10 Principles for Short-Term Mission Trips
Church leaders debate whether or not short-term trips are useful for helping start and strengthen healthy churches cross-culturally. As someone who has spent the last 11 years church planting in Central Asia and receiving short-term teams, I’d answer with a resounding “yes!” Short-term trips are useful for the kingdom.
But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think through the way we do short-term trips and make them better. This article aims to help churches—specifically Pillar Network churches—with our shared convictions around robust ecclesiology and sound doctrine expressed in clear confessions of faith—do better at utilizing short-term trips (STTs).
I want to offer 10 principles that your elders, staff, or elder-led missions committees can apply to your church’s trips. In the first four principles, I want to flesh out some practical implications that I think flow from our shared ecclesiological convictions. In the latter six, I will focus on principles that are matters of prudence, but align well with our ecclesiology. In one of my favorite articles on parenting, Ed Moore gives this caveat: “these eight things aren’t an exhaustive list; it’s a limited list, a personal list, a subjective list.” The same could be said of my own list here. Yet, I pray it helps us see more churches established and equipped among the nations in part through short-term trips.
1. PLAN CHURCH-CENTERED TRIPS: REMEMBER THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH
Everything your church does on a short-term missions trip should be working through, alongside, or towards healthy churches, or working to support a team who is serving in one of these ways. If the aim and means of missions are local churches that glorify God, then our STTs must be church-centered. Evangelistic events, one-on-one evangelistic efforts, VBS for kids, construction projects, relief projects, and extended times of prayer CAN all be a good use of time. But if they aren’t directly connected to local churches, then many times the fruit that might come will be scattered or perhaps lost altogether.
You must ask your missionary partners how your STT is related to the local church. It might have a direct impact on a local church (teaching the Word through an interpreter to a specific congregation), or it might be a few degrees removed but still with that aim (caring for kids at a training for missionaries who are aspiring to establish healthy churches in an unreached context or digging wells as a means to engage the community to see a church planted). Either way, the missionary must know and communicate that connection and you, as the planner of the STT, must be confident in the church-centered nature of the work.
2. PLAN ELDER-LED TRIPS: LEAD, DON’T JUST CELEBRATE
It’s exciting when church members undertake cross-cultural ministry on STTs, so elders should be excited. But I’ve seen pastors excited about STTs who weren’t involved in leading and shaping the partnerships. If the pastors aren’t behind the partnership the subsequent STT, then it will likely become a pet project of a few people. The end result will be compartmentalized from the rest of the church’s ministries—with little accountability—and detached from the church’s mission. I’m not talking about the elders merely giving a nod of approval. I mean that elders should be “behind it” like a fan is with their favorite football team. This level of support will be seen, first, if an elder can go on the short-term trip. If not an elder, then a deacon or key church leader who serves under the direction of elders.
This means you must give time in your elders’ meetings to discuss and pray about partnerships with long-term missionaries to whom you will send STTs. Your elders should have at least a few discussions with long-term partners about STTs before you send teams. You’ll also need ongoing discussions after the partnership is established to make sure it’s on the right track. Elders must also lead in making the hard decisions regarding which STTs / partnerships in which your church will not participate. As the church grows, more people will have a stake in supporting their friends on the field. Because requests for these types of disconnected, one-off, STTs will come, the elders must be prepared to gently answer why the church will not support the trip and why it might not be wise for the member to go themselves. If the elders don’t lead, then the church could end up spending lots of money with little gospel-impact.
3. PLAN GOSPEL-FOCUSED TRIPS: REMEMBER THE MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH
Mercy ministry and relief work are clearly implications of the power of the gospel to transform Christians who love their neighbors. Many times, crossing cultures to help with relief and mercy ministry can seem like the most urgent need. But it’s also during STTs of these sorts that the most money can be wasted, communities can be harmed, and churches can be distracted from the mission and message of the church. You must consider how a trip focused on relief or mercy ministry will impact the work long-term. Does the way you’re helping honor the local church? Does it perpetuate negative ideas about western imperialism? What is the effect after you’re gone? Does the work produce a healthier community or a more dependent one? Elders should have long, hard conversations with missionaries or organizations asking you to come for these STTs. Sometimes, relief work and mercy ministries get started only to have lots of time, effort, and money poured into the project just to keep it going when it’s not actually needed anymore. I strongly recommend Corbett and Fikkert’s When Helping Hurts for guidance in this area.
Even after wisely thinking through how these trips impact local communities, you still need to be careful that your efforts are opening a door for the message of the gospel to be proclaimed. Proclamation must be done at the right time and with careful thought, in tandem with national believers or missionaries. When three major earthquakes hit the country where I serve, well-intentioned believers who came to care for those who had just lost their family members and homes also passed out New Testaments. Those suffering reacted angrily, and this act actually hurt the witness of the church. They felt that Christians were taking advantage of their suffering. But in other cases, local churches and foreigners cared for their hurting, suffering, and grieving neighbors by giving out soup, blankets, housing, clothing and more. They did these acts with a smile and in the name of Jesus. Months later, these churches are having opportunities to proclaim Christ because they lovingly and patiently waited. Keep the message central, but remember prudent timing is important as well.
4. PLAN ACCOUNTABLE TRIPS: CARE ENOUGH TO ASK HARD QUESTIONS
Missionaries want input and accountability from their partner churches, or at least they should. Some missionaries are sensitive about their work because they’ve poured blood, sweat, and tears into the task (just like pastors have). But don’t think that because you’ve never been a missionary you have nothing to offer by way of grace-filled evaluation and counsel. Yes, unless blatantly sinful, you likely shouldn’t comment on their dress, food choices, or language, but pastors should be leaning on their understanding of God’s Word, sound doctrine, and philosophy of ministry to engage, teach, and exhort missionaries and their strategies. Paul as an apostle maintained a different relationship with local churches than modern-day missionaries should. And yet it seems he thought himself accountable to and dependent upon local churches—specifically Antioch—and maintained a partnership of accountability with them (Acts 11:25, 13:1-4, 14:26-28).
Of course, these “hard questions” and exhortations should be wrapped in humility and grace and come from the correct source. Accountability without relationship will not start or end well. Spend a significant amount of time before and during STTs getting to know the missionaries, their strategy, and their daily rhythms as best you can. Missionaries can be isolated—far from sending churches and without a mature local church with godly elders keeping them accountable. Meaningful membership and formative church discipline should be the primary means of accountability in the lives of every Christian, but most mission contexts lack healthy churches, which is why the missionaries are there. For a season, you may be the primary means God’s uses to sharpen and sanctify the missionary. STTs are a great opportunity to ask instructive questions. This role should primarily fall to the sending church, but other partner churches should ask questions to gauge the level of involvement of the sending church and whether they are needed to lean into that role more. Maybe start by asking about their local church membership, their organizational accountability structures, and their current relationship with their sending church. You won’t know if you don’t ask, and it might be that no one else is asking.
5. PLAN SMALL WORK WITH BIG IMPACT: DON'T DESPISE THE LITTLE TASKS
Some of the most impactful STTs are spent doing things that seem far from evangelism and discipling. Watching kids so parents can go on a date night means healthier marriages and families. Riding public transportation, getting lost, and being frustrated with the crowds means you better understand the daily grind of life in a crowded city and know how to pray for missionaries. Spending a week with TCKs (Third Culture Kids) at a meeting means they get to be around mature believers—who aren’t missionaries—and their parents get to be fed from the Word, equipped for the task, and encouraged through fellowship in their own language—all of which are rare occasions.
Sitting over meals “not getting anything done” means you get to hear about the culture around you and the struggles of the missionary in front of you, which again, helps you be better equipped to pray. Sitting having tea with a group of nationals with whom you can’t communicate reminds you of the importance and difficulty of language learning. Waiting patiently when the schedule doesn’t go as planned is a means to show love and care to missionaries and national partners. Cleaning up after an outreach event so the missionaries can mingle with the nationals might create space for a gospel conversation. Westerners want results. We struggle when we can’t point to what we built. Sometimes the most fruitful efforts on STTs seem ordinary at the time, but their kingdom impact is eternal.
6. PLAN ENCOURAGEMENT-HEAVY TRIPS: MAKE THE MAIN AIM ENCOURAGING THE BELOVED
One of the primary reasons the “small tasks” I referred to above are so important is because they encourage the missionaries and local believers. Encouragement should be one of the primary aims of STTs. Many of you know the difficulties of church planting. It can be lonely, slow moving, and discouraging. Missionaries and pastors in unreached contexts are building the church where there is no foundation. There is little gospel infrastructure to help the church grow in depth and breadth. Even if a local person puts their faith in Christ, deconstructing their previous centuries-old, long-held, religious beliefs takes time and effort. It can be draining and discouraging and I’ve yet to mention cultural stressors, government and communal pressures, economic struggles, or lack of funding. Missionaries, local elders, and believers need to be encouraged to not grow weary in doing good.
These seemingly small tasks may look different than a conversation or practical service. It may not be what you expected, but these times are vital for building gospel partnerships that help keep these brothers and sisters accountable, encouraged, and sustained as they start and strengthen churches. To play off a phrase from one pastor, we can sometimes overestimate what we can accomplish on a two-week STT and underestimate what an encouraged and well supported missionary or pastor can do in 20 years. We can also underestimate what a few days of encouragement from a partner can do for the life and ministry of a missionary.
7. PLAN FOR WISE STEWARDSHIP: BE WILLING TO GIVE AS MUCH AS YOU SPEND TO GO, OR MORE
It’s no secret that millions of dollars are spent on STTs. Even so, we shouldn’t cancel the fruitful trips. However, pastors should challenge your church members to give at least as much time and money towards long-term missions work by praying and giving as they are giving to STTs (if we want to get specific, then think 10 days * 10 hours = 100 hours and approx. $2000 for travel and lodging). You should also be just as careful about who you give to as to where you go. Money can do more harm than a STT can, so be wise about who you fund. Strategic and generous funding of long-term work through partnerships with missionaries and national churches will normally have a greater impact than STTs. Long-term, faithful, hard-working, effective gospel-workers who stay a long time seem to be how God is pleased to bring enduring effect in this world.
Just think what would happen if a sister church from a nearby state had a great week of outreach in your city once a year and then left. Contrast that with the faithful proclamation of the gospel through the normal means of grace over decades coming from your church. Which is more likely to have a lasting impact? This is obvious once we say it out loud. Few who go on STTs think they will have a greater impact than long-term missionaries because they are humble, kind saints, but it can be easy to forget the priority on the long-term workers. Sometimes going on a STT helps stir one’s heart to give more towards long-term work, but that’s not always the case. As you exhort your people to live for God’s glory among the nations, remind them that generously giving is a primary means of doing so in order to long-term, healthy, sustainable workers to continue to give themselves to the task.
8. PLAN USING PROPER CANDIDATES: BE SURE SHORT-TERM MINISTERS ARE QUALIFIED AND EQUIPPED.
It seems when Paul sent someone with a letter or ministry gift or to encourage the saints, he sent a trusted, mature brother or sister (1 Cor 16:17-18, Romans 16:1-2, Phil 2:25, Col 4:7-9, Eph. 6:21-22). Going on a STT was influential in my ultimately coming to the field long-term, so I don’t want to discount STTs’ importance in the discipleship of your church members. However, there are many steps that should be taken to help someone mature in the faith before they are sent to serve on a STT—things that don’t potentially cost thousands of dollars, undermine the foundation being laid for the first time among the unreached, or risk the work of a cross cultural laborer (unfortunately, I’ve seen all three of these things happen when I was responsible for SSTs at my sending church). Don’t discourage a zealous young believer who might not yet be mature enough to go. Rather, encourage them to continue to grow and see themselves recognized as qualified to go. A good question to ask is whether they are serving at your local church in a faithful way like they will be asked to serve on the STT in a foreign context. Just like a plane ride won’t cause someone to morph into a long-term missionary, it won’t transform a STT candidate either.
9. SUFFICIENT TRAINING: TRAIN YOUR CHURCH MEMBERS BEFORE YOU SEND THEM
You won’t be able to train someone to be an effective long-term missionary in time for a STT, but you can take measures to properly prepare them. First, make sure everyone on your team can share a clear gospel message (“God, Man, Christ, Response: Repentance and Faith” is one of my favorite outlines because you can adapt the approach to the person sitting in front of you). Make sure everyone on your team is a committed member of a local church. We want to model faithful church membership. Even a short conversation about church membership on a STT can bear good fruit. That can’t happen if they aren’t faithful members.
Help generate accurate expectations i.e. train them to accept that you can’t accurately expect. Make sure everyone on the team is physically fit to travel to prepare for jet lag, sleeping poorly, walking a lot, and possibly doing more manual labor than they typically do. Finally, as you are looking for ways to help equip short term teams I recommend you use resources like The Missions Course, The Missions Podcast, and read good books. When planning for a STT, use training produced by the International Mission Board or Reaching and Teaching. Perhaps use these 10 headings as points of discussion in preparing to come. But most of all, I pray the Spirit empowers you to faithfully disciple your members in the context of your local church, so they are ready to go.
10. KEEP SENDING AND COMING
God has caused my family and me to persevere in this task in part because faithful brothers and sisters have “sent us on our journey in a manner worthy of God.” Having a meal in our home with the preaching pastor from our sending church reminds us that they are holding the rope. Faithful partners who come yearly to serve, pray, and encourage have become dear friends. Seeing folks grow in their love for the city and people we minister among reignites my heart when it felt as though only a flicker remained.
When done purposefully and effectively, STTs can have a wonderful impact for kingdom growth and the starting and strengthening of churches. God seems pleased to use them in this unique dispensation of history to draw believers to long-term cross-cultural service, encourage gospel partnerships, help churches pray more consistently, sustain long-term workers and local elders, unite like-minded churches around the globe, and proclaim the gospel to the lost. Let’s steward this privilege with careful intentionality. Keep sending and coming.