A Force for Change

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about how best to express to those who financially sponsor our ministry the unique value of Grow2Serve . In the Christian non-profit world, it can be a little hard at times to legitimize a ministry that plays a “supporting” role. There are those out on the front lines, in the trenches, doing front line evangelism and church planting and reaching out directly to interact with unreached peoples in the world. These ministries are where the most exciting, romantic stories of wonder and miracles take place… out there. This is the work that we all know must be done! In contrast, the ministry of those supporting these warriors can seem… less important or less interesting to invest in. And why wouldn’t it? The reports from this side are much less grand, exotic, and desperate. The same kinds of adventures aren’t told of by those in the business of supporting our missionaries… from here.  

So I’ve been pondering how much of a difference our work actually makes for those “out there.” And I thought, why not start at the very least amount of difference we could actually be making. What if with the 300 or more people that we’ll be serving this year, we are able — at the very least — to effectively make a 1% difference in each individual? That is a 1% difference in terms of the productivity, the fruitfulness, and the overall health of any missionary that takes at least one of our courses on Grow2Serve. If there is even a 1% change for the better in 300 people, and you multiply that out, there could be a 300% difference in total. This might actually be something! With even this minimum change for the better, this would be the equivalent of sending three new missionaries out onto the field. And as a bonus, we also could see a global shift as missionaries worldwide connect, recharge from one another and from what they’re learning, and turn around and apply this energy and knowledge to their daily lives wherever they’re at. It’s similar to the cumulative effects of millions participating on a small scale in the GoFundMe campaigns floating around today. Or, as another example, the 300% mentality would be similar to the choice an author might make to sell 100,000 self-published books for $2 each on Amazon Kindle instead of doing all the work to get a publisher and have a significantly smaller number of books sold at the typical $12.99 per book price. When you start with such large numbers, even making a little bit of a difference with that number of individuals adds up to a worldwide positive force for change.

That’s what we’re trying to do here at Grow2Serve. We work to be a positive influence on the fruitfulness, productivity, and healthiness of missionaries across the world. Even if it’s only done one small step at a time, we hope that in the end the results will speak for themselves.