Now when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them, and that He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. So they stayed there a long time with the disciples. Acts 14:27-28

Ideally, the relationship between missionaries and the local churches that send and support them ought to be personal and as intimate as possible. I grew up in a church that supported our denominational missions organization, but we never really knew any of the missionaries themselves. When GBC began, it was part of our vision not only to support missionaries, but to know them! We wanted to contribute financially (the first check written by our church was to missionaries), but we resolved to do more than write checks. We were determined know our missionaries.

Here are some ways we do this as a church:

We only support missionaries who we believe are theologically sound.
We love to have missionaries in our church when it is possible for them to visit.
We read the correspondence we receive from our missionaries and pray for them in the Thursday night worship services.
We put a reminder to pray for a different one of our missionaries in the Sunday bulletin every week. (Do you know where that reminder is?)
Whoever is offering the morning prayer in the Sunday worship services prays for the missionary in that week’s bulletin.
We have the flags of the countries in which our missionaries serve. These flags and the names under them are not just decorations—they are to remind us to pray for them.
The names of our missionaries are in the preservice prayer meeting guide to remind us to pray for them.
Each of our Home Fellowships has one or two of our missionaries to pray for and write to.
There is always a bulletin board in the main lobby about missionaries, including post cards you can use to write to them. (You write the cards, put them in the offering box, and we’ll see to it that they get them!)

Next time: what we all can (and should?) do as individuals to support our missionaries.