Subsidies and growth
Following up on Thinking about money… again, I recalled some research by Wayne Allen on the relationship between financial subsidies and the growth of an indigenous church in Indonesia.
Wayne discovered that the impact of foreign subsidies for national church workers resulted in the decline or plateau of the national church. Wayne Allen provided three reasons for this inverse relationship between outside subsidies and the growth of an indigenous movement:
1. Loss of lay involvement. Subsidies resulted in a move away from lay leadership to a reliance on professional clergy.
2. Loss of focus. Workers gave less attention to evangelism in unreached villages and more attention to meeting the needs of existing congregations in line with the expectation of the foreign mission agency providing the funds.
3. Loss of devotion. As the people realized that the mission was funding their pastor they lost a sense of ownership and came to see the pastor as the missionary’s hired hand. The pastor gave greater attention to pleasing the mission agency and seeking salary increases.
I keep bumping up against this principle. Dynamic movements discover that God has placed the resources in the harvest.
