How well a church organizes missions volunteers and their work can mean the difference between fulfilling a spiritual journey into missions and stumbling into a devastating world of the uninsured.
According to Reggie Quimby, director of the office of global partnerships/volunteers in missions of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, thousands of Baptists from Alabama have been missions volunteers during the past five years. Whether a project calls for 100 people or two people, the need for insurance does not diminish with the numbers.
Quimby said if a local church volunteer group works through him and the IMB when going to a foreign country, they can obtain lower insurance rates though the IMB. Groups, can go on their own and obtain insurance, but the rates will be slightly higher and the coverage is not quite the same, according to Quimby.
Insurance is even available in times of war.
“There are a number of places in the world where war is in progress and volunteers are positioned to go or are in,” said Harold Adams Jr., chairman of Adams & Associates International. “We can insure against the risks of war. It is an additional premium and can be costly, but we can do it.”
But risks exist even when war does not. Risks occur in situations where missions volunteers do routine tasks, such as climbing a ladder to repair a roof during a World Changers trip or running during a game with children at a backyard Bible club.
Insurance is on the minds of some volunteers and their organizers when planning a missions trip. “A number of churches have called to ask about insurance because of some problems they’ve had in the past,” Quimby said.
“Sometimes Alabama folks are on missions and we never hear about it, so we can’t help facilitate some organizational things like insurance. They may not think about it until it’s too late,” Quimby said.
Jim Burton, director of volunteer mobilization with NAMB said, “More than 100,000 Southern Baptists will volunteer in church projects this year. Most of those don’t climb onto roofs or put up roof trusses, and we are very fortunate that not too many accidents happen, but they do happen.”
Usually, the regular medical and accident insurance that volunteers have will cover them when doing missions in the United States, but it is a good idea to check with insurers before going, Burton said.
When volunteering in a foreign country, regular medical coverage issued in the United States becomes more complex.
What many people don’t realize, explained Bob McEachern, associate director for volunteers in Asia, International Mission Board (IMB), is that regular medical insurance that people have in the United States is usually void outside of the United States.
Adams explained why, saying that often insurance companies in the United States do not choose to deal with the difficulties of translating foreign languages that a doctor’s bill or pharmacist’s receipt is written in, and often the bill is not itemized, rather it’s just the doctor’s rubber stamp on a piece of paper.
“When we get doctor bills we will translate the language it is written in and handle the currency conversion,” Adams said.
But he cautioned that “no one should leave the United States on a short-term missions trip without having regular medical coverage, because you have to come back to that after you return from the trip for stateside treatments.”
When Adams began insuring missions volunteers more than 20 years ago, the alternatives were few, but today groups can find numerous companies offering missionary insurance or volunteer insurance. Churches should be cautious with some of these because they may sell to volunteers of many groups, secular and religious, resulting in higher premiums due to higher risks from the diversity of volunteer groups.
Adams said a risk management alternative to trip cancellation insurance is to commission more people than actually go, rather than buying cancellation insurance for everyone. This could save as much as 50 percent off the cost of insurance.
Inevitably a couple of people will not go on the missions trip. If 12 people are going on a trip, the church could commission 15. If no one
canceled two people would head the list for the next trip.
Trip cancellation insurance has limits anyway. For instance, the fear of war or SARS are not covered, he said.
Demonstrating to insurance companies that a credible group has well-planned action for volunteers to follow can sometimes mean the difference in obtaining insurance.
“It is important that a church have a sound plan for missions. That will make insurance more available and reasonable,” Adams said. His company manages the self-funded insurance program of the IMB, and limits its practice to international missionaries, volunteers and missionary sending organizations, except for a special package for volunteers such as World Changers for the North American Mission Board (NAMB).
Burton said, “The idea is that when people go to do a missions trip they are going to do good things and are passionate about it, but things happen — ankles get twisted, cars can wreck — and if you don’t have the right coverage, the financial pressure takes away from the totality of the experience.”
Burton manages World Changers, which every summer sends out volunteers to do construction work on about 1,600 homes. “We do take out insurance on these volunteers since we manage World Changers,” he said. Otherwise, insurance for volunteers is optional but strongly encouraged by NAMB.
Most Baptist volunteers domestically organize on their own.
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