Seeing Micromissions

The bulk of missions agencies are, like churches in the US and Canada, small

To my US readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

Change is hard for ministries. Let me illustrate a challenge that the ministry I lead, Missio Nexus, faces as we seek to catalyze relationships, ideas, and collaboration within the Great Commission community.

The church I attend these days is a big, sprawling, multisite megachurch. Up until about two years ago, the missions effort was mostly absent. I am happy that they are now more serious about global ministry than ever before.

I am a part of my local church’s weekly missions prayer group. Each week we gather and some of our partner ministries join from overseas. Mostly, though, we cover a litany of prayer requests that come in via email newsletters. I am realizing through this connection that my world of missions is vastly different than the experience of a church like this. Missio Nexus is made up of missions agencies and globally-focused churches. My church’s partnership list does not overlap much with our membership list in one key area: small, “mom and pop” missions agencies. Let’s call these “micromissions” for this discussion.

Micromissions, I have observed, are typically led by a founder. It may be a husband-and-wife team. Often, these little missions structures start when somebody goes on a short-term missions trip and starts a partnership with an indigenous church or pastor. They may see the need for a school, a well, or some other physical need.  They roll up their sleeves and get to work. After a couple of trips, they see a need for an ongoing ministry and form a non-profit. Almost always, this non-profit is attached to a local church relationship network. These works are also almost always done in reached areas where the local church faces economic hardship. In this way, they are missiologically shallow. They see nothing wrong with providing money, labor, and ongoing support for schools and building projects (something long-term missionaries rarely want to invest in). They are mostly unaware of indigenizing the ministry and issues surrounding dependence. If they are, they would argue that practically it doesn’t matter; people need help. They almost always start in Central America, Haiti, or similar geographically near places. Over time, they often start second or third sites and grow their footprint by adding similar relationships with indigenous pastors. They have names, like “Next Harvest Haiti” which will later become just “Next Harvest” when they expand.

Very few of these micromissions have functioning boards. If they have a board, it is often only to comply with non-profit regulations. Their spouse is the board chair, their best friends are the members, and there is little to no real accountability for organizational mission fulfillment.

From what I can observe, our church has added about a half dozen of these micromissions to their support list since I have been praying with the group. I have been asking others involved with church missions and am concluding that across the US (I can’t say what is happening in Canada, but I bet it is similar though perhaps more diaspora focused) there are thousands of micromissions. In fact, when I analyzed how many US non-profits are possible Missio Nexus members, I came up with about 8,000 such organizations, most of them micromissions.

I play pickleball with a guy who leads a micromission. In the short conversations I have had with him about his organization (which he leads with his wife) I understand they do orphanage work, pay pastoral salaries, and finance similar activities. From a missiological standpoint, these are all things that would be discouraged in contemporary missions outreach. What they do, so goes the theory, produces dependence and paternalism. Yet, I can tell you that he looks at institutionalized missions agencies with deep suspicion. Even though I have invited him to a couple of Missio Nexus events, he has no felt need to participate.

At this point, you might be thinking that I am only critical of these micromissions. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are entrepreneurial startups. They have vision. The leaders have seen a need and are seeking to fulfill it. The future big organizations are today’s micromissions. I served many years with Pioneers. It started as a micromission, based out of a local church, by a founder who had gone on a short-term trip. Micromissions are important for the future of the Western missions movement. They are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in exposing people to cross-cultural missions in local churches. They are an important part of the ecosystem.

The problem is not with micromissions. The problem that I have, as the leader of Missio Nexus, is that we have a set of offerings that are not “sized” to serve these small organizations well. The needs of a medium to large missions agency are vastly different from the needs of a micromission. Our systems, from member care to fundraising, are built for more mature organizations. Most of the smaller agencies we already serve (and they make up about half of our membership) were birthed out of larger agencies. The founders are often former field missionaries. These leaders already understand the importance of shared learning, good missiology, and good governance. It is the micromissions “outside the fold” that do not know their own need for these things.

What do micromissions need? Here are a few ideas:

• Money issues (working with national partners, expense reporting, and similar financial oversight issues)

• Boards, Governance, and Leadership Succession (most micromissions suffer from poor governance)

• Evaluating national boards and national partners (often these are not carefully chosen or vetted - typically they rely on indigenous leaders with the best English language skills)

• Development/Fundraising (this is distinctly different for small organizations than for large ones)

• Multistate registration issues (US charities must be registered in each state in which they take donations)

• Missiological issues (as I have noted, they often don’t think deeply about dependence, reproduction, etc.)

• Liability issues (many micromissions take risks without any risk management awareness)

Reworking our program offerings around the needs of these micromissions is a part of our change curve. We need to be able to do this while simultaneously serving larger missions even better.

The 8,000 or so micromissions that need us do not know that they need us. How do we find them (there is no “micromission mailing list” you can buy)? How do we explain to them that they will benefit from better missiology? How do we help them grow in fundraising, governance, and other areas? To do this we must change. We cannot simply market our existing programs more loudly. We must develop value for them by identifying felt needs and building credibility.

That is a good challenge for any ministry to take on.