Friday, May 18, 2012

Do One Week Mission Trips Do Any Good?


Some of the objections and criticism surrounding the idea of short-term mission trips are valid. Some of the trips seen advertised on various websites appear to be nothing more than glorified vacations.  

Short-term missions get a bad rap for three reasons:

1) Missionaries allow their needs and agenda to supersede the local needs.

2) Missionaries are poorly equipped to do what needs to be done.

3) What they're doing has no lasting impact.

There is some validity to these reasons. The typical short-term mission trip involves construction or work that could be done by locals, which raises the question, "Why not just send them the money?"

Another perspective is that short-term missions can impact participants enough to justify the cost of the project, but to what end?

What's the point of it all? If the purpose is to rally participants to build the kingdom of God, then it is a good reason to justify the high costs of a short-term trip. However, many do not.

As someone who has been traveling overseas for many years, it breaks my heart to see this tremendous waste of time, money, and energy.  

So what do we do with this information? Give up? No. We find ways to be better. One good place to start would be for church youth groups to track those who have been mobilized for ministry by their short-term mission trips.

Did someone go on a trip to India or China and then decide to move there? Is there someone in your church who is retired from ministry? Talk to them. Learn from their experiences, and try to replicate them.

Let me suggest to youth pastors that if the goal of short-term trips is to ultimately send people overseas, please measure your results. So, do we scrap the concept of short-term missions? No, of course not.

We need to find a biblical way to do short-term missions.

Fortunately, Jesus showed us how to do them in Matthew 10, in which he sent out the disciples on radical faith adventures in pairs. It's a model we're not always comfortable with, but it does the trick like little else can.

Yes, short-term trips can work if you do them right. They can still change lives. But we need to look much more closely at the various models of missions and hold many to a more rigorous standard of evaluation.

What do you think? Can short-term missions work these days? Share your answer in the comments section below.


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On May 25th our next team will be leaving for India. Follow along here as we update you on the progress of the trip, and how God is working through our endeavors.


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Prayer  Requests
Pray for the safety and good health of next week's mission team.
Pray for those under the influence of Hinduism—that they will hunger for the living God.
Pray for Christians in Hindu regions—that Christ will be revealed through them and that they will communicate the gospel in ways Hindus can understand.




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