The Power of Community
in Raising Support

By Ellis Goldstein

In high school, I ran cross-country and track. Unlike football and soccer, where athletes must work together, running is more of an individual sport. One sport fosters independence, and the other dependence.

Raising personal support is like one of those sports that focuses upon the individual. By its nature, raising your support propels you into isolation. You can feel like you are on your own, and this saps your energy and motivation for working on your funding.

Our human nature is pulled toward independence. But as believers, we are to intentionally move from independence to dependence, from isolation to community.

Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV) instructs us, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” The writer acutely understands how vital it is to be connected with each other. Community creates a life-giving environment where we can push and encourage each other to persevere to do the right things.

Feeling alone and isolated while working on your support (or even thinking about it) is common to many Christian workers, so much so that some tend to procrastinate and ignore working on their funding. Some give it half-hearted attempts, but never fully get to the task of getting it done and getting to full support so they can freely minister to others.

Acknowledging our need to be connected to others while working on our support empowers the discouraged and turns procrastination brought about by fear into courage. Joining together in community with others acts as a catalyst for ideas. It helps you reject the lies of the enemy and embrace the truths of God. Community becomes a way for Christians to embrace that God created us to be dependent upon one another, not independent. And this can be powerful when applied to MPD (Ministry Partner Development).

For several years, we have been asking our coaches to create ways for their staff to come together in community to work on their support. Dave Dickens, one of the men on my leadership team who oversees MPD for our Campus Ministry, tells our staff, “Friends don’t let friends raise support alone.” Each week he practices this by facilitating a group of ten men who call themselves “The Fellowship of the Fully Funded.” They meet for about an hour where they discuss something from the Word, encourage each other from their MPD experiences, and share their MPD priorities, resources and best practices. They always pray for each other.

In other parts of our ministry, small groups are getting together for dinner once per week or per month. They share ideas over dinner, pray, and then individually work on their MPD. At the end, they come back together and over dessert share what each person accomplished.

Others are meeting in small groups by conference calls or in chat rooms to pray for each other and share about their MPD progress.

One new staff member summed up well how community in MPD works, “I think the biggest way in which the staff MPD Huddles have helped me is showing me that I'm not alone in this, and that my experience isn't all that unique. It's been nice to reconnect with friends from staff training, share how things are going, and give each other feedback.”

Community can fuel your enthusiasm for working on your support, or as Hebrews says, “spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”

FEBRUARY 2011

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This Month's
SRS Article Writer

Seven Ways to Raise Support in Community

Contributed by Campus Crusade MPD Coaches

1. Meet in a small group (6-10) weekly or monthly to have dinner, work on MPD, and then have dessert.
• Pray before and after you work on MPD.
•During the meal, each shares his/her plans for the evening. Since everyone knows they will be sharing what they will be working on that evening, it implies they will need to come with a plan. Sharing also creates accountability.
• Work on a skill (mail merge, TntMPD, etc.)
• Share best practice ideas.
• Have a themed MPD time to work on things such as end of the year asks, addressing Christmas cards, summer missions ask, writing thank you notes.
• Do a “call-o-rama,” where the focus of the time is making phone calls for appointments. Everyone has a goal of how many people to call that evening.
• After individually working on MPD, come back together for dessert to share about what God accomplished.
• Instead of an individual time to work on MPD, watch or listen to an MPD talk; review one of your ministry’s MPD resources.

2. Use a video chat room for your staff to meet, share, and pray. Just being in the chat room helps fight off isolationism. The coach compiles prayer requests and emails them to the group.

3. As a coach, use an every other week conference call to meet with a group of (3-5) new staff. The new staff create accountability for each other and sharpen their skills as they share their good and even bad practices. Practice a skill and critique each other.

4. One new staff member struggles to dial the phone. Once a week, he drives 30-40 minutes to meet another new staff member. They each make phone calls, encourage one another, and pray for each other throughout the evening.

5. Use Google Docs for your community group where each one records his/her “go-to" verses for MPD and another one to record your goals and progress toward those goals.

6. Text staff friends with prayer requests before appointments and phone calls.

7. For those in an office, meet once per week for two hours to work on MPD. Pray beforehand and debrief at the end of the time.

Betty Barnett YWAM	Ellis Goldstein Campus Crusade	Scott Morton The Navigators	Mike Riggins North American Mission Board	Steve Shadrach SRS Editor The Bodybuilders

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