The following editorial appeared in a recent update from the Global Member Care Network. I thought it was worth commenting on.

Editorial:The Future of Member Care 

Is it true that missions is in decline and what impact does this have on Member Care?

At the 2016 Missio Nexus conference in Louisville, Kentucky USA, over 800 were in attendance. The conference focus was a renewed commitment to global missions. Then at the Mission Commission Conference, held by World Evangelical Alliance in Panama, there was 275 in attendance from an array of nations. The focus was poly-centric missions.

In summary, there is a renewed call to the global church to its global mission. What is in flux is, who are the senders as the mission force is becoming multi-national, ministry roles are broader to address evangelism and social ministry needs, and how mission is financed is in major flux with decreased mission contributions. How to finance missions will require creative thinking in the future.

What is known is, the future mission of the Church will carry us to frontier missions that will require a [sic] enriched continuous care of workers. Mission structures that support ‘how we do mission’ may be in flux, but the greatest days of Member Care lay ahead as new regions are reached with the good news.

Roni Pruitt (GMCN – Executive Committee Member) [emphasis mine]I have written often about the need to create new funding strategies for missions.

Rather than trying harder to make a broken system yield greater results, I believe we need to do the harder work of devising new strategies.

Strategies that require a greater degree of buy-in from every partner.

Strategies that move away from the concept of support…

to the idea of collaboration.

Many other factors affect the realization that “enriched, continuous care” will be required in the future.

While great strides have been made in the realm of member care…

I believe we have largely been involved in catching up …

to the accumulated needs acquired over decades of inadequate care.

One change I believe we need to make is away from the term “member care.”

It implies that sending agencies are the primary (perhaps sole) providers

of the attention and resources necessary for keeping workers on the field.

I believe that is the responsibility of the entire body of Christ…

and until we mobilize that largely untapped asset…

we will continue to play catch up, at best.

I will, no doubt, write more about both of these topics in days to come. For now I’d be interested in hearing what you think. If the best way to predict the future is to create it, what would your creation look like?