Would you charge a missionary to come to your church? Trent Cornwell Introduction  I have the great opportunity to be surrounded by missionaries and students training to be missionaries every day of my life. I see them through classes at the Our Generation Training Center and many simply just stop by to speak with Pastor Austin Gardner. I have the great privelege of being able to see life on both sides. I travel some to promote missions and spend the majority of my week working with a church staff. So I have some understanding of the difficulties of a church budget in a tight economy and a understanding of the frustrations that can come from living out of a suit case.
__________________________________________________________________________________ Facts The answer to the above question seems quite simple. Here is a question that may be a little tougher. Have you charged a missionary to come to your charge. Let us look at a very facts before you come to an answer. We have interviewed a few missionaries and former missionaries . There are many factors that keep us from getting a perfect understanding of our current situation. Here is some information that we gathered. 1986 (May to June) Gas: 93 cents a gallon. Average love offering: $89 2008 (May to June) Gas: $4.04 Average love offering: $124 Information taken from: www.ConsumeReport.com and www.1980sflashback.com __________________________________________________________________________________ Case Examples Let us look how this would affect our missionaries: In 1986 a missionary with 4 kids would travel 3 hours to a church and recieve a $89 love offering. If he got 25 miles to a gallon he would have spent approximately $7 in gas. Which is only about 8.5% of his love offering. In 2008 a missionary with 4 kids would travel 3 hours to a church and recieve a $124 love offering. If he got 25 miles to a gallon he would have spent approximately $30 in gas. Which is about 25% of his love offering. Neither percentage would seem to be much of a problem except you have to add food into the equation and in many cases they have to provide their own accomadations. Which means that a missionary could easily spend $30 in gas, $32 in food, $50 for a hotel. It could easily cost them $112 to get to the meeting. Which leaves them $12 to maintain their car and everything else associated just with them coming to your church. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Conclusion Would you charge a missionary to come to your church? Have you charged a missionary to come to your church? It doesn't matter if you had the ushers receive the money in an offering plate or if you allowed the machine in front of the gas station to do it. If you invite a missionary to your church and do not cover his expenses to get there then you have basically ask him to come at his own charge. I read about that in a book one time. (I Corinthians 9) | 
