Pastor Matthew Stuckey here from Verity Baptist Church Philippines, and I wanted to make a
quick video expressing why individuals or laymen of churches should consider supporting missions
or missionaries.
I made an earlier video talking about why church leaders and churches should consider
supporting missionaries, but this is geared toward laymen of churches.
Now what God requires of us is to give 10% of our money.
The Bible says, Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty
of man.
You do not have to go above 10%, and quite honestly, for most people, giving 10% of your
money probably feels you, makes you feel like you're stretched very thin financially, and
that you're not able to go above that.
I completely understand that, and I'm not trying to compel you to go above that if
that's the way that you feel.
Let me just say that when I was in West Virginia, when I lived in West Virginia,
I went to a few different good IFB, what we'd say old IFB churches, when I was there,
and they had a huge emphasis on missions.
We would have our faith promise missions that would be done at the beginning of the
year, where you would pledge a certain amount of money that would be used to support
the missionaries that they had.
We had a long list of missionaries that we supported on a prayer letter, and so we
would pray for them every month, and most of these people I never met.
But then I started to meet a lot of these missionaries when I was there.
Some would be coming back on furlough, then we had other missionaries that were on
deputation, and we would meet prospective missionaries as well.
And what I saw is a lot of these missionaries believed in repentance of sins for salvation.
We would always try to get the missionaries to come out soul winning with us.
A lot of them would not come soul winning, and if they did, a lot of times they just
did not know what they were doing.
This is not to state that all the missionaries were bad or that all old IFB missionaries
are bad.
I don't believe that.
I would say that there are a lot of what we would call muchinaries, not missionaries.
And for me personally, as there was a big emphasis on missions, and there was missions
conferences I went to, sermons preached about that, I felt compelled in my heart,
especially as you see videos from other countries where you see people that are struggling
financially, that are not blessed like I was in the US, and a lot of things we
kind of take for granted, and then other people really starving and really struggling,
and you really feel the need to try to reach out to these countries and support good churches.
But the thing was, I thought most of the missionaries were people that I just wouldn't
support, people that I, a lot of them I'm not sure that were even saved, and then
a lot of them I just don't really think were doing the work.
So I didn't give to the missions program because I didn't want my money to be wasted.
And so this video is kind of geared toward people such as you that might be watching
this.
When it comes to missionaries and missions, Baptist churches often have a huge emphasis
on missions, and praise God for that, to have a huge emphasis to go out reaching the
lost. But unfortunately, a lot of these missionaries are just not people that are
worthy of being supported.
And so what I would say to you is this, that if you feel that way, where you want to give
to missions and your church has a missions program, but you feel like the money is being
wasted, what I would recommend is that you find a missionary that you do support, find
someone that you do agree with, someone who has, you know, Paul said, now is fully
known my doctrine. So number one, make sure they have the same doctrine as you.
He also said that you've known my manner of life and make sure you know someone
who's very zealous for the things of God, standing up for the truth, someone that
you can actually believe in, someone that you can actually support.
And so what I would say is that, you know, if you're an individual person, I do
think that if you have a great church that is using the money very wisely to
support great missions, work or great soul winning events, then by all means, support
your local church and get involved in that.
But if you are in a situation of being a part of maybe an old IFB church or some
other type of Baptist church and you feel like the money is being wasted, what I
would say is, you know, find a missionary that you do support and support them
individually instead of, you know, going through your church, if that's the
situation you're in, find individually a missionary that you do support and reach out to
them. Anyways, thank you and God bless.