WHAT DO MISSIONARIES DO?
Part III | Support Schedules, Taxes, & Onboarding
If you missed Part I and Part II of this series, I covered a number of topics ranging from:
The starting point for every mission
Some practical ways to process and confirm calling
Factors that determine mission work
Good questions to ask a mission agency upfront
Ordering your priorities
Candidate Orientation + Cross-Cultural Training
Lessons learned during fundraising
Visa overview and practical tips
Try something for me. Go to google and type "How to become a missionary" into the search bar. You'll get hits from mission agencies at the top of the list and see some blogs and videos. Still, you won't find much discussion involving the intricacies related to the process readily available. I hope that this series of articles will give you enough information about what is involved, what to expect, and what it takes (cost and sacrifice) to make an informed decision that will no doubt alter the trajectory of your life. Remember, as followers of Christ, we are not merely called to make a living; we are called to make a difference.
Before moving on to the topic of work on the mission field, I want to circle back to cover a couple of rarely discussed areas of preparation:
What to do about student loans and consumer debts
Monthly Funding (support schedule aka support grid) and Taxes
Student Loans & Other Debts
The good news is that most mission agencies will work with you even if you have a student loan. However, depending on the size of your debt or your monthly payments, your vetting process to become a commissioned missionary may be affected. If you're above the threshold either in the total amount owed or the amount paid each month, you may need to speak with a financial advisor to figure out the best way to pay down your student loan debt to meet certain limits in the shortest amount of time.
Our specific mission agency required that student loan payments be less than $350 per month. As a household, they also required that we zero out all credit lines, car payments, and other debts (such as a mortgage). These payments are considered consumer debts that need to be zeroed out—save for student loans. Hearing this may already deter many individuals, couples, or families. Still, our encouragement to you is that the Lord will empower you to shed off any financial weight/burden in preparation for answering a call to mission. When we look back at our journey, we see how fruitful it was to get rid of our credit cards, sell our two vehicles, and downsize our belongings (clothes, furniture, and other stuff).
Support Schedule & Taxes
A mission agency will usually determine the amount you will need to raise in ongoing monthly support and will most likely throw in a specific itemized launch budget to go with it. The monthly support will be determined by a combination of economic factors, including the currency exchange rate, cost of living, and other ministry-related expenses that will have prescribed rates and limits. The breakdown of allocated funds will also include:
Medical and dental coverage
Disability and life insurance
Workers Compensation
403b retirement contributions
Becoming a missionary means that you are, in fact, clergy, whether you have a commissioned, licensed, or ordained status. Having clergy status means you will be entitled to a non-taxable housing allowance (aka parsonage) which will be separate from your monthly salary.
Missionaries and ministers have a sort of hybrid tax liability. Certain agencies will require a 1099 (independent contractor), and others may have you on their books as a W-2 employee. However, in either case, you are liable for SECA taxes (self-employment tax = 15.3% social security and medicare). Work with your agency's finance department to ensure the proper amount of taxes to withhold each quarter or each month, and work out who will make those payments to the IRS. Will that be you or the agency?
Sending Team
In the second installment of the series, we briefly discussed what it means to have a Sending Church as a prerequisite to becoming a missionary. Many churches will have multiple missionary units out on the field at any given point. To go along with your church, my wife and I highly recommend building a Sending Team specific to your mission. This small group can consist of close friends, peers, mentors, and sometimes family. They will aim to provide accountability, counsel, and moral support when things get difficult on the field (and it will be challenging at times). Part of their aim will also be to assist with things like setting up prayer meetings and owning communications (newsletters, postcards, thank you cards, campaign mailers, etc.). In some cases, they can also offer support with logistics and reentry back to your passport country. A Sending Team will rightly see themselves as "senders" and you (your spouse and children) as the one(s) being "sent." In truth, you are all part of one team, with everyone doing their part to sustain the mission work abroad.
What does life look like on the mission field during the first year?
Cautionary Principle to take with you on the Mission Field
It's crucial to maintain your priorities concerning your relationships, not just with the specific mission but with each key part of your oikos. Oikos are the various social spheres you have in your life that consist of people you interact with daily or weekly. Your household, your neighborhood, your workplace, and any other place or space in which you dwell or spend time.
Relationship with God
Relationship with spouse
Relationship with children
Relationship with the church
Relationship with the lost
Questions
Are you on mission now, or are you exporting a ministry or service that you are not currently undertaking, engaging in, or practicing right now? What does your devotional life with the Lord look like? What is the state of your household? Who are you evangelizing and discipling here? In other words, where are you investing your time, talent, and treasure presently as you consider going on and preparing for a mission abroad?
Furthermore, it's easy to confuse (#5) your relationship with the lost with (#1) your relationship with God. Missionaries can struggle with this aspect of identity, sometimes equating their sacrifices for the sake of mission work with their right standing and intimate relationship with the Lord. Similarly, ministers can mix up their performance in (#4) relationship with the church with (#1) their relationship with God. If you want to know your relationship with God, then look no further than Christ, Himself (Colossians 3:3). Remember, our Heavenly Father no longer sees us as we once were, but as a new creation in Christ.
Onboarding for our First Year on the Field
We arrived on the field in mid-December 2020 amid a global pandemic. After observing a mandatory quarantine period related to traveling to the UK, we had a couple of weeks to handle in-person logistics: meeting with our local team, Field Orientation, 1-on-1 walks with pastoral leadership, and picking up our Biometrics Residence Permits at a Post Office in Oxford city center. This occurred before the UK government announced that we would enter a third national lockdown in early January 2021. Meanwhile, Steph was pregnant with our second child (daughter) and about to enter the second trimester.
The mission agency had a structured settling process that we found challenging to work through (amidst the additional challenges we were facing). This involved scaling hours in four categories:
Transition
Participation
Personal Administration
Leadership
According to our agency, the first few months would require a higher number of hours devoted to transition tasks, such as contacting estate agents, moving into a rented property, working out utilities, purchasing furniture, getting used to public transportation, budgeting ($→£), onboarding with our team, contacting our General Practitioner, and receiving our intermodal container (shipment of your belongings). Transition hours would then scale down and taper off entirely to make room for more hours spent in leadership and participation. We were told by everyone we spoke to within the mission agency to pace our transition process properly with wisdom while both the agency and church facilitated and tailored our experience. We were told to temper the expectations of our supporters no matter how eager we were to get involved or our interest in hitting the ground running in ministry activity.
Vision & Field Work
The Lord led us with a vision to go on mission to England in three primary ways:
Establishing a home-based or third-space discipleship ministry.
Engaging in local student-oriented ministry.
Learning, supporting, and participating in cross-cultural ministry with a local church or non-profit organization.
As ambassadors of Christ, our aim is to make God's redemptive love and reconciliation known to the people He brings us to (2 Corinthians 5:18-21): secular atheists, other religious groups, others of nominal Christian faith, etc. We desired to do our part to fulfill Jesus' Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) by multiplying disciples and maturing Christ's church.
Curiously, we were never asked about our specific vision during the first year on the field. We weren't asked to share what we talked about when we sat across from individuals, couples, and families, asking them to come alongside us to support the mission as senders. I highly recommend over-communicating and ensuring that the field leader, area leader, cultural coach, landing coach, and the entire church/charity staff knows and understands the vision the Lord gave you for ministry on the mission field, keeping everyone on the same page and centered in the Lord’s will. One of the most valuable lessons we’ve learned is…
In Part IV, we'll discuss adjustments made and give a year one review by revisiting a list of "7 things that will undermine our settling" to see if it aged well.