Prayer: We discovered we will need to upgrade software versions on our web server in order to launch an eSeries with tips and advice for before, during, and after a mission trip. Pray that testing the new version and the upgrade would go smoothly.

Prayer: That God would provide a website project manager (support raising position) to join our staff.

Praise: Over 10,000 inquiries about mission trips made via ShortTermMissions.com since last July!

Praise: We have entered a 1 year “trial period” agreement with John McVay to adopt the AskAMissionary.com website into the M-DAT family of services. John will continue to be involved in the editing and assembling of the content for the website and e-newsletter. We plan on maintaining a standalone AskAmissionary.com site as well as integrating the Q&A content into PreparingToGo.com (currently in beta).

Brad Brestel is Personal Stewardship Pastor at Lincoln Berean Church (LBC) in Lincoln, Nebraska. He heads up the church’s Generous Living Team. In this interview he talks a little bit about what he does as a stewardship pastor and then adds some insights on generosity and money for missions.

Propel: What are your responsibilities as Personal Stewardship Pastor?

Brad: The Generous Living Team is responsible to help build a culture of generosity in our local body. When we wake up in the morning, we are the group that is thinking about the church’s income. We teach classes in theology of stewardship, cash flow management, preparing wills and building a master financial plan. We are currently working more on how to serve the members of our local body who do not have cash flow issues yet need to hear and understand the theology of stewardship.

Propel: How do you teach people the importance of giving as an integral part of The Great Commission?

Brad: I’m uniquely positioned for this one. I serve both as the stewardship pastor and also on the missions team. Our missions team includes a “Resource Team” that I lead which is concerned mainly with the financial resources needed to fund our global outreach projects. Since stewardship and global missions are my main two passions at LBC I naturally include the Great Commission as part of the theology of stewardship taught in the “Intro to Generous Living Class” at LBC; that is our “Stewardship 101” class. I remind people of the two great commandments and the Great Commission in the first five minutes and build everything from those cornerstones.

Propel: In your opinion, should people tithe 10% to the church before giving to missions, or do you consider giving to individual missionaries or para-church organizations part of a tithe? Please elaborate on your thoughts. (more…)

In missions we talk about goers and senders. Goers are people on the field planting churches, facilitating community development, training nationals or even working in administrative roles. Senders are people who pray, mobilize, work out logistics and give money so that the goers can stay gone and finish their work.

The purpose of this brief article is to encourage Christians to take ownership of the giving aspect of mission involvement. Giving money to missions may be less public, less glamorous, than actually going overseas, but it is no less important than physically being on the field.

Rarely are Christians discipled to be disciplined and intentional missional givers, whether that giving is directly to missionaries or through church mission committees. So, then, what can we do to train ourselves to take our role as givers seriously?

• Begin by remembering that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matthew 6:21). With this in mind, think of how you can mold your heart to become more generous. Practice disciplines to align your heart with God’s.
• Next, give regularly, whether that’s monthly, every other month or quarterly. Whether or not you believe the principal of a tithe carried over from the Old Testament to New Testament times, God still deserves our first-fruits.

(more…)

By Peter Armstrong

We finalized the name for the new internet resource center for aspiring missionaries. Can I have a drum roll please? The name of the website will be… PreparingToGo.com.

Although we tentatively used that domain name to refer to the project for awhile, we did not know if it would go over well with the intended audience. On our quest to make a final name selection, we brainstormed 200+ alternate names, eliminated all but five, and made a survey. Fifty aspiring missionaries gave us their input. The result? PreparingToGo.com emerged as the leader. We think it is a good name to work with—a solid name that relates well to the content of the website, has few negatives, and is easy to remember and spell.

A good name only goes so far though. Ultimately the content on the website supersedes the name. We are happy to report progress on the content the front!

In May, an intern from JBU edited down the footage from several missionary interviews and our pilot run of an organization headquarter tour. In July, we set up the ability to post the videos on PreparingToGo.com. That brings us to beta version 0.6 for the website! Hurray for progress! You can watch these first samples at http://PreparingToGo.com/videos/ . Or watch them via our YouTube channel. If you have a YouTube account please subscribe to the channel and add us as a friend.

Although we have made progress, we also encountered a few setbacks. Unable to figure out a satisfactory method to get around closed country issues for the mission field reports we envisioned, we decided to put production of these video clips on hold indefinitely. Also, our week long mission trip to produce a series of mission agency headquarter tours fell through. Between staff training, travel, and office remodeling projects, summer is not a good time to schedule these tours for the mission agencies. In fact, it may be pretty near impossible to coordinate producing a series of tours in a one week time frame. Lining up the schedules of multiple organizations is tricky! We’re not abandoning the idea though. We will just have to work out a different way of accomplishing the goal.

The next few pieces of the website we are working on are a directory of mission organizations, a logo for the website, and producing more video clips. Content. Content. Content!

Prayer: Test video shoot — At the end of this month Peter will be at Operation Mobilization’s headquarters in Atlanta to shoot some video for the upcoming long-term missions website. Pray that equipment will work well and the footage he gets will be helpful.

Prayer: Summer Mission Team — In July a small team comprised of a cameraman, video editor and M-DAT staff member will take what Peter learns in Atlanta and put it to use. Pray for a few qualified volunteers to help out this project.

Praise and prayer: Volunteer video editors — We’ve begun recruiting volunteer video editors to help out with the long-term missions website. So far we have six willing volunteers, but we need at least six more. If you or someone you know possesses video editing skills and equipment, let them know we need their help!