TEC’s mission: We are laboring in joy TO CULTIVATE A TRINITARIAN COMMUNITY of worshipping, maturing disciples who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord over all the world.
We want to participate in making disciples of all nations so that men confess that Jesus is Lord until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
We recognize that there are a variety of good choices that other Christians and churches may make that honor the Lord. We want our outreach principles and process to be clear as we seek to honor the Lord with the resources and opportunities He’s given us.
To that end, the TEC budget (not only in dollar amounts but also including our attention and our prayers):
We have to start somewhere, and starting where we’re at makes sense. When Jesus commissioned His disciples, He started with Jerusalem, where they were, expanded it to Judea and then Samaria and then to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
It’s become easy to think that because something is farther away it must be more of a “mission.” There is such a thing as foreign missions and going to places “where Christ has not already been named” (Romans 15:20). But we shouldn’t neglect our neighbors or our own nation, and we do want to have something to export. We want to start closer to home and also not to get stuck in small-mindedness so that we encourage the saints to seek God’s global glory.
We prefer to support men/ministries that we are already connected to in some way, when possible. Supporting those from within the TEC flock isn’t automatic, but has great potential.
It’s easy to imagine how this could be abused. Preferring more personal could be an excuse for nepotism, it could mean letting a friend slide.
But we think personal relationships promote trust, and they allow for growing affections, more communication, and greater accountability.
This is a practical issue on a couple levels. First, our resources are limited, so we can’t support every good ministry. Second, related to the principle of preferring personal, we’d rather give more support to a smaller number of ministries. Fewer buckets means our dollars can fill each bucket a little more and so be more effective.
The Great Commission is to make disciples. That requires evangelism, yes, and then also planting churches, training pastors, and translating the Bible. Those activities are more directly connected to discipleship, but there are many crucial, if indirect, jobs that enable discipleship and worship.
Additionally, the Bible talks about mercy ministry, and while deacons coordinate this locally, there’s no reason to think we couldn’t support this more broadly. We remember that “pure and undefiled religion…is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction” (James 1:29). This means foster care/adoption ministries are appropriate avenues to support, and also by extension ministry to the poor/homeless.
The above principles are not a mechanical formula; they require wisdom to apply.
Since there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors, decisions about which ministries to support (or to stop our support of) would begin with unanimity from all the elders. The elders would then communicate to the entire flock, through email and/or in a family meeting setting, seeking their input. As with the affirmation process for elders and deacons, this period of back-and-forth communication would take place for a minimum of a month. So the process in brief: