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Failure to go face to face
When someone joins your partnership team and supports you $100 a month for 20 years it turns out to be a $24,000 transaction. Raising support for ministry has a lot of similarities to marketing a service, and to just about any marketing enterprise, $24,000 is a big deal. It deserves personal time, individual tailoring, careful cultivating and lots of tender, loving “customer care.” -
Stalling out at the point of phoning for appointments
The first call is the toughest, but the second isn’t that much better. You would rather eat a slug, brush the dog’s teeth or go for a root canal. However, if you manage to persevere, the 50thcall is a breeze and it actually becomes fun. It is especially enjoyable once you’ve learned to make the calls with a positive expectation that you will get the appointment and people are going to be delighted with your presentation. -
Making appointments that get cancelled
Appointments get cancelled mainly because the prospective ministry partner hasn’t been treated with enough value and respect. You treat them with respect when you know what is unique and important about them and why they are worthy of the special privilege of hearing your story. People keep appointments when they know they are meeting with a busy ministry professional with a passion for their work, someone who is eager to share the challenge, the costs and the rewards of an exciting outreach. -
Dull, boring presentations
This sin is especially deadly. If you wish to maximize the time it takes to be fully funded, just fill your presentation with boring generalities, endless facts and figures and throw in a long, impersonal media presentation. A successful face to face appointment is primarily about building a personal relationship with a potentially long-term ministry partner. Rather than using a canned media presentation, take the time to learn about your prospective ministry partners, their home, family, work, activities, and what they value most in terms of ministry outreach. Then tell your story with the assumption that you will make a great extension of their personal ministry to a place they probably can’t go themselves. Tell brief action stories that portray the successes, the miracles, the hardships and the heartbreaks of your ministry. -
Failure to ask for support
A friend recently shared a conversation he had an acquaintance in his church. The man spoke with pride about his brother who was a missionary in a tough area in Eastern Europe. My friend asked if he supported his brother financially. He said, “No”. -
Failure to ask for referrals
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Failure to follow up
I once told a leader in a major mission agency that he could expect about half of his face-to-face presentations to result in some kind of support. After a support raising trip to his home area he reported that only one in six resulted in support. Among the questions I asked him was, “How did you handle the follow-up when people said they wanted time to pray about it and discuss it with their spouses?
We address a generation today that responds to relationship building, not mass appeals. Almost totally gone are the days when someone hears a missionary speak in church, picks up their prayer card from the display table and makes a commitment to support them.
On the other hand, if you make individual appointments to spend forty minutes to an hour building relationships and sharing your story with clarity and passion, nearly half the people will respond with some kind of support.
A little surprised and asked, “Oh really? How come?”
“He never asked.”
Here is a very simple question that somehow becomes the most difficult for missionaries to ask: “Is there any reason we can’t begin a partnership in this ministry today?”
If you are afraid to ask that question, take a moment in your imagination to reverse roles. You are one who believes in world outreach but you are not personally called. You invite a missionary couple in who has a sincere desire to know you, your family, and your values and goals in ministry. They share stories that portray their calling, their unique equipping, and their passionate desire to serve on your behalf in a kind of ministry that you value. Now think honestly, regardless of whether you are in a position to support them right now or not, will you be offended or will you be honored when they give you a clear, businesslike, explicit opportunity to invest?
A missionary who was raising support called recently and sadly announced, “We’ve run out of contacts!”
“Of course you have,” I said, “Doesn’t everybody?”
Actually, not everybody runs out of contacts. Many today are walking away from every presentation they make with an average of three new contacts. It is done by using an astonishingly simple process.
Picture yourself in this situation: You have just finished a delightful time sharing your story and your vision with a new couple who are prospective ministry partners. They’ve loved your stories and they are inspired and challenged. They may or may not be able to support you financially, but they definitely want to be on your newsletter list and pray for you.
And so you say something like, “Listen, it is going to be a privilege for us to serve on your behalf. There is actually one other way that you could be of enormous help. What if the Lord were calling you into this ministry? I can imagine there would be a core group of people you would go to first and give them the opportunity to partner with you. Since the Lord apparently isn’t calling you to do that, would you mind putting us in touch with a few of those key people? Of course there would be no pressure and no obligation for them to support us, but our job right now is simply to share our story with as many people as possible.”
That simple request effectively guarantees that you won’t run out of contacts.
He said, “I expected them to call me back and a few days, but they never did.”
Bingo!
Again, reverse roles. You are the one who has heard a great presentation and has been touched with the opportunity to support a great ministry. The response card is right there on top of other papers on the coffee table in the living room. It will remind you to pray, talk to your spouse and give it your best consideration, right?
Well, maybe. More likely someone is going to toss a magazine on top of the card and it will disappear for about a week. You occasionally think, “I’ve got to make a decision and get back to these people.” But, unfortunately, you only think of it while you are driving someplace, eating lunch or laying in bed about to go to sleep, but never at a time when it is convenient to find the card, find the phone number and make the call. A month later you are thinking, “Interesting I haven’t heard back from them. They’re probably fully supported by now.”
You will do your prospective partners a huge favor, saving them embarrassment and guilt by offering a simple, courteous gesture. Just say, “I’m really pleased you are willing to give this some serious thought and prayer. Do you mind if I give you a call in a day or so you can let me know then how the Lord is leading you?”
