As I’ve mentioned before, “short-term missions” continues to be one of the most popular search terms that Missionary Confidential receives. And further evidence are the sheer number of inquiries we receive at our personal blog. 97% ask about mission possibilities spanning from one week to a year and are usually to take place in between college breaks or as a filler while the person “figures things out”.
I’ve already stated my feelings in “How Effective Are Short-Term Mission Trips?”, more from the perspective of the long-termer dealing with the short-termer, but I recently stumbled upon an article that put into words something that I hadn’t quite put my finger on yet. While the article is mainly about how missionaries choose their field (another topic for another time), I was very interested to read the very last section which dealt with the assertion that short-term mission mentality is a huge deterrent to people becoming long-term missionaries.
While it sounded a bit shocking at first, especially the section on “Anti-Long-Term Sentiment”, I started to replay what many other Christians said to us as we were preparing a few years ago for full-time mission work. “What will you do when you come back?” came up a lot, usually wanting a detailed agenda of work and living circumstances in the States. We hadn’t even gone to the field at that point! “You’re only going for a year or two, right?” or “You will come back because America needs you to serve here,” also were stated frequently.
Since living in our field for a few years now without returning for a visit, some Christians have even said, “When are you coming back so you can be a normal Christian?” The attitude has definitely been that we’d “get this out of our system” in a year or two and return; when this has not happened, we’ve sensed more fear in people’s voices when we hear the questions. Quite frankly, I can think of very few people that have encouraged us to remain long-term. In our experience only other long-term missionaries seem to “get it”.
The references to back up such claims helped to underscore that perhaps the over-focus on short-term missions as a way to encourage long-term service is not working. In my limited experience, I do not personally know anyone for whom a short-term mission converted them to a long-term missionary; I’m sure there are isolated cases you might know, but I suspect it is not a huge majority. Statements like, “Involvement in and spending on missions trips is seeing an unprecedented increase, while recruitment for full time mission service is flat,” and “A generation is coming of age familiar with the long-term goal but only thinking about short-term options,” really make you think.
This section is actually a short read, so scroll down about 3/4 to “SIDEBAR: The Spinning Out of Control Short-Term Missions Explosion”. I’d be interested in your comments on this one.
Related posts:
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Interested in Short-Term Missions? Some Good Thoughts
How Effective Are Short-Term Mission Trips?
Short-Term Missions Done Right
The section on the Short-term Missions explosion is good, though, to comment about the article in general…it’s the typical “You Ain’t Crap Unless You’re in the 10/40 Window” fare…which I find tedious. Until these missions agencies start producing martyrs (i.e., from the Developed world), I think they should stop trying to preach (judge?) to the rest of us about being in the so-called “reached” parts of the world. But that’s off topic…please explore *that* topic in a future post!
In our city, Iloilo, Philippines, I am blessed to serve with several full-time missionaries. Three of those full-timers (my wife among them) felt the call to full-time missions on a short-term missions trip. For those three their short-term trip was the catalyst for their full-time commitment, so it certainly did not “sabotage” their full-time missions efforts. For me I did make several short-term trips in college, but I felt the call to missions sitting on night in church when I was twelve years old.
We also have several families that make a trip to our ministry each year. I guess someone could judge them and say they are just getting their yearly “missions fix” and that they are ignoring the fact that they should be on the field full-time. I wholeheartedly disagree.
How can any of us know if someone is missing their calling to be a full-time missionary? How can any of us know if a regular short-term missionary is really missing his calling of being on the field full-time?
My name is David Anasco, not Holy Spirit. I cannot peer into a person’s heart to determine their motives or true intents. I cannot peer into their future and then therefore set myself as a judge as to whether or not they are missing their destiny. That is not my job, that is the Holy Spirit’s job.
I feel that a part of my job is to facilitate missions, short and long term. I love short-term teams. Yes, they are tons of work– organizing their travels, schedules, places to eat, etc.; however, I love facilitating life changing experiences. I love putting people in a place for God to use them and for them to hear from God, and I feel that a short-term trip is an excellent place for both of those things to happen.
I understand how some could look with concern over the rise in short-term missions trips, especially as it relates to finances, how perhaps the increase of these trips and teams is siphoning money away from the full-time missionary, I do not share those concerns.
Just GO, for two weeks, for two years, for two decades, JUST GO.
@Greg: That’s why I included “another topic for another time”.
It’s definitely on the list.
@David: Good points. A lot of people judged (wrongly) that we would not last in our mission field simply because most other missionaries didn’t. No one took anything else into account.
Although we did some exploratory trips before arriving here, neither of us had been on a short-term mission trip anywhere, much less our field.
And I’ve had some people tell me that my calling was wrong (they often had ulterior motives in saying this) or assumed that I would be too homesick to continue. These were usually people that did not know me well. I am thankful that the Holy Spirit does guide us in these things!
Here’s something related you should find interesting:
http://bluepassport.blogspot.com/2009/08/resource-for-short-term-mission.html
Since 2007 we’ve made Livermore’s book required reading for every short-term team coming to serve with us.
Interesting article you linked to….alot to digest….definitely worthy of some response posts.
As far as the short-term thing….I think alot of it is about bad, or lack of, missiology in the US. I heard a missions pastor describe the short-term experience as “all about you, a time for Christ to disciple you with a field trip at the end.” If this is how the church views it…then why would they come back. With this view the short-term trip is nothing more than an event to be experienced…like a youth camp or Beth Moore event.
The other thing is how the receiving team views them. Rarely do I see long-term workers actively recruiting from their short-term teams. Most use them like day laborers and move on. I occasionally see someone who casts vision while they’re working with a team and then follows up with consistent contact once the team has returned to the US.
Btw, I went on eight short-term trips and then served for 2 years prior to coming “long-term”….so I place a decent amount of value on short-term work….if done right.
Grady
@Greg: Thanks for the suggestion. I plan on doing book reviews in the near future and welcome anyone’s suggestions on books that pertain to missions work.
@Grady: “about bad, or lack of, missiology in the US” Absolutely why we need a re-education in churches about missions in the 21st Century, something I plan for a future post. We don’t need to throw the STM baby out with the bathwater, but I believe there is a need to bring it into balance and how it is taught.
Interesting discussion, glad to see it. Just one quick response: I have always been very staunchly against the idea that “you ain’t crap unless you’re in the 10/40 Window.” That is an ungodly stance, and I’d rebuke any agency that tried to say it. What I have consistently argued is that (a) there are so many missionaries in more open places and so few missionaries in less open, harder fields, (b) I believe God has called sufficient missionaries for ALL the fields, therefore (c) someone is ignoring their calling!
I would suggest an even balance of 1/3 missionaries sent to backslidden Christian areas, 1/3 sent to places that are mostly open and heavily evangelized but not yet majority Christian, and 1/3 sent to heavily unreached areas. And I do believe that the whole short-term vs. long-term shows a huge imbalance. But one thing that would be worth exploring is the impact of globalization. Used to be, not even so very long ago, it was very difficult to get to a field and you stayed there a long time. Now it’s easy to get just about anywhere in the world. Since you can go and come back so easily… why wouldn’t you? That’s one impact of that mentality.
Justin,
Thanks for the clarification on your 10/40 view. I totally agree with you on the 1/3 idea. I do believe that there are people God is calling and they’re not responding. I also think it’s because so many places in the 10/40 chew people up and spit them out. Every field has it’s own difficulties but living in a war-torn, or previously war-torn country takes a toll on a person. Our attrition rate in certain countries is 100% over a 3 year period.
We’ve written a series about short-term missions and its impact. We know of several missionaries who were challenged into full-time service after a short trip, and they serve in restricted access nations.
@Justin: Great points all around. I agree that some are really missing their calling.
@Grady: Attrition in all fields has been a number I’m interested in as ours is 90% over a 3-year period (most leave considerably sooner than the 3 years)–and ours is not a war-torn or third-world area.
@Christian Missions in Asia: Thanks for the info. Good stuff! I have no doubt that a STM has helped people become LTM. I just don’t want STMs to detour people from LTM.
Obviously, STM does help some folks decide for LTM. Unfortunately there is also the temptation to use STM as an easy way out to “fulfill my missionary commitment.” Just look at the vast numbers of short-term missionaries, and the growth in them, compared to the smaller numbers of long-term missionary growth, and you can see the issue. The key is not to abandon short-term missions or shut it down, clearly. I’m not sure what the key is. But something needs to be done about LTM recruitment!!
Justin,
Starting to see you everywhere! I think a lot of the responsibility falls on us LTM’s. We host over 200 STM every year but have no process for recruitment or follow-up. I know how this works from being a STM for 10 years…you get home and the excitement wears off, life goes back to normal and you move on. If I had received regular emails, twitters or whatever I would have loved that…but most didn’t and still don’t.
This change is a significant one. Most LTM don’t see this as part of their responsibility, they default to their organization. But an organization has no personal relationship with the individual we do and it falls upon us to follow up with them. Just an idea!
Grady
Perhaps also in part the responsibility of the agency that sends the STM? Or the team leader of the team that goes over? Someone needs to have a coaching relationship with the short-termers, and I’m afraid that the LTM missionary in place likely won’t be that person.
The reality is alot of STM don’t come through an agency, they come directly from a US church. Alot of these leaders have very little understanding of missions beyond short-term…their world view is 10 day trips. I think it’s up to us on the field to educate and share the vision before they come, while they’re here and after they return. No one can expand the vision to include LTM like those doing LTM.
Hm. I have not seen any research to back up the idea that the majority of STMs come from churches not through agencies. Do you have links? I thought most of it came through agencies like YWAM, Teen Mania, etc. There are stats in the Mission Handbook that show hundreds of thousands of STMs but those are the ones going through agencies…
In my denomination they all come from churches. I would easily say the vast majority come from a local church that recruits, trains and leads them to the field. Our denomination doesn’t typically have teams they put together and people join from various churches. So for us we can develop relationships both from overseas and while in the US with these specific churches to help them understand missions. For others like YWAM and Teen Mania I can see why it would be their responsibility for training but I still think it would be our responsibility on the field to continue dialogue with the individuals once they return to the US.
@Justin: In my experience all my STMs come from churches; however, I’m not sent by an agency, either. It makes sense that stats would be available via agencies, but how do we get stats from individual churches who send directly? I’ve been wondering about missions stats in general for a long time as it would have to be culled from denominations, agencies and individual churches–quite a task in itself!
@Grady: LTM recruitment and development is so important, and I feel like Christians in general are floundering to understand missions in the 21st Century, both LT and ST. I believe discussions like these are vital to moving forward and helping people embrace their calling.
Hi C, curiosity: are your STMs sent BY churches THROUGH an agency, or do they come directly from a church? As someone who has been involved for over 15 years in collecting and analyzing mission stats (including work on the World Christian Encyclopedia and now on Operation World) I can tell you it is a very big job!
Hi Justin, they come directly from a church, no agency involved, usually from one of our supporting churches in the States, so we already have a relationship with them and know that our missiology matches.
However, we’ve been approached directly (via our mission blog) about STMs by at least five churches during our time here. Because we didn’t know them at all–and they opened with what/when/how they were going to do here (without dialoging with us)–we politely rejected each as it was too risky.
C. Holland, LOL, risky on so many levels.
This is a great discussion. I love it because it helps people to actually think through these things (at least I hope so…)
I have led short term teams before and I actually did it a month or so ago, and I would like to add that STM trips are not for the “lost” on the field. It is mostly for the people who are traveling there and some for the people whom they are visiting. That is why they are trying to make it sound as fun as possible. Why dont we just say that we have people who have never seen any genuine followers of Christ and leave it there. Not many people would come!
People on the STM trips are in a hurry since they only go for a week or two. They are worried to “do” things so that they have their interesting stories to tell. They have to tell people how many bibles they handed out…
Also, what about those long short term trips? The ones for 1-2 years. I believe that especially these have a higher possiblity of being an “after college” thing since they have no clue what to do with their lives. Really? Is that what Missions for?
@Ozgur: “Long short term trips”, I like that phrase! And, in my experience, on the 1-2 year commitments here, they do tend to be people who have told me bluntly that the mission commitment was to help them to figure out what they wanted to do back in their home country. So be it, but no one seems to care about what happens to the believers here in the field once they leave.
“I think it’s up to us on the field to educate and share the vision before they come, while they’re here and after they return. No one can expand the vision to include LTM like those doing LTM.”
I like this and whole heartedly agree. We should be leading our generation in the way they should go by teaching them about how they can move from this STM experience to long term and the reasons why they should.
@John: Yes, it is all about education as, in my experience, I believe that Christians in general are very UNeducated about 21st century missions. Many seem to hold to old or strange stereotypes without thinking it through.
Great discussion, everyone! I’m late to the table but one major idea that we might all consider when it comes to short-term teams whether leading, sending, receiving or following them up is the command to “make disciples” in the process. We tend to assume that people will “get it” when actually, Jesus wants us to teach it in multiple ways “as you go….”
@Kerry: Good reminder. The “make disciples” is a much longer, more involved process but I think it’s what we’re supposed to be doing, not growing numbers or filling seats.
Again, excellent comments. I would like to pass on a comment that I received from a short term team member during an exit interview. He was on a team that was there for 7 weeks. He said that he would never go on another short term mission’s trip. I asked him why figuring he had some awful experience. He said no it wasn’t that but he discovered that he was just gaining close relationships with the people and realized that is what missions is all about. I did tell him but it took a ST mission trip to discover that. I lost touch with him through lost emails but I am sure he is looking only at long term.
I saw you linked to another entry “Short-Term Missions Done Right” and you might address these thoughts there, but those thoughts are:
-As a full-time, long-time missions guy I’ve fallen in love with short-term missions. They get stuff done on the field. Dollar-for-dollar I could probably get a lot more done with the total cost of their experience (since airfare is usually the lion’s share of the budget), but the dollars that make it into nuts-and-bolts projects on the field are dollars we wouldn’t have had anyways. I think the “short-term missions costs too much” (aka “short-term missions are bad stewardship”) camp misses the point. The main goal of short-term missions, ironically, isn’t to get stuff done on the field. Stuff getting done is the icing on the cake. The real beneficiary is the sending church. For a few thousand dollars they get someone in their congregation who has had new, life changing experiences with God. More often than not young people return home all geeked up on doing stuff for Jesus and the unwise church leader now has to deal with CONTAINING all that zeal. (Okay, spending thousands to put fire in the belly of your congregants then trying to contain it, now *that’s bad stewardship*).
-Short-term missions taught me I could hang with living in another culture. I didn’t plan on it (I thought I was going to be an evangelical church planter in Utah in my youth) becoming my life, but experiences abroad in my youth told me it wasn’t so bad. I could imagine a harsh shock to a first-time-long-termer who had never held a passport before….in centuries past the mission call meant leaving home for the first time to many. In the 21st century we’ve got travelocity. It makes sense to go short before going long.
-Short-term missions done wrong can ruin a long-term candidate, obviously. You mentioned calls about 2 week to 1 year projects. There’s a cycle we’ve seen with Bible college interns that’s screwed a few of them up (filed under “We’re not going to do that anymore!”). The first three weeks on the field all is new and different and exciting, almost romantic. Then you miss cable and hot water. The next few months suck and you want to go home. Unfortunately, too many 2 or 3 month missions projects end in that period, leaving a bad taste in the short-termer’s mouth. A little longer, and things get so much better. Something to think about when planning a short-term mission.
I love short term missions. I started a missions group called Kingdom Adventures; go on an Adventure with God! Go somewhere only God can take you; see things only God can show you; be a part of something only God can accomplish. You will go home geeked up for Jesus, if the project is done right.