What Do You Do With All That Money?

I was asked twice again yesterday. It's a pretty common question, actually. Just how do we allocate our missions spending at KACC? How do we know where and whom to support? Do we have a structure, a plan, a strategy for our financial investments throughout the world?

There's a lot to be said about this topic, more than I will cover in this post alone. But I do think it's important to share the overarching support strategy of our Global Missions Team.

It begins with a statistic I heard back in 1990. It was that as much as 95% of all money designated for missions in U.S. churches never leaves the U.S. 95%! How can that be?! But when I considered the kinds of projects that end up in the missions category (camps, Bible colleges, scholarships, local church planting, etc.) I realized that this number just might be pretty accurate. I thought then that if I were to ever be responsible for a church's missions budget, I would make sure that such a number could never apply to us.

When I arrived at KACC eight years ago, I found a healthy missions budget (10% of the giving) that was spread throughout the world, but without a lot of specific intent or strategy. During my time here, we have refined our thinking about how we are going to make a world of diffrence. First, we determined that at least 2/3 of our budget would go to regular support of missionaries and projects (the remaining 1/3 to be used for our ministry's local expenses- benevolence, operations, urban, etc.). We then chose to use Jesus' words in Acts 1:8b as our model for financial distribution:

"...and you will be my witnesses, in Jeruslam, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

We chose to align our support along these four quadrants, with present-day designations for the areas Jesus mentioned, and a percentage of our giving assigned to each area:
> Jerusalem= California (local)- 15%
> Judea= the United States (national)- 15%
> Samaria= the western world- 25%
> ends of the earth= the rest of the world- 45%

Our current missionaries/projects were then placed in their corresponding geographical "pockets" and (unbelievably) everyone/thing fit perfectly! Now we have a global paradigm that helps us maintain a balance in our giving, and allows us to actively seek out new opportunities when we have the opening to do so. It's not a perfect system, by any means, but it does give us discernible shape and tangible guidelines as we seek God's direction for our church's involvement, whether around the corner or around the world.

Jesus told us in Matthew 6:21 that where we place our treasure is where we'll find our hearts. At KACC we want to have a heart for the world, just as God does. So we're trying to making sure our treasure is invested, not only outside our front door, but throughout the earth.

After all, don't you suppose it's all just outside God's front door?