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What Is a Short-Term Mission, and Does God Use It?
âGod doesnât call us because weâre equipped,
He equips us for the callâ
May 27
Hi, everyone!
United Airlines has me firmly in their corporate grasp (not to mention seatbelt) as we wing our way to Denver and then New Orleans. This is the first leg of the trip to Balfate, Colon, Honduras, Central America. (You know youâre traveling a long distance when your destination has four identifiers.) Tomorrow I grab TACA Airlines (or vice versa) for Honduras.
Judy, Matthew, and I are going to Honduras for two months. We will be working with the Cornerstone Foundation, which operates a clinic on the north coast and is building a hospital there. The only doc for about 30,000 people at the edge of a mountainous jungle will be gone for the summer, and I will be taking his place. The clinic in Honduras should be quite busy. I will be challenged by a lot of medicine Iâve never seen or even thought about. I just have to remember that if I werenât there, theyâd have no medical care. So I just have to try to be better than nothing. Not as easy as it sounds.
Because there are no phones, faxes, mail, or e-mail available, we will be incommunicado. We will emerge in two months from the canopy of trees and the fellowship with the monkeys. We will be perplexed strangers to the world that no doubt has done quite well without us.
Many folks have asked that we keep them informed about our journey, so we will try to keep a diary (not a dairy, though that might be useful too) of our adventures. So this group e-mail will begin to relate our experiences and the answers to all of your prayers. Your first prayerâthat I leave town soonâhas already been answered.
Many of you are medically oriented, many of you are connected to us through church, some of you are family, and a few of you fall into many categories. For some, these notes will be too theological; for others, too clinical; and for most, too impersonal. What an opportunity! A chance to offend everyone! A few of you are recent acquaintances, and you might find all of my thoughts tedious. Thatâs the beauty of e-mail. Youâre just a click away from the recycle bin. Use it as you see fit.
We always think that we will discover some exotic new disease on a trip like this or, even better, find its rare cure. Or that we will happen upon some new theological insight. But usually we just expend all of our energies on finding clean water, cooking rice, and rinsing the sweat off our collective brow. The mundane once again supplants the ethereal.
I am in what most mission agencies call the âfirst phaseâ of the trip. Maybe you are unfamiliar with the stages of a mission trip. If so, Iâll identify them for you below.
Phase 1: That time during which you try to stay clean and dry and succeed. This phase usually lasts about five to ten minutes after arrival at the intended destination.
Phase 2: That time during which you try to stay clean and dry and fail. Your ultimate success is likely to depend upon how firmly you cling to this goal. If you keep this objective, you will become a very unhappy camper, questioning why God is punishing you or allowing your job to be thwarted.
Phase 3: That time during which you remain dirty and wet and donât care. This phase should last at least a few weeks or months. Your success on the trip is critically dependent upon your ability to accept the conditions where you are working without complaining or, more accurately, without really caring about the circumstances.
Phase 4: That time during which you think you are going to die and are afraid that you will. This phase is a sign that it is time to go home. With the grace of God, your project will be complete by the time this phase arrives, the next replacement will be arriving soon, and you will be able to hang on.
Phase 5: That time during which you think you are going to die and are afraid that you wonât. Pray that you donât reach this phase.
While these descriptions may seem impious, they accurately reflect the stages we anticipate.
Time to go. The plane is about to land, and theyâre asking, âIs there a pilot on board?â
On the road to Honduras,
Leon Greene
What is a short-term mission? Should we endorse it?
Mission work is often defined by the length of service. Anything less than two years is a short-term mission. Sometimes distinctions are made among the various types of mission trips.
- Career mission: Longer than two years.
- Short-term mission: Less than two years with a clearly defined goal or project.
- Cultural exposure: Less than four weeks with broad goals or purposes, often multifaceted.
- Vacation with a purpose: Usually less than two weeks with limited goals, often being to support and encourage long-term missionaries. (Frequently these trips are made by a family, and some real vacation time is included.)
What are the advantages and disadvantages of these missions? A short-term mission has many advantages:
However, there are also some disadvantages to short-term missions:
- They can be burdensome for the long-term missionaries (more trouble than theyâre worth).
- âShort termersâ can be culturally insensitive and make problems for the long-term missionaries long after the short-term team has gone home.
- Short-term workers can suffer considerable culture shock and reverse culture shock. (It can be as distressing to return home to U.S. culture as it is to go to a developing country.)
- Often the short termer has little to contribute, especially if the preparation has been deficient.
- Language barriers can add to the difficulty of the missionâit may be impossible to relate meaningfully to the people of the country visited.
- The short-term missionary may react negatively to the host culture.
- Short-term missions are costly of both time and money.
- Short-term service can manifest guilt associated with having so many material possessions.
- Short-term missionaries may concentrate more on the project than the people to whom theyâre ministering.
It is important to acknowledge that there are valid questions that are asked about the utility and appropriateness of short-term missions. Certainly the projects are costly, averaging about $1000â2000 per person. Could that money be better spent? Remember the woman who poured expensive perfume on Jesus before His crucifixion? Her display was unusual, but Jesus certainly did not condemn it.
While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, âWhy this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a yearâs wages and the money given to the poor.â And they rebuked her harshly.
âLeave her alone,â said Jesus. âWhy are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of herâ (Mark 14:3â9).
Short-term missions have been criticized for their expense. Since many missionaries are barely able to make ends meet with their meager support checks, shouldnât we just divert the short-term money to the full-time missionaries? My answer is that we do not have to make a choice. We can and should do both. Increasing the support of the full-time workers is necessary, but one way to accomplish this task is to educate specifically the younger members of the congregation about the missionariesâ needs. Youth are most commonly engaged in the short-term mission effort. If you asked a more probing question, the answer might become obvious: âWould you spend $1000â2000 to alter indelibly the mindset of a young person, to establish a worldview of missions, to help a young person mature spiritually, to inspire fervent prayer for missionaries, to change a life, and perhaps to plant the seed of a future missionary?â Most people would answer yes to such a question.
Short-term missions are burgeoning. In 1979, 25,000 people participated in short-term missions. By 1989, the number had increased to 120,000. In 1995 it was up to 200,000,[1] and in 1999, over half a million people participated in short-term missions.[2] If you use that number to calculate mission investment at $1,000 per person, it becomes $500 millionâquite a sizable chunk of money. We must be sure it is being used well. But for perspective, compare this money to the amount spent yearly worldwide on chewing gum, for exampleâover $2 billion. We in the United States alone spend over $6 billion yearly on video games and nearly $14 billion yearly on CDs and tapes. The expenditure on short-term missions, therefore, actually seems insufficient by comparison.
Is this short-term mission pattern just a fad? Has it simply become the rite of passage for youth involved in church activities? Is it necessary? Does the short-term mission trip merely represent a socially acceptable form of (often youthful) self-indulgence? To answer, we must examine whether the person going is responding to Godâs call and whether the short-term mission produces godly fruits in the host environment, in the person who goes on the trip, and in the sending congregation.
Most short-term mission workers have an entirely positive approach. They accept the local conditions. They look for unique ways to serve. They are flexible. Most return home with a new or renewed sense of purpose to their lives, some with a vision that they didnât have before. Most are changed people, and that change can last a lifetime. They look at the world in a different way. They begin to understand the Great Commission. It becomes relevant in their local community of âJerusalemâ as well as in Judea, Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of the earth.
Through many years of doing short-term missions, Iâve seen countless youth who dedicate their lives to full-time Christian service as a result of their experiences in a foreign land. Pastors are born, missionaries are molded, and health-care workersâdoctors, nurses, and physicianâs assistantsâare inspired. Yes, Iâve also seen adults changed in ways that no other experience could have accomplished.
One of our childrenâs leaders in our church has been a committed, evangelistic Christian for many years. She had devoted her life to the Christian cause, so she was no slouch as far as dedication is measured. But she had never been out of the country to see the church in the rest of the world. Recently she had the opportunity to go to Manila for two weeks as a childrenâs educational worker. She felt âa personal awakening to the needs of the worldâs children,â a concept she only thought she understood before the trip.
Listen to what she said to our churchâs missions committee: âNow I have a taste of desperation that children, who are some of the richest soil in which to plant the Truth, are not included in the plans as churches are planted all over the world.â She saw children âwarehousedâ in a newly planted church while the adults learned to worship. They were âcorralled into a small room with little or no direction, teaching, or learning for two long hours. What a waste of spiritually rich time and potential.â This dear saint returned to the United States a changed woman! The first time we saw each other...
