What do you think about them?

Is the trend Good, bad? Is it biblical?


How do you maximize their impact?

Who should go? What agenda should be laid down for the trip? What should the trippes do BEFORE the triip, DURING the trip, and AFTER the trip.


Any stories? Good or bad examples?

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

My personal take is that sending overweight unqualified adults and children to swing hammers or any other work that could obtained locally at a tiny fraction of the cost is an arrogant waste of resources. Our South American or African brothers and sisters don't need a bunch of teeny bopper or golf enthusiast great white 'saviors' waltzing in and helping them build a block Church bldg that they could build much cheaper AND give work to locals as well as perhaps present the gospel to those workers. The hilarious part is that the "missionaries" usually don't even have the slightest concept of how arrogant and spoiled they appear to the locals, who for the most part are snickering in their sleeves, and would be agog to ever see how much these all-thumbs carpenters have spent to come "help". Just send the money, and if you want to take a vacation, do that on your own, but don't insult your brothers by making a pretense of 'missions' out of it. If you care about missions, then give. Don't go seeking "experiences" by making a gazingstock of your less prosperous brothers.

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Brad
PCA Member
Virginia

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

You asked for examples, so here's one that sticks in my mind. A PCA Church that I was once a member of (no longer for reasons such as this) sends a bunch of teenagers to Tokyo every year to provide childcare during an annual Church conference. Seems to me that childcare for a week could be had for far less than the $2000 per teen they are spending. That's just sick. SEND THE MONEY, not the kids in dog collars and spiked hair. What a joke.

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Brad
PCA Member
Virginia

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

That's been a pet peeve of mine for years. Small examples was using a good chunk of the Deacon's fund to send young men and women to work at another PCA church in LA after Katrina, where their labor probably cost 50-60bucks an hour after you do the math.

A much bigger source of hair pulling was running into American missionaries in Southern Africa. For the price of one of those, you could fund 4 better educated Afrikaners who already speak the language and understand the culture, and pump valuable resources into the Reformed Afrikaner community, which needs it.

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Tim Vaughan, 48 years old, member Redeemer OPC, Santa Maria CA.

I don't know whether my understanding of the term 'short term missions' is the same as those responding previously. I would not consider a building/childcare project a short term mission as this can be done by local Christians.

For me 'short term missions' is a person giving up anything from a whole summer to a two year period or so to help a local church in evangelism or development.

When we were on the missionfield we benefitted greatly from short term teams (over a summer) or short term workers (up to 2 years). The advantge in a church planting situation were:-

-so much more ground could be covered in a shorter time.
-the gifts of the team members combined making it more effective.
-it was hard for one person to come to a bible study with one person whereas with a short term team people are coming to a group where they have perhaps befriended one of the team.
-after the short term team/worker leaves there is always plenty of follow-up.
-people can pray more effectively for the work when they return home and indeed correspond and encourage some of the people they have contacted..

Advantages to the short termer are:-
-helps them to realise how their gifts and abilities fit in.
-helps them to assess whether they are suitable candidates for long term missionaries.
-the resident missionary can assess them and give practical advice. Some of the ones who came to us have in fact gone on to be full-time missionaries whilst others realised it was not for them. Others were just unsuitable.

Disadvantages (to the resident missionary)
-time is spent initially giving cultural orientation
-when a short termer makes some mistake, he can go home after the summer. The resident missionary however has to pick up the pieces.

I believe it is a good trend provided the short term worker does not think of it as his national service where he does his bit for the kingdom then does nothing afterwards. Also it is wrong when people just go out because it is expected of them or they want some sort of an adventure holiday.

Although the apostle Paul was a full time missionary, he was "short term" in various cities (Ephesus, Coinith, Philippi etc) planting churches and appointing elders before moving on. The short term work was important to the long term objective. I feel a lot of churches have been established by one missionary using teams of short term workers.

There are countless examples of benefits and pitfalls, and we experienced many more benefits than pitfalls, but the church I was connected with in Clonmel in the Irish Republic came about from a two year Operation Mobilisation team.

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Stuart
Elder, Lambeg Baptist, Northern Ireland, UK

In Him the fulness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form and in Him you are complete (Col 2.9-10)

The sacrifice of a broken heart doth please Him but the sacrifice of a broken Christ alone doth satisfy Him (Richard Steele)

Would black africans hear the Gospel from white Afrikaners with a history of apartheid?

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

How about short term medical trips, such as dental clinics, cleft palate repair, cataract surgery in places where local healthcare cannot provide these things? Even if fat American doctors came and helped blind catact-ridden people, I am sure that this would be appreciated.

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

If I could play "devil's advocate" (probably a poor choice of words on the PB!!), I have had this conversation before and have raised the same concerns with short-term mission trips that are being raised here. More often than not, I am told that short-term missions serve more than one purpose. Yes, a church building in Trinidad gets built, which is good even if the cost is high, but a bunch of spoilt suburban kids also get exposed to poverty and want (maybe they won't be quite as spoilt when they get home) as well as getting to interact with their brothers and sisters in Christ in a foreign country (maybe when the get home they won't visualize the saved only as mirror images of themselves). What do you think of that reasoning?

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Eric
Woodgreen Presbyterian (PCA)
Calgary, Alberta CANADA

That was always the excuse I heard from English speaker South Africans, but as an American a bit more non-partisan I came to the same conclusion most other European non English speaking South Africans did, that Black Southern Africans get along better with Afrikaners than with just about any other White people.

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Tim Vaughan, 48 years old, member Redeemer OPC, Santa Maria CA.

Those sound like real ministries to me, Pergs, something that in most cases cannot be provided locally and less expensively. My personal (and unimportant) view is that those are excellent works for the Church to be engaged in.

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Brad
PCA Member
Virginia

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Here is a link to a whole issue of Missions Frontiers about the topic:

Mission Frontiers January 2000

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

If we changed the wording from short term missions to "Summer Internship" would this matter?

If we chose only those people considering missions to go and placed on them a study and retreat focus so that the kids or young adults come out, do a spiritual journal, engage in hard study and prayer, and then go back and give a report to the churches, what do you think?


Most long term missionaries have done at least 2-3 short term trips BEFORE their long term entrance into missions.

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

Here is a link: Mission Frontiers January 2000

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

I don't find this to be a devil's advocate position by any means. Short-term mission trips are often as advantageous for the missionaries as it is for those who are being ministered to. People return from these trips with a new (or renewed) vision for God's world mission and sometimes return to the field full-time years later.

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Rae W. | Elder @ Grace Central Presbyterian Church | Columbus, OH
not another blog, v2.0

So our brothers' difficulties should be used to correct the bad parenting that we are guilty of that produces "spoilt" children? Is that not making a gazingstock of our poorer brothers?

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Brad
PCA Member
Virginia

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

You could also phrase this as reaching out in love and mutually learning from our overseas brothers. The motivation is not to gawk but to help.

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

I certainly agree that short term trips by those with scare skills such as doctors, nurses, and dentists are extremely valuable. But the typical short term mission trips we often see around here are 7-10 day trips where there is some building project going on combined with perhaps a VBS for the local children.

I pretty much strongly agree with Brad that the local labor should be used for building and the money (often $1000-2000 a person) sent instead. This brings to mind the (works-based) "mission" trip to Mexico that my 81 year old father-in-law went on with his PCUSA church a couple of weeks ago. He knows a LOT and used to be able to do almost anything related to building or mechanics, but lets get real. The cost of his trip could have paid for 10 local men to have worked on that project. Yes, it might be good for one contractor-type person to go to coordinate, but I'm just not buying that our men are needed for the labor part.

Mostly what I see is people go and feel really good about themselves for going. It has not been my personal experience that they end up going back for long-term trips.

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Janis
Christ Church ARP, NC
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved." Eph. 1:3-6 ESV

I think that there is a legitimate use to what is refered to as "short term missions", and also an abuse of it.

As a younger boy (about middle school age), our church "youth group" took a "short term missions" trip to Arizona to an Indian school. Our job was to spread gravel by hand (with wheel barrows and shovels) that dump trucks had dumped into piles around the dirt parking lot. Looking back, this almost angers me that we would be sent to do this work as it was completely USELESS. I can't think of any other reason than it was to make us feel good about ourselves. If the dump trucks had only drove slowly as they dumped out the gravel (the normal way of spreading gravel), there would have been no work to do.

That being said, I don't think that always "sending money" is the right thing to do. I think that us Americans don't like to get our hands dirty, and that we think that we can buy our way out of doing just that. I think that people NEED things everywhere. You don't have to look far. A perfect example of a legitimate "missions trip" in my mind is a young woman from our church who is currently helping clean up after the hurricane in Louisianna. That is fulfilling a NEED.

So I think that there is a balance in these "missions". We should imitate Christ in fulfilling needs around us, and even other parts of the country/world. But at the same time, I believe that we are called to be good stewards of the time/resources God has given us, and that to squander them on useless activities is vain IMHO.

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Jeff Bartel
Mechanical Engineer
Member - Trinity Reformed Church - RPCNA

"To believe in the power of man in the work of regeneration is the great heresy of Rome, and from that error has come the ruin of the Church. Conversion proceeds from the grace of God alone, and the system which ascribes it partly to man and partly to God is worse than Pelagianism" (The Reformation in England (London, 1962), Vol. 1, p. 98)

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Depends on the nature of the mission. Make sure its not for little kids so they don't get in the way of hard work if thats the nature. However, being apart of L'église reformée st. mark here in québec city we have an «english bible camp» for 3 weeks in the summer in which we reach out to the community and we invite native english speakers to come and help out for 1 week. They can see Québec in the evenings and help with 30 + kids during the day in their own language just doing VBS basically. I love it and I think it is great. When it comes to emergencies given Canada is socialist if your canadian they will work with your provincial insurance and if your American its very easy. Show them the evidence and they will automatically bill your insurance company and you don't have to worry about it there. Forewarning if you come make sure you ask for someone who speaks french to come to the hospital with you because chances are there are not many doctors so the nurses and the employes' english is terrible generally. We had this problem this year. And be prepared to wait a long time depending on the nature of the problem. Ear infection =7-8 hours! But I encourage you if your Church is interested next year to contact our pastor. I know someone on the board has visited the church before to do a evangelization project at english cafés before.

website: ERQ

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Joseph P. Grigoletti II
Lay-person
Église Réformée du Québec
Québec, Québec Canada

''Nothing is so sacred that Satan will not invade it. In fact, the more sacred something is, the more he desires to profane it.''
John MacArthur

another thought... these short term trips may be means by which God uses to call full time real biblical missionaries. They can give men and women tastes of the calling and God can (and does often) use them like that.

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Joseph P. Grigoletti II
Lay-person
Église Réformée du Québec
Québec, Québec Canada

''Nothing is so sacred that Satan will not invade it. In fact, the more sacred something is, the more he desires to profane it.''
John MacArthur

I agree completely, Rae - you beat me to it!

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Mason
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA)
New York, NY

"Come now, and let us reason together," says the Lord, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." - Isaiah 1:18