The missionary newsletter is a vital connection with home churches
Missionaries forget to write and send their monthly Missionary newsletter. It slips their mind because they are just too busy with everything else. Among all of the other things they have to do, they forget this all important aspect of their ministry. It is a low sinking feeling of the heart that a missionary gets when they are visiting one of their supporting churches and someone says, “We haven’t gotten a newsletter from you for months now.” What felt like one month of forgetting to send a Newsletter can easily turn into two, three or four months without even realizing it.
Just because the Missionary forgets to send one, doesn’t mean that the church folk will forget receiving one. That being said, most church folk will reciprocate forgetting about the missionary if he forgets them. They do this in the way of sending financial support to the missionary. For the most part, missionaries are “out of sight, out of mind”, unless they are being prayed for. It is human nature to tend to not think about people with whom we don’t communicate; the more we hear from them, the more we think about them. So the church folk have much more to work with when they hear from the missionary regularly.
When the missionary forgets to send the newsletter, in essence, he is forgetting to talk to the people who are supporting him. When he writes the newsletter, he is reminded of the good times he had with different people in that church who is now supporting him. He is being reminded that he is accountable to those who have entrusted him to bring the gospel to the country he is called. It is good therapy to send the newsletter regularly to the supporters of the work.
The newsletter is a lifeline of communication with the support that missionaries need. Suffice it to say, “The more that people think about a missionary, the more they will be supported.” I had a pastor tell me one time, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” He was encouraging me to send them a newsletter and to send it regularly. Although somewhat crude, this statement truly says it all. The more that people hear from the missionary, they more they think about him. The more they think about him, the more likely he is to be supported with prayer and finances. When you don’t send the newsletter, people don’t think about you as much. They are thinking about the missionaries who do send a newsletter. The most important that missionaries forget is the send a newsletter on time and regularly.