{"id":101,"date":"2018-08-14T01:07:32","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T01:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/?page_id=101"},"modified":"2025-10-17T01:10:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T01:10:52","slug":"how-to-be-a-better-donor","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/how-to-be-a-better-donor\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Be a Better Donor"},"content":{"rendered":"

(How to support your missionary or ministry in ways they will really appreciate!)
\nBy Cathy Douglass<\/p>\n

\"\"Like many of you, my husband and I support missionaries whom we know personally\u00a0and ministries that we are excited about. At the same time, I am the director of a ministry\u00a0which depends on income from donations. And as missionaries ourselves, we have been blessed for 38 years by ministry partners who have sustained us with their prayers and\u00a0generous financial support. We have great appreciation for those dear friends and\u00a0enthusiastic supporters whose faithfulness and concern for the lost keep them giving over\u00a0the years. Thus, I am in an unusual position to see the world of financial support for ministry from three angles. May I offer some insights on \u201cHow to be a better donor\u201d?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Don\u2019t wait to be asked. If\u00a0you\u2019re not already supporting a missionary or ministry,\u00a0or if you have room for more, seek one out and approach the leader\/missionary \u2013\u00a0s\/he will be delighted! The Macedonian believers \u201curgently pleaded\u201d with Paul for the privilege of giving (2 Cor. 8:1-5)!<\/li>\n
  2. Make regular pledges \u2013 annual, quarterly, or monthly. It feels good to give a gift\u00a0on the spot when a missionary comes to speak, but it feels even better to be an\u00a0ongoing investor in a worthy ministry and watch it grow. When you make regular\u00a0pledges, you minimize the time your missionary has to spend in support\u00a0development as opposed to evangelistic ministry. Think about it? Which would\u00a0you rather see a ministry leader do: Speak in churches raising support, or get out\u00a0in the field leading the workers and sharing the gospel?<\/li>\n
  3. Be faithful to your commitment. Missionaries and ministries have fixed\u00a0expenses regardless of whether the support comes through. Every month is an\u00a0exercise in trusting God to supply! What would you do if a quarter of your paycheck\u00a0were missing one month?<\/li>\n
  4. Don\u2019t hop around every year to a new ministry. Ministries adjust their budgets\u00a0and expectations to the growing income, and it\u2019s not very easy to cut back on\u00a0project commitments once things are underway.<\/li>\n
  5. Give a relationship as well as money. Missionaries love to have a relationship\u00a0with their donors, both individuals and churches. Can I call you up for an urgent\u00a0prayer need? How can we pray for you, our supporters? If the ministry you support\u00a0has hundreds of donors, this may not be easy, but most will want to make the\u00a0donor-ministry relationship as close as possible.<\/li>\n
  6. If you give through your church, inform the missionary. A single check from\u00a0the church doesn\u2019t tell us who cared enough to give, and who prays for us! We\u00a0hope you won\u2019t just \u201cgive and forget.\u201d We\u2019d like to send you our prayer letters and\u00a0ministry reports. Remember, we want relationship whenever possible.<\/li>\n
  7. Make use of your missionary in your church. Missionaries love to share their\u00a0passion for the Great Commission with anyone and everyone. We have areas of\u00a0expertise which might bless your church\u2019s programs. Call on your missionary or\u00a0ministry leader to speak to children\u2019s Sunday school classes, VBS, youth groups, retreats, women\u2019s events, or prayer meetings. We consider it a part of our calling to minister in our supporting churches as well as among the lost.<\/li>\n
  8. Be informed and pray. Make sure you receive the prayer letters, read them, and pray through them often during the month. Pray with your children too. Then tell your missionary that! I\u2019m so encouraged when I get responses from those who read Naya Jeevan\u2019s Breakthrough or our personal \u201cDouglass Diary\u201d prayer letters saying, \u201cWow, God is doing great things, we\u2019re praying for you!\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Financial partnership with a missionary or ministry can be a rewarding experience.\u00a0Keep these points in mind for the maximum blessing working both ways!<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    (How to support your missionary or ministry in ways they will really appreciate!) By Cathy Douglass Like many of you, my husband and I support missionaries whom we know personally\u00a0and ministries that we are excited about. At the same time, I am the director of a ministry\u00a0which depends on income from donations. And as missionaries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-101","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"_cloudsearch_visibility":"0"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515,"href":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/101\/revisions\/1515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nayajeevan.org\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}