Wise Use of Money!

"Western money must be used wisely in world missions in order not to create damaging dependency. The assumption that the West is the banker for world missions comes from the period when Western Christians became the paymasters for missions. This went along with a condescending attitude toward non-Western Christians, which spread the disease of dependency. Dependency caused non-Western Christians to assume wrongly that they had nothing worthwhile to contribute to world missions. The apostle Paul knew that money must be used carefully for it to be a help and not a hindrance to God’s mission (1 Corinthians 9:14-16). Consequently, he created no dependency either on himself or on funds he could raise."

(Robert Reese. "Best Mission practices for the 21 century" Christian Standard, November 29,2009. pg844-45)

Economical Church Planting Is Possible! Abandoning Western Church Planting Ideas!

"Mission methods must be cheaply reproducible for maximum effectiveness. Americans have developed expensive methods that cannot be duplicated elsewhere. In fact, we have come to rely so heavily on borrowed money that many churches are seeing declining contributions to missions because of needing to repay loans for expensive buildings. Such luxuries did not characterize the early church, which had no buildings for the first couple of centuries. For Christianity to spread rapidly throughout the world, missions need to return to sustainable methods that do not require huge sums of money for success."

(Robert Reese. "Best Mission practices for the 21 century" Christian Standard, November 29,2009. pg844-45)