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

In part I, we learned about some reasons that poorly designed and executed short-term trips occur. Now, we will look at some of the ways you can make sure that the short-term trips you take are worthwhile, well-planned, and well-executed. We will look at what the church leadership can do, what the missionaries can do, and finally what the people going on the short-term trip can do to make sure their trip will build the Kingdom and glorify Christ our Lord.

The church can help get things right by letting their people assist them. Allow the people interested in missions and mission trips to be responsible and give them some authority to look into mission opportunities and needs. Pastors often don’t have enough time to do all they need to do for the church, and they need help to evaluate mission trips and mission partners. As we know, though, zeal without knowledge is not good (Proverbs 19:2).  Pastors should make sure to equip the people for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11-12).

Pastors should clarify the calling and tasks for the people who will lead missions. The pastors should make sure that they are well-informed and willing to read and learn what to do to evaluate trips and prepare people to go. A person in the body with real mission field experience can do this training, but it is the pastor’s responsibility to make sure the people that the Lord gave him to shepherd are equipped to do the work of the ministry.

The church can also help by changing the focus away from the individuals that will go, to the need for the church’s trip, by explaining and building up the ministry goals in the minds of the broader church, showing the sacrifice the people make going to serve. Then, finally, the church should give the people who went time to report on the ministry done on the field instead of the experience of going to the field. These focuses help orientate the body towards the real purpose of missions.

Missionaries can help the most by taking the risk to explain the kind of mission trip that they most need to see on the field and offering to advise and assist in the training necessary for the short-term missionaries to succeed. In the short run, this requires more from the missionary, but in the long run, the missionary will learn to benefit and enjoy short-term trips and even anticipate them.

Missionaries need to be honest with their sending churches and supporters and not accept trips that will not be useful to the ministry. When a church or just supporters show real interest in the ministry’s work and express a humble desire to do something useful, the missionary needs to honor that request. While it can seem like more work to fashion a beneficial trip and help train the short-term missionaries, it becomes more comfortable over time. Short-term trips become a real joy and the isolation that many missionaries feel from their supporting churches lessens as more members of those churches bond with their missionaries. The sending church will also bond with the nationals in a more enduring and profound way.

The people going can make sure to have the attitude that the trip is not about them, their experience, or their feelings; the mission trip is a unique and vital chance to glorify God. This attitude does not come naturally to people, quite the opposite. First, the church has to set the tone, and then the leaders of the trip need to set up times for some training and preparation that allow the goers to appreciate the gravity of what they are doing. Describe the details of the mission to the members and call them to sacrifice for the sake of it. Another good tactic is the pledge to take nothing they will care about losing. Get every person going to look at each thing they are bringing and say to themselves, at least, “I don’t care if I never see this again.” It is one thing to get the goers into a mental frame of sacrifice and service, but when you do, the trip needs to be useful, and the sacrifice must be for a worthwhile cause.   

When the church, the missionary, and the goers all start to think about these trips correctly and focus on the Kingdom work and the people they are trying to reach, the other details of the trip tend to fall into place. When taking the trip seriously, people get impatient with too much tourism. A little tourism never hurt anyone, but they want to work and do good and serve people. The missionary and the church should honor that. Soon you will find the people of your church unwilling to be the 15th team to paint the wall this summer.