Let’s say you have some money lying around. Maybe it’s, like, five whole dollars! Or, on the other end of the spectrum, let’s just suppose it’s a lot and growing every month. You feel the reality of the Jesus story in which the big guy drops some coin on his workers then takes off, leaving them to wrestle with making the most of their “talents.” Whether we have a lot or a little, don’t we want it to work for God’s kingdom?

If you want to put your money to good missional work, but wonder how, three things might guide you:

1. The Holy Spirit may say, “Do this with your money!”
2. Someone (sent by the Holy Spirit) may walk up to you and say, “I could use some cash.”
3. You could read this list and get tons of great ideas.

Three caveats about this list:

1. It’s not exhaustive. There are other good ways to spend your money. If you’re inclined to share some of yours (ideas, not money) with the rest of us, we’d be honored.
2. I’m thinking broadly when I talk of using money in ways that are good, “missional,” and contribute to the kingdom of God. I’m also thinking how I think, likely inferior to the way you think, which will probably cause you to think about some of the items on this list, “What? That’s a dumb way to spend money!” No worries. That’s your prerogative.
3. This is the start of a three-part summer series featuring lists! If you have a list you’d like compiled, feel free to let me know.

Also, if you’d like more info on any of these items that don’t have a link, email me and I’ll help you connect.

75 Ways to Put Your Money to Missional Use

1. Tell your favorite missionary you’ve got their medical insurance deductible this year.
2. Get a master’s degree in a field that will open doors internationally.
3. Take a world missions course like Perspectives, Kairos, or Pathways.
4. Pay for someone to take the course with you.
5. Fly to a faraway place to encourage and pray for missionary there.
6. Sponsor a local missionary in an area where Islam and Christianity meet.
7. Set up a scholarship fund for students in your culture and students in another culture.
8. Link your giving efforts with strategic prayer via Praelude2020.
9. Pay for Bibles to be put in the hands of some of the most under-evangelized people on the planet.
10. Sponsor a helpful training seminar in your church. How about Bridges?
11. Give your pastor an Amazon gift card and a list of 25 missions books you’d recommend.
12. Buy clothes and a pay for a professional photo for a young missions speaker/writer.
13. Fund a young writer’s self-published book.
14. Set up a stock fund ear-marked for a particular missionary’s retirement. Trade it well.
15. Scholarship a TESOL program for a worker.
16. Help fund a refugee care ministry in Europe or the US. Serve some Syrians.
17. Send four bright young friends to Urbana 2015.
18. Upgrade a mission worker’s phone. Or car!
19. Pay for dental work for a cross-cultural worker.
20. Find a global-minded screen writer/director with a dream and fund her movie.
21. Capitalize a micro-loan project.
22. Invest in a business-as-mission worker by underwriting their visa, registration, licensing, and office lease.
23. Buy homeschooling curriculum for workers who use it. And a case of iPads?
24. Fund a pallet of flour for a bread company to help feed starving North Koreans.
25. Pay for surgery and rehabilitation for kids with birth defects.
26. Fund adoptions for parents who want the kids no one else wants.
27. Fly an international student and their best local friend back to their home country for Christmas. Or fly their mom in for a visit and insist she stay in your home.
28. Underwrite an album of global worship songs by a mission-minded musician likePerry Lahaie.
29. Assemble a library for a worker in Mozambique.
30. Pay for a willing pastor to go on a vision trip to someplace where he won’t preach (just learn).
31. Cover a week-long retreat for a cross-cultural worker.
32. Underwrite a strategic prayer conference.
33. Publish a beautiful prayer guide for an unengaged people group.
34. Invest in a water treatment facility for 30,000 people who need it.
35. Cover travel costs and a generous honorarium to get the best missions speaker you know to come to your church.
36. Get a small gift for a worker through forafriend.com.
37. Cover a year’s subscription to calledtogether.us for a single missionary.
38. Tell some young buck at church that you’ll order the curriculum if he’ll lead a dozen of his buds through Operation Worldview.
39. Buy a pair of walking shoes and use them to prayerwalk your city.
40. Send a worker couple to a marriage seminar.
41. Underwrite the development of a marriage seminar for an unreached people.
42. Help launch the innovative funding site, buck4good.com.
43. Buy sub-zero sleeping bags for people who are truly homeless. Think “warmth for the weary.”
44. Buy and read Gary Hoag’s The Choice.
45. Pick a local family in need and once a month send a care package based on their individual needs.
46. Contribute to an organization rebuilding homes after a hurricane or other disaster.
47. Purchase a life insurance policy and make your favorite mission agency the beneficiary.
48. Buy a water filtration system each year to send to those who do not have clean water. Get a filter for your home and stop wasting resources buying bottled water.
49. Hand out bug spray and sunscreen to homeless families.
50. Give money to a micro-finance organization in Uganda or anywhere that gives small personal loans to help people start businesses and escape the bondage of poverty.
51. Encourage a pastor, ministry leader, missionary, or youth worker with free use of your lake house.
52. Buy running shoes, FitBit and a 5K entry fee for a worker friend who needs to get in shape (and wants to!)
53. Buy sewing machines and hire someone to teach refugees to be seamstresses.
54. Give $5 or $10 gift cards as an encouragement to someone you see serving others.
55. Go to a local school and offer to buy school supplies for kids who need them.
56. Pay for a child to attend church camp.
57. Donate games, movies, comic books, or toys to a children hospital.
58. Pay for the person behind you in a fast-food drive through.
59. Give gift cards for gas and food, coins for vending machines, and notes of encouragement to families of children with cancer.
60. Help a missionary pay off school debt so they can serve cross-culturally (check outthe Go Fund).
61. Plant a fruit or shade tree.
62. Buy a bed for an orphan. See Sweet Sleep.
63. Donate to buy some Drinkable Books.
64. Support the venerable Operation Christmas Child.
65. Send doctors to hard places via Doctors Without Borders.
66. Give to those who minister to those in ministry.
67. Freshen your breath and wardrobe when you buy from these guys: Project 7 andSevenly.
68. Offer to care for pets while mission teams are on the field, or pay for boarding.
69. Fund and mentor a child or teen who wants to start a business.
70. Donate money for food for hungry kids.
71. Buy, assemble, and distribute hygiene kits for homeless people.
72. Send video tech to a worker friend at the ends of the earth to help her tell great stories of God’s work in her midst.
73. Buy and raise a few chickens.
74. Donate a bike to help an Indian pastor see more people.
75. Buy the supplies and hire some kids to spruce up a retired missionary’s home.

You probably have another idea, a better idea, and a better place to execute one these ideas. 

Join me in praying that God would shower financial resources on us in huge, wonderful surprising ways. Ask him for the grace to give hugely, joyfully, and strategically toward the advance of his kingdom to the Earth.