Funding the Family Business, published by Stewardship for Christian workers, is packed with 25 chapters covering almost everything you need to know to establish a support base.
Early chapters look at the principles of giving: "If you are going to receive financial support, someone needs to give it, and because you can’t receive until they give, it is important to understand what the Bible says about being a giver before exploring what it means to be a receiver". The clear message is that because "it is more blessed to give than receive", support raisers are helping others to experience God’s blessing and reticence to approach potential supporters can deny them this privilege.
Later chapters deal more with the practicalities of finding supporters and asking for their commitment: "You want to make sure that those on your support team know why you want them to be your supporters, what being a supporter will involve and how they can be the best help to you in following Gods' call on your life".
As a workbook it is packed with stories, insight and exercises that will inspire, inform and guide in the ministry journey.
Testimonies
"Our support was declining and we were considering quitting. Myles' intervention and teaching completely transformed our view of support raising and set us on a fresh course with faith and vision"
"When we started looking into serving overseas, we vowed we would never raise our own support. But God had other ideas and soon we found ourselves reluctantly doing so. We then attended a Myles Wilson seminar and our reluctance was transformed into enthusiasm. We haven't looked back since and wouldn't change from it now - even if we were given the option."
"Several years ago, my wife and I were receiving 70% of our target annual budget. We were in a financial hole, and could see no way up and out. I'm delighted to say that, with Myles as our coach, we were able to get to 95% of our budget within 6-9 months. Myles was a wonderful "coach" with a wealth of experience in this field. He not only has a firm grasp of biblical principles that lie behind the whole area of support raising, but has the personal qualities that a coach needs - encouraging all the time, but also prepared to confront and call for change when needed. He nurtured our faith in the Lord's ability to provide, and is a great teacher. He was for us a messenger from God, and we thank God for Him.
"Our mission has benefited enormously from Myles' training of both staff and mission Partners. We have learnt not only how to go about raising support but why we want to do it. Our aim is to develop partnerships between ourselves and churches, mission partners and the projects and ministries in which we serve, both here and abroad, and Myles has helped us to achieve that much more effectively."
"We have published a number of Myles' articles on giving and receiving in our magazine and have received more requests to re-use these in other church and charity publications than any other resource.
"For well over a decade we have used Myles Wilson to train our candidates in support raising. His biblical, practical and enthusiastic approach has been a great help to many new candidates who can often feel unsure if they will ever be able to raise the amounts they need to follow God's call into mission. However, despite some members coming from small churches with very limited finances, in the years Myles has trained our staff we have never had anyone not go to the field because they couldn't raise their support. The foundation that Myles has helped us lay is to see support raising as a genuine way of getting churches, friends and family of our members involved in mission and as a blessing to the supporters where it is more blessed to give than receive."
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