Comments on: Are Short-Term Missions Sabotaging the Conversion to Long-Term Missionaries?

By: Mike P

Mike P — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 01:54:07 +0000

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.

By: James

James — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:13:55 +0000

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.

By: C. Holland

C. Holland — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:19:57 +0000

@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.

By: Kerry Buttram

Kerry Buttram — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:00:02 +0000

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….”

By: C. Holland

C. Holland — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:38:01 +0000

@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.

By: John

John — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:52:41 +0000

“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.

By: C. Holland

C. Holland — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:40:37 +0000

@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.

By: Ozgur

Ozgur — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:08:59 +0000

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?

By: Justin Long

Justin Long — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:25:46 +0000

C. Holland, LOL, risky on so many levels.

By: C. Holland

C. Holland — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:08:13 +0000

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.