When I was six years old my parents accidentally forgot me at church. Both of them had driven that day, and they simply pulled away thinking I was in the other vehicle. Meanwhile, I sat happily on the front steps, waving goodbye to friends. At first the autonomy of it all was pretty cool. But when the last car left the parking lot, I began to feel six years old. We lived only two miles away, but less than five minutes alone was enough to convince me—it stinks to be forgotten.

Now multiply that by thousands of miles and several years. Perhaps you start to get a feel for what missionaries experience when their sending churches lose touch. They may not act like six year-olds, but the repercussions can be surprisingly similar. The loneliness and disappointment due to a lack of tangible support can lead not simply to disconnection, but downright dysfunction. No one…