Comments on: Weak dollar makes life tough for missionaries abroad

By: Speedlinking - January 23, 2008 « Thoughts of Resurrection

Speedlinking - January 23, 2008 « Thoughts of Resurrection — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:04:49 +0000

[...] Weak dollar makes life tough for missionaries abroad addresses the impact on missionaries supported by the weakening US dollar. I had not thought of this before… [...]

By: Daniel Bitterli, Zürich

Daniel Bitterli, Zürich — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:53:33 +0000

I can assure you, that we don’t need any missionaries from the US in Switzerland (not Sweden). Unfortunately, over here we like to stick to our traditional church (eg. protestant and roman-catholic) And please don’t send any money. I think there is enough of it already and it tends to corrupt people.

By: The Aesthetic Elevator

The Aesthetic Elevator — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:53:07 +0000

Jaybee’s point is good, in fact I’m conducting an email interview this week addressing such questions for the next issue of Propel.

I’ve actually done this before, worked stateside part-time and been supported part-time. I didn’t lose support (granted, I’ve never been at full-support either, sadly), but the concern is valid. Bear in mind also that having a part-time job overseas will likely effect your visa status in some way.

I agree that missions support needs to be rethunk, although not just because of a weakening dollar. I have missionary friends from Europe to China, and all have felt the pinch the last couple of years. The weak dollar is a new phenom in my lifetime, but we in America were naive if we thought this couldn’t happen.

And while there are more cross-cultural missionaries going out from other countries as Andrew points out, this does not preclude us in the U.S. from sending. And as one whose been raising support for the last five years now, I’m still convinced that giving to missions — as individuals and as churches — is not what it should be most of the time.

By: jaybee

jaybee — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:46:16 +0000

This seems to me like a good argument for changing the way missionaries are supported. I know of a missionary to the U.K. who is in exactly this situation. When I asked her what would happen if she were to get a job to help supplement her income, she said that her supporters would withdraw their support, since they weren’t paying her to go to another country to find a job. Seems to me that we should be encouraging missionaries to bear as much as possible the cost of supporting themselves. 1) They wouldn’t need to worry about the weakening dollar. 2) What better way to integrate yourself into the local population then by getting even a part time job. 3) One basic problem here would be that, as my missionary friend says, everybody would say that she wasn’t really trusting in God. Not so. Even those of us who work full time have to depend on God for our income; it’s just that he pays it to us through our paycheck. For a missionary, “trusting in God” could very well mean finding work in the area where you are sent. If missionaries are scrambling to provide even the basics of life, the simple solution seems to me to find a way to make the money to pay for these things in whatever country they are serving.

By: Andrew Conard

Andrew Conard — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:00:09 +0000

Andy – Thanks for drawing attention to the article. I had not thought about this effect of the weakening dollar. However, this does make the assumption that the missionary is coming from the United States and headed to another country, or at least is supported by US dollars. I think that increasingly the opposite is true – both that the US is not the center for sending missionaries to the world and that other countries could probably do well to send missionaries to the United States.

By: The Aesthetic Elevator

The Aesthetic Elevator — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:26:21 +0000

Been this way for two or three years now; they’re a little behind the times.