Reliant Mission, Inc.

~Our Mission~
Reliant partners with mission-minded churches and organizations to help make ministry possible. We provide support raising training, coaching, and employment resources so that more workers can live out the Great Commission.

~Our Challenge~
As North America & Europe have become increasingly post-Christian, the need for ministry workers has increased, not only in international contexts but right here in the United States. Innovative Christian networks have risen to the challenge—speaking of the missional church and actively reaching local unchurched communities.
These innovative churches and ministries are reaching students, urban centers, and specialized groups who need the gospel. Yet funding for this critical mission often doesn't come from those who are being reached. The traditional pass-the-plate model is not sufficient to fund the mission.
Reliant Mission is a mission agency for the networked missional world. We serve as a hub between local churches, ministry workers, and the donors who support the work.
We exist—and our donors invest—because we are motivated by a singular truth: the hope offered through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our mission is the text of Matthew 28:18-20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations..."
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Founded in 1989, Reliant for many years was the mission agency for the Great Commission Church movement and the groups that spun off that movement. However in 2006, our board of directors slowly expanded our capabilities to serve other networks, as we realized the need that was there. Today, our missionaries labor across a spectrum of gospel initiatives, new and established.
New ministry partnerships have included churches associated with the Acts 29 Network, the Ecclesia Network, the Christ Together network as well as many independent ministries with such examples as Africa New Life Ministries (OR), Box 7 Ministries (TX), Shepherd Community Center (IN), and Hands and Feet (NM).
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Our long-term goal is to be a top trusted partner across the evangelical world for missionary and church-planter fundraising.
Our three to five-year goal is to successfully scale our support systems while growing to 600 active missionaries worldwide. We have grown eight to ten percent each of the last five years, navigating large-scale changes in personnel and systems while transitioning small-to-medium-to-large. We want to accomplish further growth while retaining our strong record of financial competence and integrity, the warmth and family atmosphere that our missionaries have come to know us for, and our focus on the Great Commission of Jesus.
Abridged from www.reliant.org/amr

Our history in the 1970s Great Commission movement taught us much about how to establish a solid support structure for mission. Jesus-focused energetic church planters dropped people in pairs in campus environments with a vision to reach the next generation for Christ. Though enthusiastic, many of these attempts struggled due to lack of structural support. In 1989, GCM was founded out of a recognized need that passionate ministry requires fundamental planning and financial stability. Now, as GCM serves the wider evangelical world, our strategies are shaped by our history: providing structure and support for those with a mission.
For missional churches and gospel-centered non-profits, we provide a path to assess, hire and train support-based staff, allowing the ministry to focus on their local mission and not administration.
For missionaries, we provide critical fundraising training and coaching, medical and retirement benefits, and a full range of care and support.
For donors we provide a strong, audited, and secure giving system that allows confident giving towards gospel work.
These simple services, done well, are the practical key to helping missional churches and gospel-centered non-profits expand their ministry impact.
Our last five years has seen record expansion for us: 8 to 10% each year through the years of the recent economic downturn. We have nearly doubled the missionaries we support to over 400, and we have transitioned from training 30 to nearly 80 annually.
This opportunity comes with challenges as we seek to aggressively expand our capabilities while retaining our sound financial audit record, our “by name" relationship with every single one of our missionaries, and most importantly, our heartbeat for the gospel.
Our short term strategies have been rapid and significant: we've executed a move of our administrative team to a new, well-equipped facility in Orlando, FL. We've poured significant financial and time investment into world-class database software that prepares us for the future of the mobile web, with expanded secure giving options. We are in the process of a three year plan to re-organize and expand our internal teams, such as our Missionary Resources department, by adding positions and pursuing further outside experience.
Our final planned strategy (coming in 2014-15) is to update our brand and story to help churches and donors understand who we are today--our desire and ability to serve the evangelical world more broadly.
Abridged from www.reliant.org/amr

Our capabilities are focused on technical and business solutions for the needs of missionaries so they can focus on mission. Our administrative offices employ 30 staff (26 FTE) dedicated to support missionary operations. Some of the capability highlights include:
Confidence-Building Fundraising Training
A particular strength is our missionary fundraising training. The training philosophy is scripturally grounded and incorporates William McConkey's "Win, Keep, Lift" relational strategy for building donor teams. The approach is shared with Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru), who gifted their system to us in 1989 and taught our original missionary cohorts.
We've modified the system for church planting and non-profits, and our 8-day comprehensive training covers everything from the theology of giving to how to present their calling in a clear, concise, and story-oriented manner. Our missionaries consistently leave training reporting a strong change from “fearful" to “confident" in their ability to trust God for finances.
Detailed Missionary Assessment & Professional Human Resources
Reliant has created an independent assessment tool that reviews seven key factors for missionary success, which provides local churches a unique role in co-evaluating candidates. Our 2012 upgrade included a new online application system implements the latest web application technologies, including including custom workflow capabilities and parallel instant access for local ministry leaders.
Family-Friendly Benefits
The GuideStone benefits network links our missionaries with almost 80,000 other pastors and missionaries across the US and has improved our insurance offerings, keeping costs as reasonable as they can be in this difficult health benefits environment.
Trusted Financial Accounting
We continue to invest in our experienced accounting staff with staff CPA, internal and external audits, and heavy emphasis on our accountability memberships such as the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. GCM uses only generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) as defined The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
Easy Online Giving & Donor Services
Our secure donor information is managed with Blackbaud systems, an industry leader in enterprise-quality donation tracking. Nearly 83% of new individual donors in 2013 established their gift online using our secure website. This statistic leads the non-profit giving sector.
Friends, Partners, and Memberships
Reliant's offices are located in Orlando, FL and share space with Converge Worldwide and Crosspointe Church. We are across the street from Cru and Wycliffe Bible Translators and down the street from Pioneers—all of whom we maintain personal and informal connections. Formal associations include the National Association of Evangelicals, the World Evangelical Alliance, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, Missio Nexus, and Christian Leadership Association.
Abridged from www.reliant.org/amr

In some ways, our desired outcomes are within the scope of our dreams but beyond the scope of our mission. That is, our desired outcome is that more people in a post-Christian North America and worldwide will come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ. We reside several steps behind that: providing the administrative structures that are critical to supporting missionaries. Our partner ministries—the churches and networks we serve—are the frontline leaders. They will measure their outcomes in baptisms, lives changed, disciples made, and churches planted.
We'll take the “assist." Like the athlete who passes the ball or the actor who supports the lead, we know we're critical to the mission.
Our widest outcomes, then, are best framed: “Are people on mission well-supported and freed up to accomplish their daily work in the gospel?"
Certainly more people are being supported, as our growth from 200 missionaries in 2007 to more than 400 in 2013 can attest.
By God's grace, what we have accomplished is a strong, historical foundation of quality services with an organizational culture of high integrity and “doing things right." We believe we are nearly the top in our field at leveraging practical fundraising knowledge into reproducible training. Our team members are talented and loyal. Our missionaries worldwide are young and full of passion: the average age of missionaries we onboarded in 2012 was 26 years old, and our overall average is just 34 years old.
Today, because of our significant recent growth, we feel that the road forward is clear but challenging. The recent moves that we have made to respond to growth—relocating to a new office facility, establishing an upgraded database, adding positions to our organization chart—have used a lot of our available energy and resources. These are the right moves for the future, but they have natural costs in transition. The forward challenge is to effectively grow business processes, technological solutions, and the demand for human resources so that our missionaries and church planters worldwide can remain fully focused on the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.
Abridged from www.gcmweb.org/amr