Category: Thoughts on Short-Term Missions Trips

Imagine you have relatives visiting from Germany.  They speak no English, but they tell you they want to engage in “meaningful ministry” while in the States.  Reluctantly, you allow them to teach your kindergarten Sunday School class.  You must translate.  Since the lesson takes twice as long than usual, the kids lose interest.  Still, your relatives go back to their home country rejoicing over all the converts they made.

Imagine you are asked to host a team of 20 people from Japan at your workplace.  They also speak no English and don’t know anything about your work, but you are expected to give them something to do for the next two weeks.  Out of desperation, you decide a bunch of walls need painting.

Imagine a stretch limo pulls up into your neighborhood.  It is filled with a youth group from Beverly Hills who want a tour of “middle-class America.”  They start snapping pictures of your children while smirking at their Target clothes.  You overhear them marveling that you mow your own lawn.  They want to know if they can paint your house–as long as they can take pictures, of course.

I know you get where I am going with this.

Sometimes all we need to do is put ourselves in their shoes.  The wrong starting point is often the very biggest problem with short-term ministry.  We shouldn’t be asking, “Where can we send our youth group/missions team/etc. that will have the biggest impact on our own people?”  Instead, ask the question, “Where is the need and who can we send that can fill it?”  The initial focus should be on the receivers, not on the senders.

When Choosing a Trip:

• By far, your most valuable trips will be to missionaries your church supports, because you already have a personal connection.  
• However, do not pressure your missionary to accept your team.  If your church supports that missionary, he is already going to feel pressure no matter what you say…..do not add more!  Make sure you give him an “out”, and then if he does agree, follow his specifications for the team as best as you can.  
• Develop a healthy skepticism of “short-term missions organizations” whose primary existence is to send out teams.  I’m sure there are good ones (Caravan being one of them), but make sure you ask questions such as, 
• What will be our connection to local churches or missionaries?  
• Who is making the major decisions? [It should be the people on the field].  
• Why can’t local people do the work we would be doing? [You need to receive a good answer for that question.] 
• What will be the follow-up to whatever ministry we accomplish?  [If there isn’t any, then what really is the point of going?]

Keep In Mind:

• Support roles are often the very best ways that short-term missions teams can be used.  A missionary conference needs childcare?  Perfect for a short-term team.  Energetic bodies needed to run a camp?  Excellent.  Homeschooling help so that a mom can work on language skills?  Fantastic.  Using media skills to put together a promotional video for the ministry?  Wow–that would be great!  
• Sharing skills is another excellent reason for teams:  Teaching micro-enterprise skills.  Training local church leaders how to run a VBS or an ESL class.  Sharing skills in medicine or art or construction.  Training them to do it is always better than doing it yourself.  
• If you are asked by a local church to put on some sort of program, such as a VBS or soccer camp, please be very careful.  Don’t bring in a ton of resources (markers, candy, prizes, etc) that the local church could never reproduce themselves.  After all, do we want them to think, ‘We could never do that ourselves; we must have Americans do it for us?’  Use local people as much as possible, and use local resources accessible by everyone–even if it means your program won’t be as exciting.

Sometimes, we just need a different mindset.  People want to go overseas and come back with great conversion stories.  But when you don’t know the language or the culture and you don’t have the relationships–that is simply not going to happen effectively.  Instead, participate in a ministry where you can support those who can do it effectively.

Part 3:  How to Make Sure They Love You on the Other Side

Part 4:  Don’t Be So Predictable

We met the Most Disastrous Short-Term Missions Team Ever about a year after we had lived in Tanzania.

We didn’t know these people; we hadn’t helped them get to us, but they were there to serve a church that we were a part of, and that’s how we ended up stuck with them for two weeks.

They were nice enough people and all, but they had some pretty firm ideas of how they wanted things to go.  Our local pastor had wanted them to sleep in church member’s homes, but they insisted they would just sleep on the floor of the church.  (He was too nice to tell them that co-ed sleeping was entirely culturally inappropriate.)  They didn’t like the lunches he had arranged for them, and after a few days, they asked if they could eat something else, greatly offending the pastor.

But the worst part was their lack of showering.  For some absurd reason, these [fully-grown] adults decided that it would be fun to have a “No Showering Contest” during their trip.  They bet each other how many days each could go without showering.  Of course, there was a perfectly good shower available to them, and there was an abundance of water available at the time.  But apparently their malaria medication affected their good judgment [or something like that] because these otherwise normal people decided this would be funny.

Not only did they refuse to take showers, but they constantly discussed it.  Even around the local people,  who at best were confused why Americans would come to their country and not shower, and at worst, were terribly offended.

We were horrified.  But we were very young and inexperienced, so we kept our mouths shut.  I can tell you for certain that if a team attempted that kind of shenanigan around me now, I would drag them to the shower by their ears.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only bad experience we saw.  We saw a good friend who had an American church insist on sending him 20 people.  He had a desperately hard time finding them all housing, food, and “ministry” for them to do.  Many of them ended up painting walls….despite the fact that there are many qualified painters available in a city where there is 40% unemployment.  Considering that it cost $50,000 to paint those walls, I hope they did a good job.

We had other friends who had a short-term team member vocally and repeatedly criticize their ministry….in front of other team members. [Which was, of course, devastating….missionaries have feelings too.]  Apparently living in Tanzania for a month made him more of an expert than our friends who had lived there for a decade.

Now, in case this all seems a little judgmental of me, please know that I went on some short-term trips before coming to Tanzania, and as I look back, I can see how I blew it too–how I was culturally insensitive or inflexible.  And to be perfectly honest, there have been multiple times I have blown it as a long-term missionary as well.  I realize that I don’t always get it right, and that God can use us regardless of our foolishness.

But over the years, we’ve learned a lot.  There definitely is a “right” and a “wrong” way to do short-term missions.  Sometimes the line is not perfectly clear, but we can at least work towards getting it right.  So in the next three posts, I am going to share what we have learned.

Part 2:  The Limo From Beverly Hills in Your Neighborhood

Part 3:  How to Make Sure They Love You on the Other Side

Part 4:  Don’t Be So Predictable