Starving kids - making marketing missions easy?

Every so often, a colleague tells me it's easy to market missions. It's always someone from another department at our headquarters; they resent the amount of money we raise every year for missions because their fund raising efforts don't yield the same amount. While I know they mean well, I find it particularly appalling that the complaints often seem to include this argument: "You have it easy. You can slap a photo of a starving kid on the brochure, and voila, people give."

That argument fails to notice the obvious - there really are starving children in the world. I don't feel guilty for advocating on their behalf to concerned Christians. The argument also fails to take into account the vast amount of money spent on ministry in America. While our world missions department may raise more funds than one of our departments devoted to ministry in America, the combined budgets of the American ministries' departments far exceeds ours.

Of course, I do understand their heart. It can be difficult to raise funds for legitimate ministries in America, particularly if others are advocating for more needy parts of the world simultaneously. I would, however, like to a point out a few of the challenges unique to marketing world missions.

1. People are inclined to care more about the needs of people like themselves and closer to home. It's human nature to identify more with the needs of someone like yourself. The challenge of marketing missions is to get people, who are often ignorant about the world's needs, to care about those who are truly foreign.
   
2. Christians are motivated to give to missions for different reasons. Some are likely to give to humanitarian causes like feeding children, but others want to give to ministries they feel are more directly involved in preaching, teaching, and converting adults. When an overseas ministry isn't focused on humanitarian causes, photos of hungry children are not only misleading, they can alienate the very donor most likely to support the ministry.
3. The needs of the world are great and complex. Raising funds for America is comparatively easier because the task is more easily defined and explained. The varied political, economical, and religious situations around the world make it much harder to explain how contributions will be used. Moreover, since the needs around the world are so great, it's easy for potential donors to feel as if their money won't make a difference; it's just a drop in an ocean of need. They are naturally inclinded to keep the money closer to home, where they can personally see the difference it makes (see my first point).

If I know one thing about promoting missions, it is that it is difficult. Simply put, it requires the help of God. Getting people to care about spreading the Gospel around the world is the work of God's Holy Spirit, however, He has always chosen to use people. I am grateful to be one of them, and I don't expect it to be easy.