Short term missions for reformed churches

[Pergamum]

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?

 

[Mushroom]

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.

 

[Mushroom]

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.

 

[TimV]

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.

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.

 

[jambo]

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.

 

[Pergamum]

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

 

[Pergamum]

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.

 

[ericfromcowtown]

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?

 

[TimV]

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

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.

 

[Mushroom]

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.

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.

 

[Pergamum]

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

Mission Frontiers January 2000

 

[Pergamum]

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.

 

[Pergamum]

Here is a link: Mission Frontiers January 2000

 

[raekwon]

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?

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.

 

[Mushroom]

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)

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?

 

[Pergamum]

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)

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?

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.

 

[Grace Alone]

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.

 

[Arch2k]

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 In my humble opinion.

 

[jogri17]

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

 

[jogri17]

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.

 

[ColdSilverMoon]

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.

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

 

[ColdSilverMoon]

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.

While I understand the point you're making, Brad, in reality it has no Scriptural basis at all, and comes across as very condescending to those who sacrifice their time and money to make very worthy short-term mission trips. Several points:

1. The "locals'" perception really has very little basis in missions in general, including short term missions. Please show me some Scripture reference that qualifies mission work so as not to appear silly to the local culture. So what if they snicker at the "overweight unqualified adults" or "teeny boppers?" Does that make their work any less valid? It is very pretentious of you to judge people who sincerely work to further the Gospel in a sacrificial and Christ-centered fashion. Nowhere in the Bible does it say to labor for the Kingdom only if you are "qualified" or are not white.

2. Your entire post smacks of class envy and frankly, racism. Your characterization of all short-term missionaries as vacationing white folk who are lazy, incompetent, overweight, spoiled golfers is absurd, superficial, and offensive. Maybe those wealthy upper class people really want to help and serve their missionary brothers overseas. Who are you to judge their intent and their effort? Undoubtedly there are those who vacation under the guise of short-term missions, but there are also many who do not. To characterize all short-term missions work as "a joke" is shameful.

3. Please show me some evidence from the Bible that short-term missions are bad. Otherwise, I would encourage to support those called to spread the Gospel, in whatever capacity and in whatever time frame that may be, rather than making snide remarks and unfair caricatures.

 

[Mushroom]

1. The "locals'" perception really has very little basis in missions in general, including short term missions. Please show me some Scripture reference that qualifies mission work so as not to appear silly to the local culture. So what if they snicker at the "overweight unqualified adults" or "teeny boppers?" Does that make their work any less valid? It is very pretentious of you to judge people who sincerely work to further the Gospel in a sacrificial and Christ-centered fashion. Nowhere in the Bible does it say to labor for the Kingdom only if you are "qualified" or are not white.

It not only makes it less valid, it makes it completely INVALID, friend. If these folks really care about helping the indigenous Christians in expanding their ministry... SEND THE MONEY... not the useless fat kids and dads at 10 times the cost. This is silly to even have to point out. You might call it pretentious, but I've been on the other side and seen the loud, pasty American "missionary" brats arrive en masse complaining of the heat, the smells, and the bugs, and accomplishing 1/10 the work at, again, 10 times the cost, so they can have an "experience" that makes a gazingstock of those they call their brothers. You may not like that assessment, perhaps because you or folks you love have in the past been on of those pasty "missionaries", but the facts are the facts. The local Christians put on a happy face to be able to recieve what help they can, but I can assure you from experience they are by and large not impressed to have to play caretaker while their families and culture are used as zoo exhibits for spoiled American kids.

2. Your entire post smacks of class envy and frankly, racism. Your characterization of all short-term missionaries as vacationing white folk who are lazy, incompetent, overweight, spoiled golfers is absurd, superficial, and offensive. Maybe those wealthy upper class people really want to help and serve their missionary brothers overseas. Who are you to judge their intent and their effort? Undoubtedly there are those who vacation under the guise of short-term missions, but there are also many who do not. To characterize all short-term missions work as "a joke" is shameful.

Dude, the last thing you should be accusing me of is racism... you have no idea of what you speak, and I'm not going to honor your accusation with an explanation, I'll just tell you you're wrong and leave it at that. My characterization is very much factual in regards to the silly "mission/vacation" garbage that I am addressing, and I will judge whether you like it or not, because I have seen it many times, and it is a joke, and a sad, arrogant waste of the Church's resources.

3. Please show me some evidence from the Bible that short-term missions are bad. Otherwise, I would encourage to support those called to spread the Gospel, in whatever capacity and in whatever time frame that may be, rather than making snide remarks and unfair caricatures.

If you really need scripture proofs that would show that a waste of resources and time used to make a gazingstock of your poorer brothers and pamper spoiled American children and their myopic parents, then I think you may have missed a few aspects of scripture by a long shot already, and pointing them out would seem futile.

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

Agreed Brad. I have been the recipient of short-term missionaries in West Virginia when I lived in the "boonies" and we had some preppy kids from Fallston, MD come "fix our stuff". Made me feel like I lived in a Zoo.

 

[ericfromcowtown]

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?

No, but it's easier to have empathy for the plight of others when you've experienced it first hand, even if only for a couple of weeks. My point was that it might be over-simplifying things to determine the worth of a short-term mission trip only in terms of $ / square feet of construction.

 

[Arch2k]

*Mod reminder* Let's keep the conversation civil and on-track everybody!

Brad, while I agree that many times money is the answer, would you not agree that there are legitamate needs that we can help others with? Christ helped feed the poor, and heal the sick did he not? I think I understand your point, but I question if you have not thrown out the baby with the bath water.

I think also a definition of "short term missions" could be helpful here. I believe that the office of "misssionary" has passed away, but still believe in the abiding responsability to feed the poor, and help those in need. If this meaning is used, one could help out in the local soup kitchen, or lend aid to your neighbor.

 

[Mushroom]

Just as an example, the median income in Haiti is $270 annually. A roundtrip ticket from Dulles Airport is around $600. I would be ashamed to stand next to a Haitian brother swinging a hammer knowing that just the transport costs for me to get there to help like that was costing more than he will make in two years. I would rather send him the check.

The reason real missionaries support this kind of travesty is because they know it is the only way they'll get their selfish and arrogant countrymen to do anything to help. They'll only give if they're gonna get something in return like an "experience" that will make them appreciate their prosperity more. This is a sick joke.

 

[Mushroom]

Brad, while I agree that many times money is the answer, would you not agree that there are legitamate needs that we can help others with? Christ helped feed the poor, and heal the sick did he not? I think I understand your point, but I question if you have not thrown out the baby with the bath water.

Brother, there are short-term missions that are quite valid... Doctors going in to perform surgeries and procedures that the locals would never be able to get except through that is one, and there are many others of similar vein. But what I am addressing is the common summer "mission trip" of teens and parents who go to someplace like Haiti and help build something or put on an outreach that is ridiculously wasteful and by and large ineffective due to expense, lack of qualification, and bereft of linguistic training.

My apologies for the intensity of my posts, but this is one subject that really gets my goat.

 

[TimV]

Brad may be using some hyperbole, but the point it sound, and there's no racism there that I can see, but rather the contrary, since he is advocating more money to local non-Whites.

Instead of 12 middle class young Americans, one grizzled contractor matched with someone who speaks the lingo and understands the culture would get a lot more done.

Not to say short term missions aren't valuable; they are. But they should all be overseen by very wise, older men, and not enthusiastic "youth pastors".

 

[Pergamum]

Is the bottom line financially really the main focus here?

The US has a LOT of money. It is the American way to throw money at the problem and leave it for others to fix. Let's not let this thinking affectmissions too. We need to get involved.

We need to send PEOPLE too. If not just for their sakes, for OUR sakes as well so that the US churches are taking part in the Great Commission.


So concerning costs, this shouldn't be the final factor in condemning short term missions. Long term missionary families also cost 10 times per year more than a local evangelist as well... should we eliminate long-term missionaries too and merely send money overseas like KP Yohanan thinks?



If done right, short term missions can be very beneficial:

It can be beneficial for locals if a clear and reachable objective is planned. Medical clinics, dental clinics, well digging.

For those that take the trips it can be beneficial as a first step towards long term missions. These trips can be life changing, if done right. I suggest pre-reading, a spiritual journal, concentrated prayer times and post-trip reading and discussion, almost like a course of study.


Brad, you seem to over-speak very often. Are you trying to be offensive? Have you ever been on a short term mission or out of the country. What were your experiences?