A recent song by Francesca Battistelli, which begins, “Fear, you don’t own me. There ain’t no room in this story,” has become a recent favorite of mine because of stories I get to hear from missionaries who go through Reliant Mission’s seven-day New Staff Training conference. During the training, they are taught a lot of things: how to share their ministry story, how to ask people to join them prayerfully and/or financially in the ministry they’ll be involved in, how to answer (potentially) tough questions and how to follow up when promised donations are not received by the Reliant Gift Services team. One of the issues that comes up once they start raising financial support is fear — fear of rejection, fear of making a mistake while they’re sharing their ministry story and asking the person to join the team as a financial partner or the fear of not being able to raise all of the financial support needed to be able to do ministry.

Over the last 20 some years as the Missionary Liaison, I have had the privilege of watching our missionaries work through fears and come out stronger in their faith and gain more confidence in God and what He can do in and through other people's lives.

Having to call a person back several weeks after they said they would give can cause fear. “What if they have changed their minds and decided not to give? What if something happened to their financial situation and they cannot give now?” These fearful thoughts can start to creep in and cause them to get stuck. At the training, our missionaries are told to not assume the worst, but to contact the person to let them know that a donation has not been received yet. Making that phone call can be nerve-wracking.

One of those missionaries shared with me how he recently worked through that fear.

“Back in June, a friend emailed to say that she and her husband wanted to become financial partners for $30/month beginning in July. A gift did not show up in July or August. So I called the husband and asked if it was still their intention to join our ministry team and would they like me to help them sign up? (I FELT SO AWKWARD!)

But get this: it went FINE! Super fine in fact. He apologized and said he actually thought they were giving but maybe his wife hadn't gone to the site to do it yet. He THANKED me for calling, and he said he'd talk to his wife when she gets home and make sure they sign up right away!

Before Reliant Training I likely would not have made such a bold phone call. And I would have lost a potential long-term ministry partner. I can't get over that he THANKED me for calling.”

Stories like this help encourage me to not let fear dictate what I’m going to do going forward when I’m going through a tough situation in my own life as well.