What Do You Want to Hear From Your Mission Partners?

I would love to hear what different churches do to communicate with their mission partners around the world and what I can do to be a better communicator. As a mission partner we must raise our own support in order to earn a salary and so communication is vital to build relationships that bring in the support we need.

We send out a monthly newsletter that talks about our life in Ethiopia (I have just submitted my first blog post) as it is not easy to make the work we do sound exciting because in reality it isn't necessarily exciting. It is work that is done by people all over the world, in every community, including by many within the CRC. I work in administration and my husband is a musician. We both work in education in Ethiopia, me in a mission school and him in a local seminary. Making our work sound more exciting then it is in order to raise support feel wrong and is not authentic, but yet it is often what is expected. What do you like to read about from your mission partners?

The other question is in relation to communicating officially, with the deacons or mission team. It can be so hard to keep up with who is the role of communicator, and we know that these roles tend to change quite frequently as people step in and out of new church responsibilities. What does your church do to make communication with your mission partners easier, and what are your expectations (as a church) from your mission partners?