I’ve several times posted articles about the benefit and down sides to short term missions projects that are common amongst youth groups. I never really thought about it until my senior pastor nixed a request to take a group to Russia because it was more cost efficient to send money and hire locals to work on building the seminary that our church was sponsoring. I realized then that there were many ways to bless a community and sometimes that might mean not taking a group of Americans over to a foreign country. Over the years I have come to see that partnerships is an vital aspect of mission. Hence my continued interest in our partnership with Ireland. So, I ran across this article and was very impressed.
Short-Term Mission Trips Can Teach Sustainability and Partnerships
I’m grateful to belong to a church body that emphasizes church empowerment in our mission strategy. Sometimes we have healthy dialogue and even disagreement about the usefulness of short-term missions. But who says students can’t participate meaningfully in the same kind of church empowerment we champion in our overall global missions strategy? I’ve seen firsthand that students can be the catalyst of these types of relationships, and when it happens, it’s beautiful.
This past year, for example, one of my students focused his year-long senior project on the Haitian church with whom we partner in Nassau, Bahamas. He worked with community leaders to create a sustainable garden providing meals for hungry families in the neighborhood surrounding the church. He, another student, and I traveled to Nassau this spring, along with two of our pastors, to conduct a children’s ministry workshop that allowed us to hand off some of the ministry we love to the faithful believers who live there year-round. When I returned with a team of 18 juniors and seniors this summer, they selflessly trained and encouraged our Haitian friends.
Short-Term Mission Trips Produce Long-Term Missionaries
Go ahead—ask the missionaries you know how God called them to the mission field. I have yet to meet a cross-cultural missionary who didn’t first participate in a short-term trip. Most of the people we know who participate in missions by praying, giving, or going first served on short-term trips.
One girl in our church has become something of a poster child for what I hope students will take away from their trips. When I expressed disappointment that she couldn’t join us again on a trip the summer after graduation, she reassured me it was okay since she’d gotten what she was supposed to from the experience. She said her task now is to create Christ-honoring change in the world through advocacy and fundraising. Wow. Talk about outgrowing her teacher! She put me to shame in her understanding of short-term missions. Currently, she’s raising money for a Haitian orphanage struggling to continue its gospel ministry to kids outside Port Au Prince. All of this advocacy she relates back to her experiences on short-term trips.
Short-Term Mission Trips Create Unstoppable Kids
A South African friend once asked me, “How do we raise up kids who are unstoppable?” He recounted the days of his own youth during and just after apartheid. He and his friends had been zealous for the Lord, and he didn’t see a parallel here in the United States. That question has spurred me on in ministry, and through experiences with students I’ve found pieces of the answer.
Take, for example, my students who got involved with special-needs peers at their public high school as a result of serving at a Joni and Friends Family Retreat. They started a club that gives such students an opportunity to participate in social activities after school. A group of students who served with Hurricane Sandy relief efforts in New Jersey want to know where they can get involved with a soup kitchen in our own city. Another student is compiling an anthology of works by the Nassau team to raise awareness about the poverty of our Haitian friends. And some students from the same group are embarking on an experiment to “give more, spend less” in order to raise money for specific needs in the Haitian community.
Students are learning the all-sufficiency of Christ as they embark on adventures naturally beyond them. They are recognizing their role in the global church. They are becoming unstoppable.
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