, geared toward the whole church, it takes a bit longer to fill the roster. We also visit the same sites more than once. So, for example, when we go to certain places to serve alongside our missionaries, team members go to serve their missionary friends and the ministries that they get to know. The community we serve knows we will be back again. The relationships formed fuel the momentum to return.

next page... |  1 of 3

share this page