OPENING UP THE MISSIONS BOTTLENECK

By Steve Scott
Steve served for twenty years as an Evangelical Free Church pastor, seven of them as a missions pastor.

• Does your team long for more people to be involved in your church’s missions ministry?
• Is your missions team overwhelmed?
• Does the congregation as a whole seem disconnected from the church’s missions ministry?

A “yes” to any of those questions may mean that your missions team has become a bottleneck for missions.

Often, six to ten people on a committee hold all the missions cards in a church. Our missions committee made a decision to deal out the cards. Within four years, we went from seven people serving on a committee to over 140 missions ministry volunteers.

The key was to restructure the missions program to resemble a youth ministry model with many people doing one or two ministries about which they are very passionate. This involved several steps.

First, we determined the Key Result Areas (KRAs). In our case, we divided the responsibilities into six KRA’s: Administration Team, Candidate Development, Short-term ministry, Advocacy (projects, training, and education), Local Outreach, and Missionary Care.

Next we determined an implementation plan. We could not change everything at once, so we started with two areas and added others as key leadership was identified. Our first team was the Administration Team that provided general oversight and handled the finances. We also added Missionary Care that first year. The next year we opened up Candidate Development. The third year we did Local Outreach and Short-term Teams. The fourth year we started Advocacy.

The third step for implementation was to find a champion for the particular ministry area or responsibility. This is critical. The right people make all the difference!

Fourth was to provide each champion with a charter for the ministry area. This set the vision, provided boundaries, and defined reporting and support structures.

Fifth was to support the champions. Quarterly check-ins determined if there were any gaps regarding strategy, mobilizing people, training, or implementing projects. Each champion had different gaps in their ministry areas, but my role was to help fill those gaps.

Finally, the champion would report at least once a year to Administration Team representatives. This kept the budget people connected to the front-line ministry workers and provided an opportunity for celebrating the champion’s vital role in the success of our missions program.

Opening up the bottleneck improved every aspect of our missions program. We involved more people, mobilized many first-time volunteers, and brought relief to the original, overworked missions committee.