Summary: This page explains my views as to why "regular" mission boards are not biblical
(Reason number 6 of 6). For the calling page, see Why we are not under a board.

Competition between mission boards and missionaries for mission funds

by Missionary David R Cox

It is interesting that a missionary that is starting or pastoring a local church on the foreign mission many times has a great deal of problems trying to raise $5000 for a new vehicle or $20,000 for a church building on the field, but a mission board can raise from the same churches 1 or 2 million dollars for a new office complex for themselves. This is a great problem in missions.

The bottom line is this, there is a very limited and reduced number of fundamental or biblical churches out there, and they are all 100% taxed when it comes to missions dollars. Missionaries are in competition with other missionaries for these mission dollars. But even this situation is not as bad as when it comes to mission boards. They literally have several 365 days a year fund raisers that go from church to church to raise funds not for their missionaries but for the home office.

All donations, 100%, that go to the mission headquarters come from churches and individuals donating to missions. So a mission board is in competition with every missionary out there. The bottom line here is that a mission board will rebuke their missionaries if they come to states and stay there for years going from church to church raising funds, and buy mobile homes or travel trailers to do this, and spend all their money they raise on expensive equipment such as $5,000 displays, and remote control video projection equipment, etc. But the mission boards themselves have no limits on the amount of money they spend, (the tithes and offerings of God's people) in order for them to raise their own operating expenses.

Mission boards staff rarely preach anything except promoting missions (which means promoting themselves. When it comes to being active in a local church, likewise they are already in the ministry and cannot sacrifice from "their ministry". They simply have little use for local churches except to suck the blood from them.

As if it was not bad enough as this situation is, the same mission board that competes with their own missionaries for missions dollars turns around and nickel and dimes the missionaries to death. Often they find ways to charge the missionaries for anything and everything that is possible. As per their own self imposed rules, they have to write a thank to every donor that gives the missionary money, and send them a yearly summary. Each of these letters which they say is necessary costs the missionary $1 to $2. Then the turn around and impose emergency fund, travel fund, furlough fund, retirement fund, college fund, etc. All of these funds they try to get into their bank accounts and not give the missionary any interest off of this money. Then they turn around and loan the missionary's own money back to him at commercial rates of interest.

On the field they take the position that any money that goes through their hands is in their control. Churches in the states donate money for the building of churches on the foreign mission field, or for Bibles or literature, and they loan the money (at high interest rates) to the missionary instead of giving it to him. If the people who donated it for missions as a free will gift with no strings attached only knew that their donations were being given and manipulated by the mission board, and because of how they do this, the missionaries look for other sources because of this, then they would be greatly angered.

But what about those missionaries that fall for the mission board's loans with strings attached? It is common practice today among modern mission boards that the church building on the field is possession of the mission board and not the people who are the members of that local church. In other words if there is a falling out between the board and the missionary, then the local church has to abandon the building. That is even though that local church may raised among themselves half the amount of the building, and may have put forth all of the labor to build the building.

What's more the mission boards regularly set themselves up as judge and jury over the affairs of that local church. In other words, any practice or doctrine that the board doesn't like, they have a clause that they can remove the pastor or force the church out of their own building. Is this the way God intended in the New Testament? I think not. Mission boards are not even hinted at in the New Testament.