Two years of catalytic funding, church-led sending, and honest learning — reported openly to the donors, churches and partners who made it possible.
Strategic Coordinator, Antioch21
“You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.”
— 2 Corinthians 9:11-12
As I look back on the last 3 years, my heart is truly filled with thanksgiving to God.
First came the casting of the vision to create a ‘seed fund’ for missionary support, by the late Joseph Chean in 2023.
Then came a year of having many conversations with various people to flesh out the concept for the Missions Seed Fund (MSF).
Following that was a year of pilot-testing, leading to the official launch of the MSF in 2025.
And now here we are.
This update is a review of the work done with the MSF.
We mean for it to testify to three things:
As you read it, may your heart overflow with thanksgiving!
And may the Lord continue to bless the work of our hands, that His name be made known among the nations!
Two Years in Review · September 2024 – September 2026
The Seed Fund began quietly, running two pilot grant calls to test our processes, sharpen our assessment criteria, and learn what churches actually need.
On 2 October 2025, the Seed Fund was publicly launched at the Antioch Summit. A third grant call — our first official one — opened to the wider church community.
The Seed Fund is a partnership model built around three commitments:
Applications must come through a committed local church. We partner with the church, not just the individual — ensuring workers are sent with community, accountability, and long-term holistic support. Workers in partnership with missions agencies can also be sent, provided the local church is the primary applicant, working in close partnership with the agency.
We provide up to one-third of livelihood costs for up to two years — capped at $1,000/month for singles and $3,000/month for families. This is seed capital, not full support. The church and other partners carry the rest.
Priority is given to deployments among unreached people groups — populations where less than 2% are evangelical Christians.
Applications are assessed by an independent Seed Fund Advisory Committee (SFAC), composed of experienced practitioners in missions and church leadership.
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Pastor Eugene Seow | A21 Board Representative, SFAC Chair |
| Lam Kok Hiang | A21 Board Representative |
| Susan K | Independent Member |
| William Toh | Independent Member |
| Daniel Long | Independent Member |
| Terrance Tan | Independent Member |
Workers are active across Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, East Asia, West Asia, and Central Asia. The work they do varies, but centres on:
Establishing worshipping communities among people with little or no access to the gospel. This is long-horizon work — measured in years and relationships, not quarterly outputs.
Many workers in their first one to two years are primarily engaged in language acquisition and cross-cultural integration. Sustainable, long-term presence begins here.
Several workers serve through professional roles — in education, business, healthcare, in both for and non-profit settings — which both sustain their presence in those contexts and create genuine points of connection with local communities.
Where local church networks exist, our workers seek to strengthen rather than supplant them — building relationships with indigenous leaders and supporting locally-rooted ministry.
We want to be honest with you about the limits of what we know at this stage.
For workers deployed in 2025, some are still in language learning and early integration. For all workers, the nature of cross-cultural work means that fruit — real, lasting fruit — often takes years to become visible.
Over two years of pilots, conversations, application reviews, and check-ins, our team has accumulated important learnings that we’d like to share with you. We share these not as criticisms of the model, but with a desire and an open invitation for deeper conversations on how we can better serve the wider body of Christ.
Every church that came to us arrived with its own definition of what it means to send a worker — its own procedures, its own theology of calling, its own sense of who qualifies. Our aim was not to impose a single model but to create a rigorous, open process that helped us understand where each church was at, while humbly surfacing some of the important considerations in sending long-term cross-cultural workers well. The application fields were developed in consultation with experienced field workers, church sending committee members, and senior church leaders.
What we found was that the process opened genuine conversations — with smaller churches still developing their missions approach, and with larger churches willing to revisit models they had held for years. In almost every case, what motivated churches to engage was love for their own members: people sensing God’s call in ways that did not always fit existing policy. That love made churches willing to adapt, and sometimes to make real structural changes.
We learnt as much from these conversations as the churches did.
Member care is crucial and non-negotiable. As we asked churches about their approach to supporting workers on the field, we also connected them with resources, agencies, and other churches with experience in this area. The peer-to-peer sharing this generated has been one of the more meaningful outcomes of the Seed Fund.
On the funding side: covering livelihood costs in the first two years matters more than it might seem. It frees workers to focus on language learning, preparation, and building relationships — rather than anxious fundraising — and gives them a firmer footing to raise the remaining support they need.
That said, we want to be honest about the limits of our current model. Covering livelihood costs only means that setup costs, ministry expenses, and the ad-hoc financial pressures that arise on the ground remain unaddressed. Workers and churches absorb these gaps themselves. We are exploring how to address this, and welcome conversations with donors who may wish to help us think it through.
We have been genuinely moved by the breadth of giving to the Seed Fund. 7 churches from across the denominational spectrum have contributed about $180,000 — churches sowing into the missional efforts of other churches they may never have formally partnered with before. It is a small but real picture of the Acts 2 community: giving not along denominational lines, but in recognition of a shared mission.
Over 160 individual donors have also given through our Agathos fundraising page (from $10 to $1,000 and more) and directly, with gifts ranging from first-time contributions to individual gifts of $20,000 to $100,000. It tells us that the vision of a cross-denominational pooled fund resonates across a wide spectrum of the Singapore church — not only with major donors.
Together, these two streams have affirmed that it is possible to build a giving platform that cuts across denominations, deploys capital carefully, and earns people’s trust. We believe that paradigm has potential well beyond the Seed Fund’s current scope — and we are keen to explore how similar models might address other gaps in the missions landscape.
The Seed Fund addresses one gap — a significant one, but one among many.
What we support is the financial footing of new workers in their first two years: the stage most likely to prevent a deployment from happening at all. We are glad to fill this gap.
But as we have grown more embedded in the missions ecosystem, the other unaddressed needs have become harder to ignore — support for new field projects, care for workers returning after years of difficult service, resourcing for the local staff in agencies and churches who carry the work of sending but are rarely in anyone’s fundraising materials.
What the Seed Fund has shown, as an experiment, is that a cross-denominational platform for kingdom generosity can be both relational and rigorous. That model is worth building on. We do not know yet exactly what form that takes — but we are excited to find out, and we hope you will be part of that conversation.
The Missions Seed Fund exists because of the generosity of many. We are grateful to everyone who has given — whether a one-time gift or a multi-year pledge, whether a few hundred dollars or tens of thousands.
Over 160 donors have collectively contributed through the Agathos giving page.
4 donors gave through multi-year commitments.
7 churches gave a total of $180,000.
1 foundation gave $36,000 over 2 years.
Antioch21 contributed $15,000.
A Note to Every Donor
Your giving is not a transaction. It is participation in what God is doing among the nations through the Singapore church. The workers on the ground carry your generosity with them — not as a line in a budget, but as evidence that they are not sent alone.
Thank you.
We will be running 2 grant calls per year from 2027 onwards. For 2026, we have completed 2 grant calls, and will be running 1 more in Oct 2026. Based on current demand and learnings from our first two years, we anticipate:
| Year | Projected Grant Calls | Projected Applicants | Families | Singles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 1 (2 completed) |
~3 | ~2 | ~1 |
| 2027 | 2 | ~20 | ~12 | ~8 |
| 2028 | 2 | ~30 | ~16 | ~14 |
The below projections assume applicants will be fully supported at our cap of $3,000/month for families and $1,000/month for singles, for a maximum of 2 years. Projections will be adjusted based on actual demand.
| Horizon | Amount Needed |
|---|---|
| To fund projected 2026 grant call (1 grant call, 3 applicants) |
$168,000 |
| To fund projected 2027 grant calls (2 grant calls, 20 applicants) |
$1,056,000 |
| To fund projected 2028 grant calls (2 grant calls, 30 applicants) |
$1,488,000 |
| To support up to 53 new applicants (2026–2028) | $2,712,000 |
For the team involved, the applying churches, the workers being sent, and for God’s work to be done among the nations.
Your donation to the Seed Fund directly enables the next grant call. Every $12,000 sustains a single worker for one year of living costs (at our cap). Every $36,000 sustains a family for one year (at our cap).
Giving link: tinyurl.com/missionsseedfund
For larger gifts (SGD 10,000 or more): contact Darrell Ong at darrellong@antioch21.sg
Know a church that is sensing a call to send? Know an individual who might give significantly? We would love an introduction.
Contact Terence Goh at missionsseedfund@gmail.com
The next grant call opens 1 Oct 2026. Applications open to all Singapore-registered churches. Share this with your missions committee.
