Spreading the love?

It's standard practice for a single church to support a number of missionaries - and for a single missionary to be supported by a number of churches. My guess is it started off this way because missionaries failed to raise enough funds from the one church - and, later on, once the church was in a position to contribute more, that person had already received all the money they needed from elsewhere, so the church had to find other people to support - and on it went.

I find the situation a bit odd - I think this is because I like the idea of a missionary being regarded as a regular member of staff - and if your church's pastor or youth worker gets all their support from that church alone, then why shouldn't the missionary? One argument I've heard in favour of spreading your support around is that if the church leadership changes, you're not left in the lurch. There's clearly some good, practical wisdom in this, but it seems a little jaded to me to base the way you do support on the expectation that a future pastor won't want to support you.

Of course most churches already have a number of missionaries, and I'm hardly advocating a cull. I'm more thinking about this because I'm in the unusual position of (hopefully) being the first missionary my church sends out.