This is an area that I’ve wrestled with for a long time with populations far poorer (in one sense) than any we find in North America. My definition of “self-sustaining” is rather nuanced for this reason. The difficulty I tend to have is with both words. What is the “self” for a local congregation? What does it mean to “sustain”? These words derive their meaning by understanding the boundaries around the works.

In the DR I worked with illegal Haitian immigrants that when they worked made between $50 and $100 a month. As a mission we refused to pay pastor wages, something that the nationals felt very differently about. Right before I came to the field the pastors when “on strike” against the mission. That moment in the history of the DR field was a curious one but illuminating one. In that moment lots of relationships and assumptions became apparent and in my mind it raise more questions than I can ever answer. The nations quite rightly saw that North Americans could easily afford to provide salaries to national pastors who often lived on the desperate level of survival even for the very basics. Sick pastors would got to the doctor and the doctor would recommend “more food”. It was that basic. At the same time the missionaries understood that creating the expectation of permanent dependent subsidy for the most basic level of church existence is long term poison for the church. This is a learning that the church has had to relearn many many times throughout the centuries. If CRWM offered salaries of $100 a month to pastors it would have destroyed the ICRRD (Iglesia Cristiana Reformada de la Republica Dominicana). One of the learnings I’ve come away from my experience in the DR with was that the money itself isn’t really the issue, it’s how we think about it and the value we invest into it and the kinds of relationships it creates.

What I look for in terms of “self-sufficiency” in a work is that their leadership (which hopefully in time goes from the missionary to a local leadership group) has the initiative and responsibility to acquire for itself the funding it needs for sustainability and future growth. To me that means that while not all of the dollars needs to come from the pockets of the people who are benefiting directly from the local ministry (although some of that very much has to happen) but that the sphere of those who benefit is broader than the local ministry. There can be external funding partners or donors who can sustain a ministry long term but in a sense that local ministry also finds a way to minister to the donors through their partnership. I think that this kind of understanding helps develop healthy ministries and helps reduce unhealthy dependency as well as resource sharing between communities and individuals of different financial resources.

Culturally we are very comfortable with market metaphors. I think that markets can be very helpful and powerful but that they aren’t God. Markets and ministries in fact don’t always produce the best results. Classis and other ecclesiastical structures can provide a helpful, added layer here. Some leaders are natural fund raises either by giftedness or by virtue of more affluent networks they were simply born into. That’s a wonderful things, but unless we have other structures that invest financial resources outside of natural networks we will tend to perpetuate the “haves and have-nots” situations and not make progress in seeking the Jerusalem-Acts standard of “no poor among them”.

What I am looking for is a layered approach that uses natural networks and also intentional leadership networks (which is what a classis is) to do a better job of supporting diverse ministries in a diversity of economic communities. We want to do this in a way where we see churches among the affluent and churches among the poor and where in a sense all are “equal” in that they are self-sustaining even if money is flowing between them in a healthy way. The broader body of Christ is blessed when the financially wealthy and financially poor can make contributions of whatever it is they have been blessed with for the benefit of the whole body of Christ.