How to Make Sure Your Short-Term Trip Helps Instead of Harms the Mission Field: Part I

 

Whenever people prepare for a short-term trip, good feelings abound. People want to help and serve and have an adventure. The missionaries are happy and supportive of the trip and are excited to see them come. A schedule is created, a price tag is attached, people are recruited, facts are checked with the missionary, and tickets are purchased. Then there might even be a short prayer service or “commissioning” where a team is honored and prayed for and sent out from the church the Sunday before they go. Feelings are sky-high as bags are filled with requested goodies for the missionaries, and the whole experience feels special and then...

The missionaries feel worn out and stressed by the trip. The short-term goers themselves are left untransformed. They settle back into their everyday routines. Additionally, a lot of money was spent, while little has changed on the field, and little to nothing changed for the team members. With so much good intention, money, and effort devoted to short-term trips, how can they so often turn out to be all sound and fury, signifying nothing?

These mistakes are rarely intentional, and they come from more than just the people going. Unfortunately, there is far too much blame to go around. Let us look at the overlapping problems:

It is effortless for Americans to think that a short-term trip is really about us. How will this trip affect me? How will I change? What kind of adventure will I have? Will I see God work a miracle? Unprepared Americans often go on a trip prepared to judge it like they judge church for the entertainment value and the personal enrichment value of service. Likewise, the short-term trip is on trial. The most important question is, what did this trip do for me? They know they will help a missionary and realize they will “rough it” for a time on the field, but that is the price you pay for going. They are looking for personal enrichment and crazy experiences that make them feel good about going on the trip.

This desire is the message they often get from their church. And to be honest, how can we blame them? 

The church often reinforces the view that the mission trip is about the people going. The church does not do much to explain the trip. The elders or other church leaders don’t closely investigate the trip’s nature, so they just celebrate the people going. It is hard to blame the church leaders for this because trip preparation is hard work with many hard-to-deal-with issues. No church leader wants to crush enthusiasm for missions in the body of Christ. Few leaders have time to organize trips and don’t want to discourage others from doing that work. The path of least resistance then is to allow a trip to go forward and celebrate the participants and hope they get something out of it. 

The missionaries are in a tough spot if they ask for a beneficial trip and if their church feels ill at ease trying to meet that trip’s requirements. The missionary often receives a trip request in the form of, “The church needs a trip that…” and since they are a supporting church, their needs determine the priority. The missionary receiving a short-term trip is often burdened and overwhelmed by the cultural illiteracy of the coming short-term “missionaries,” and they are desperate that potential and current supporters do not sour on his or her work. The missionary then tends to make trips that are easier to manage, limit interaction with nationals to those who are understanding and forgiving toward Americans, and schedule the trip around events and sights that tickle their American guests’ fancy. 

These overlapping interests, misunderstandings, and differing needs often lead to short-term trips with minimal forethought and a limited goal of small value. Often, the team members receive little to no training, nor spiritual oversight from their leaders. Missionaries struggle to communicate their complex needs and feel crippled in saying no to enthusiastic people that support them. At the same time, it is often harmful, and at times even dangerous, to take untrained and unprepared Americans into an environment where they have prolonged interaction with nationals. No one wants a bad short-term trip, but if we find ourselves in a cycle of poorly planned and executed trips, how do we break that cycle?