Should Missionaries Remain Members of Their Sending Churches?

Imagine this: a couple walks through premarital counseling with their pastor where their pastor emphasizes the importance of leaving and cleaving and the two becoming one. Nevertheless, after the wedding and honeymoon, the couple begin to feel pressure from both of their loving families. One side wants the new couple to spend every holiday with them. The other side of the family counsels them on how to manage their finances and make decisions. This puts pressure on the young couple. They don’t want to let either family down. They may have had a ceremony and changed homes, but they struggle to live as one with each other.

Even with the best of intentions, the same thing happens with churches and missionaries. Churches raise up and send missionaries to the field but keep them as members on their rolls. Churches most often do this out of love for them. However, keeping missionaries as members at the home church can hurt the missionary’s ability to meaningfully join a church on the field. The missionary often feels more responsibility to their “home” church than their new church. They may have had a commissioning service and changed locations, but they struggle to live as a part of the body where they are now located.

Thus follows a story about why and how we removed seven of our 65 members and identified them as missionaries instead.

Our church was planted fourteen years ago. We’re small. We don’t own a building. We meet in a YMCA every Lord’s Day to pray, read, sing, preach, and “see” (through the ordinances) God’s Word. When we come together, we often pray for the nations. We also give 20 percent of our offerings to missions. By God’s grace, he has allowed us to send eight of our members to the nations. What a sweet gift for a small church!

With each of the missionaries we have sent, we worked hard to pray and prepare them for life on the field. We also highlighted the importance of joining a local church early in their missionary efforts. It took some time and effort, but each one joined a healthy local church in their new context.

Cloudy, Complicated, and Confusing

So why did we keep their membership? Well, at the time it seemed like the kind and supportive thing to do. We didn’t want them to feel like they were not part of our church anymore. The question is, would we have done this for someone in business or some other vocation who moved overseas? No, we wouldn’t.

This discrepancy inadvertently clouded our membership covenant, complicated their new membership covenant, and confused church membership for the watching world.

For example, our covenant requires each member to gather with our church regularly, submit to our elders, meet with a group, serve the needs of the church, partake in the Lord’s Supper, and many other things. What do all these have in common? They require a member to attend. Obviously, a missionary on the other side of the world can’t attend and, therefore, can’t adhere to our covenant. There’s also the missionary’s new local church and pastors to consider. How could our missionaries join a new church if they remained members in ours? Our decision to retain our missionaries’ memberships limited the ministry their new churches could do for them and with them.

I asked a large group of national and international pastors about their views on missionary membership. Should it stay with the sending church? Should they have dual membership? Or should they only have membership in the new church? Interestingly, many encouraged missionaries to join a local church, thus removing their membership from their sending church.

I was greatly helped by these conversations and especially edified by Caleb Greggsen’s article, “Who’s in Charge? Authorities in the Life of a Missionary.”

I brought all this information to our elders, and we discussed and prayed through it. Eventually, we were convinced that removing our missionaries’ membership was the best thing we could do for them, us, and the watching world. We would still recognize them as missionaries sent out from us. They would remain accountable to us as workers, but no longer as members.

We reached out to all our missionaries. Interestingly, because we valued membership and worked with them to find healthy local churches, it came as no surprise that we would remove them as members of our church. Designating them as missionaries instead honored them.

Lastly, we reached out to our members to inform them of the discussion between the elders, missionaries, and outside counselors. Again, we received no pushback or questions. We proposed removing them from our membership and designating them as missionaries. The church unanimously affirmed the vote.

This process formalized a healthier, church-centered approach to supporting our missionaries. We had always checked in, prayed for, and shared updates. But the transition from covenant member to missionary changed the way our church supported them. While we entrust them to the Lord and to their local church, we found ways to continue to support them from afar. Each of our small groups adopted a missionary to check in and regularly pray for them. These groups even sent Christmas packages overseas to them because they desired for the missionaries to know they were loved. Rather than being listed as members in our directory, we designated an entire page to each of our missionaries.

Of course, special scenarios and circumstances will come up that need discernment, grace, and flexibility. What about a missionary serving where there is no local church? What happens when they come home on furlough? If missionaries move from one international context to another, who helps them find a local church? These are good questions, but they don’t negate the importance and clarity that local membership offers to everyone involved.

Holding on to our missionaries’ membership muddied the waters for everyone involved. We had become like those loving parents who find it so hard to let their kids leave and cleave. By finally letting go, we saw blessings come to our church, our missionaries, and their new churches.