What is "Faith Promise Missions"?
What is “Faith” Missions?
First Baptist Church participates in “faith” missions. As the word “faith” would suggest, it is doing missions in dependence on God. However, most methods of missions will claim to be “of faith.”
In missions terminology, “faith” missions is contrasted with those missionary societies or denominations that raise money, recruit, screen and approve candidates and then send them to the field as mission employees with a guaranteed salary.
In faith missions, the missionaries raise their own support through deputation in local churches. They are commissioned by a local church to go to the field of God’s calling on the belief (faith) that the churches supporting them will be able to fulfill their financial commitment of support.
Missionaries are supported individually and directly by the churches who designate funds to specific causes.
The process of deputation is an opportunity to develop personal and intimate relationship established between the missionary and the supporting local churches. Furloughing missionaries reaffirm this relationship by reporting to the churches “all that God hath done with them,” (Acts 14:27).
What is a Faith Promise Offering?
The Faith Promise Offering is scripturally based on the example of the churches of Europe and Asia Minor as they participated in benevolence giving for the financially deprived believers in Jerusalem. (I Cor. 16:1; II Cor. 8:1, 3-4, 10-12, 9:1, 6-8).
The Faith Promise Offering has been employed by mission-minded churches all over the world. The Philippian church was a mission-hearted church that contributed sacrificially to the ministry of the Apostle Paul. It was given the commendation and promise of the supply of every need in doing so (Phil. 4:10-19). Modern times have seen it flourish in evangelical churches of various denominations.
