Funding or Prayer: What Are You Raising?

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By Luke Cawley

How’s your budget looking? Do you have all the money you need to fund your ministry for the coming year? If the cash isn’t there, do you have a plan to try and raise the cash that makes your work possible?

I am thinking a lot about money these days. I was recently involved in setting up a new organization called Chrysolis. I am hoping to move with my wife and kids to Romania soon and begin developing the work of Chrysolis in Eastern and Central Europe. Like most such pioneering work it needs money to make it happen. We don’t need piles of cash, but we would like enough to house and feed our family, and also to cover the general costs of our work. So, I do think about money fairly frequently and, like you with your ministry, I do have some thoughts about how we might be able to raise it.

Raising Prayer

Recently, though, I have begun to ponder whether I should perhaps also apply the methods of fundraising and financial planning to other areas of ministry. This thought started brewing a while back when I had dinner with an old ministry associate of Billy Graham. He told me that the turning point in Graham’s evangelistic fruitfulness came when he began to cultivate prayer support as intentionally as he grew his financial base. Once he had a core group of people committed to praying for him regularly and intensely, increasing numbers of people began to come to faith through his speaking.

I know at the moment, based on current levels of financial giving, that we need 100 people to become regular supporters of Chrysolis. We currently have 51 donors. So… in one way or another 49 more people need to choose to partner with us financially. Interestingly, as I ate dinner with my wise mentor, he suggested – without me telling him about the finances of Chrysolis – that I needed to identify and invite 80 to 100 people to become the intercessory backbone of our ministry. These shouldn’t, he said, simply be people who receive my prayer letters. They should instead be a group of people whose prayers are as sacrificial/personal a commitment to me and my ministry as are the gifts of those who give financially.

Since that conversation, I see this theme of intentionally developing financial support wherever I look. My wife and I are currently reading the biography of James Fraser, the missionary to China who died in his 30s. Fraser founded a church planting movement amongst the Lisu people which is still thriving and growing 75 years after his death. James Fraser traces his evangelistic breakthrough with this unreached people group to a regular prayer meeting formed by a few of his friends and supporters back in England. He frequently sent them detailed and heartfelt letters outlining the exact challenges about which he most needed prayer, and updating them on the progress and disappointments which were occurring in the work.

None of this is to say that finances and prayer are separate matters. Last weekend I was in Romania formalising some of Chrysolis’ partnerships with evangelistic organizations out there. A friend of mine, who has been a full-time cross-cultural missionary for around twenty years, told me that two years ago she realized her need for a group of core prayer supporters. She informed me that the two years since she did this have been the only period of her entire ministry in which her income has exceeded her budgetary requirements. She sees prayer as key to this breakthrough.

So, I hope your plans work out financially, just as I hope that we are able to press ahead with our move to Romania. But I am also beginning to form plans for creating a strong base of prayer for our work. Maybe you could do the same for your ministry or perhaps even become one of the people who prays intently for the ministry of others. If you’re struggling to find someone to pray for, I’m sure any of us on the Release The Ape blog would love to have you standing with us in prayer! Just drop us an email. Mine’s: luke@chrysolis.org