Vacations and exotic adventures fill social media feeds during the summer. Scrolling through I find photo after photo of friends in unusual destinations like Rwanda, Burundi, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. As the season of short-term mission trips reaches a crescendo, I confess that deep-seated questions stir in my heart and mind as I think about the value of these trips.
Some call mission trips a waste of time, or worse, harmful. Others call them life changing and a key piece of church ministry. So how can we participate in short-term mission work effectively?
To start, we need a lot of wisdom and humility.
Before you pack your bags for your next international excursion, think about how you will invest in God’s global family. Make it a priority to encourage Christians around the world, support local economies, and find the common themes that speak to all of our humanity.
Over the years, I’ve adopted the following guidelines to inform my engagement in international ministry:
1. Get involved at home.
We are God’s light in a world that needs love, truth, and grace in all corners. To share the truth of Christ with integrity in a foreign country, we need to actively be that light in our hometowns. The work we do today in our own spheres of influence will translate to a genuine expression of God’s love across boundaries. The best preparation for a short-term mission trip is to practice loving others long-term, right where we are planted.
2. Always involve the local church.
In 2002 I found myself in the pristine countryside of the Czech Republic. My Californian church partnered with a small congregation in Valašské Meziříčí to host a week-long evangelistic English camp. We collaborated with leaders of the Czech church in a country where approximately one per cent of the population consider themselves Christians. Together we shared the Gospel with the first post-communist generation — students who had zero preconceived notions of who God is. This was such an honour. My team acted as a catalyst to draw students to camp, while the local church would be the ones to invest in them long after we were gone.
3. Promote God-given dignity.
It’s not uncommon to hear mission trip attendees reflect, often with surprise, how they received more than they gave. When mission teams go out in humility, ready to empower local partners, they often return with new perspectives and a richer understanding of their own faiths. Our presence as visitors should reaffirm the dignity of local ministries, rather than assuming we have superior knowledge and know-how.
At Plant With Purpose, the organization where I work, we use the phrase “God-given hope and dignity” to describe the impact we strive to make on partnering families. More than any other result, we want to see impoverished individuals experience empowerment by using their own gifts to change their circumstances. We find that the best encouragement visitors can offer is to walk alongside partnering farmers and bear witness to work already underway in local communities. This model gives dignity to local farming families as they share the literal fruit of their labours with their guests.
4. Understand God is already at work.
During a recent trip to the Dominican Republic to share our program with supporters, we spent the day in the community of El Café. Under the hot Dominican sun, the group trudged up a deforested hillside with local community members. Together we planted 3,000 trees to restore the watershed that connects to the capital city, Santo Domingo. As we rested in the shade, community members shared how the organization’s local program was transforming their lives, formerly bound by poverty, into lives of freedom in Him. Our tree planting was helpful, but God had clearly been at work in El Café long before we arrived. Our central role was to bear witness.
A mission trip can change you. At best, short-term missions allow the global body of Christ to mutually encourage and lift one another up. Visitors learn about local ministries, and locals receive encouragement. 1 Peter 3:9 puts it succinctly: “Instead, bless — that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing” (The Message). So may your disciple-making be done with wisdom and humility, with open eyes to see what God is doing in our world.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Davide Novelo.
