I will admit it. I am a short-term mission trip junkie. I love going on short-term misson trips, and I love going on them with the students in our youth group. Whether it’s fixing up homes in our own state of Pennsylvania, building a home hundreds of miles away, doing evangelism in Mexico, building a school in Kenya, or running a youth camp in Kazakhstan, I can honestly say that every short-term mission trips I have taken with our youth group students has been a blessing. We have made short-term mission trips the focus of our summers in our youth group.
In all this, there has been some great rethinking about short-term missions over the years by many leaders and churches that I have been happy to see. I am thankful that leaders are speaking out against short-term missions arrogance, where short-term mission trip participants go with a savior and superior mentality, as if they know everything and are the only ones who can save the world. Rather, more and more leaders are understanding and teaching how short-term missions participants need to be humble, culturally sensitive, open to learning; need to understand the importance of supporting the local, long-term missionaries and need to understand that often the greatest benefactors of the short-term mission trips are the participants.
Similarly, I am glad to see that many leaders are considering and practicing pre- and post-trip training and debriefing, to equip students before trips and enable long-term spiritual growth and fruits after the trips are completed. Like we say in our youth group, the mission trip begins when we get home. Thus, we want to make sure that missions becomes a lifestyle and not just an activity that has happened for a few days in the summer.
For the past few summers, some other thoughts have crossed my mind as I consider how our youth group and perhaps other groups could be rethinking short-term missions.
First, rethinking the cost of short-term missions. Because the economy has affected everyone, the cost of the mission trips has increased. Even the trips within our state cost money for travel, accommodations, and materials. For our group, rethinking this has meant that these past two summers, we teamed up with urban churches and created urban-suburban partnerships. In doing so, we created mission trip opportunities for our youth group students and adults that were a week long, but we met at church each morning and returned home each night. Sure, we lost some of the bonding of sleeping overnight at a location together. However, many students who could not afford to go on an overnight/out-of-state/out-of-country mission trip could now go and have a powerful short-term missions experience.
Second, rethinking the purpose of short-term mission trips. In 1996, members from our church built a church in a rural location in Vera Cruz, Mexico, after the son of one our families tragically died during a mission trip there. While it still remains a tragedy in our church history, God has used it for his good and glory. The family decided that the savings they planned to use for their son’s college education would be used to build a church in his memory. That church has become a center for refuge during the winter months in Mexico, when great flooding hits the area. Moreover, 11 other churches have been planted in the area. Our primary ministry over the years has been to encourage the local church there, as well as do Vacation Bible School (VBS) for the local children. However, in recent years, the local economy has also grown. The church has done its own VBS ministry in the few years we could not go back. And the local, rural area has given way to modernization. In all this, with the indigenous church and economy flourishing, I have begun to think during our recent trips, What is our purpose for coming here now?
Chap Clark and Kara Powell, in their book, Deep Justice in a Broken World, helped me consider this question even more deeply and how it relates to our short-term mission trips. I want to be clear that I am not saying that VBS is not an important ministry. However, what Chap and Kara are talking about is youth ministries that are “willing to do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, until the systems that perpetuates brokenness are fixed.” They talk about the idea of not just doing service but really asking the why questions of injustice and then doing something about that. Moreover, they are asking ministries to consider more than just service that helps others but rather, having a goal of justice that removes obstacles so people can eventually help themselves.
For our groups, this has meant rethinking our short-term missions to go to areas where there is a “greater” need for VBS ministry, such as Haiti. Moreover, we have worked with local missionaries in Kenya and Tanzania to build schools so that long-term change and benefit can be provided for these areas. Even building homes with Habitat for Humanity has been a powerful ministry for our group in trying to help alleviate the perpetual cycle of brokenness for some people. Our urban-suburban partnerships have been developed so that continual, long-term relationships and partnerships would be nurtured rather than just a one-time summer service trip.
Finally, we have strategically been to and are planning more short-term trips to places where “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” and trips to “the ends of the earth,” where the gospel is rare. Ultimately, we are trying to rethink so that we are not making repeated trips to the same places and doing the same things but are considering short-term mission trips where we can contribute to working on helping to fix the systems that perpetuate brokenness.
Helpful Resources:
Bleed Out: Stories of Christlike Compassion
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Writing this slant puts the pressure on because change is what we need as we continue to pack students up with money and medical release forms for weeklong trips to serve, but change requires movement and work and a lot of intentionality.
We jump in with willing hearts and a desire to make missions a lifestyle but quickly get pulled away by the loudest things in our ministry to douse water on fires, answer phone calls from people who have the solution to all of our fundraising needs, and attend meetings that may or may not have much to do with the method and praxis of our youth ministries.
Changing the way we do short-term missions can be difficult because we’ve grown accustomed to getting by with the basics; because we know that in serving, there is power, and someone’s life is going to get changed by it regardless.
However, it’s hard to ignore the findings that say we may be off on this assumption. The work that Fuller Youth Institute did in collaboration with The Global Learning Center and Bethel College (at summits that convened with experts on short-term missions) tells us that short-term service trips might not be producing the spiritual and relational growth spurt we might expect for the long term1.
The research2, as cited in Deep Justice and Short-Term Missions curriculum, sheds some light.
• The explosive growth in the number of short-term mission trips among both kids and adults has not been accompanied by similarly explosive growth in the number of career missionaries.
• It’s not clear whether participation in service trips causes participants to give more money to alleviate poverty once life returns to “normal.”
• Participating in service trips does not seem to reduce participants’ tendencies toward materialism.
My husband, a thinker and a problem solver, has said on many occasions, “Why not take the $10,000 that we raise to fly us all to Mexico and send it to the locals to build 10 houses instead of us going to build one?” We raise money to travel and do work that locals could be doing, and it would benefit a lot more in need.
This thought was solidified as I read the study3 done by Dr. Kurt Ver Beek from Calvin College (after Hurricane Mitch in 1998), also noted in Deep Justice, that tells us that those receiving new homes, while overwhelmed and appreciative, would rather the money be sent in order for more homes to be built.
At the same time, youth ministers know that short-term missions are a valuable tool that help us—by way of experiential learning and cross-cultural interaction (even if it’s at an assisted living center across the street)—make a deeper and more formative impression of God’s kingdom on the hearts of our students.
So what do we do? A good start would be to use well-researched and practical help that’s been provided through others who think about missions more than we do.
I’ve been using the Justice Mission curriculum with teenagers since I was 21 years old. I’ve immersed myself in the words of Jesus and am convinced that God requires us to walk humbly, seek justice, and love mercy.
So when we are encouraged to do a better job by way of walking with students long before a trip happens, doing a better job of reflection and interaction during a trip, and making efforts to extend our debrief into our “normal” lives for ongoing transformation, we have a difficult time actually doing it.
Isn’t our problem just that? We often listen, subscribe, and hope, but we leave the concepts sitting on a shelf, lost in the past.
The apostle Paul had this same struggle. He often wished to do other things but never could seem to do them. The things he wanted to do he left alone and often did the things he didn’t want to do. Wow. Isn’t that all of us?
Where do we start? Where do I start?
We have to start with the question of why. I learned in college while studying for ministry that we must always ask, Why do you do what you do when you do it? What’s the objective? What are we after?
Why are we involving our teenagers in service and justice work? Our answer to this question will help us plan in advance for a short-term trip. It will help us teach these lessons throughout the year as a foundation for the experience we hope will have the impact.
The second and equal starting point is investing this understanding of why in our parents. Most of the time, students who come from families who understand what it means to serve tend to understand it themselves. Let’s start conversations with our parents.
Finally, it would be good to dust off our social justice shelves. Find the resources that are rich in helping us. They are there, waiting for us to customize and use to incorporate justice learning and lifestyle before we even think about painting a house or reading books to kids.
May we have grace as we grow on this journey, and may we always help each other along the way, regardless of where each youth ministry finds itself. There’s always room to grow.
Further Reading:
The Justice Mission
Deep Justice: Journeys
Deep Justice In a Broken World
The Kingdom Experiment
The Kingdom Experiment: Youth Edition
The Revolution
1. Brad Griffin, Kara Powell. Deep Justice Journeys. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2009.
2. Robert J. Priest, Terry Dischinger, Steve Rasmussen, C.M. Brown, “Researching the Short-Term Mission Movement,” Missiology Volume 34, no. 4, October 2006, 482-483.
Volume 34, number 4, October 2006, 431-450.
3. Kurt Ver Beek, “The Impact of Short-Term Missions: A Case Study of House Construction in Honduras After Hurricane Mitch,”
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There’s a fine line we walk when it comes to short-term missions. That line is between selfless serving and self-gratification; between overbearing and/or subtle patronizing ways of relating and relationships of mutuality as equal members of God’s creation; between seeking a lesson for youth to learn how privileged they are and finding an opportunity to live out God’s love; between a romanticized trip and being a part of what God is doing in the world.
I find it alarming when people think a good incentive to get others to participate in short-term missions is that you get more out of it than you give. When this is the primary lesson with which we return, it’s called self-gratification. Similarly, but in some ways differently, we can fail to see the people to whom we go as equally valued creatures of God who may need our support and empathy rather than our pity. Oddly enough, those less fortunate materially can make us feel superior and better about ourselves, often at the subconscious level. Thus, we return with the story that begins, “Imagine, they did not even have…”
It is no wonder parents and youth workers use short-term missions as a way to teach students how privileged they are so they can better appreciate what they have. There is also the romantic glow that surrounds short-term mission and prevents us from seeing ourselves as laborers together with Christ—God’s servants. In these cases, mission is about us and not about God and God’s people. In other words, we have de-centered God.
There is a way, however, in which we can go on short-term missions (call it a different name, maybe) to witness to God’s love and join in what God is already doing. We then share, learn, value, dwell with God and God’s people, seeing ourselves as God’s servants.
Mission begins with God. It is about God and God’s people. Mission is characteristic of who we are as Christians rather than periodic activities for self-centered reasons. Here is my definition of mission: Mission is the witness of God’s people to God’s love as seen in Jesus Christ as they respond to God calling and sending them out in the power of the Holy Spirit to participate in God’s mission.
This means that who we are, what we say, and what we do individually and collectively in our congregations and youth groups should always reflect the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ demonstrated the love of God through loving God and others, reconciliation, right relations with God and people, forgiveness, and newness. Furthermore, we witness in and through the enablement that comes from the Holy Spirit and not in our own strength. Jesus, by his own confession, did and said nothing on his own (John 5:30). Can you see why God has to be at the center of mission?
Rethinking short-term missions, therefore, begins with questioning and challenging our understanding of mission to see if it lines up with Jesus’ statement: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). It means studying the life of Jesus Christ so that we understand our pattern. If we engage in short-term mission, it should be a natural part of who we are as a congregation, as a youth group. We’ve already been witnessing at home. We are now extending our call to witness to God’s love further afield. If we are not witnessing at home, why are we bothering to go somewhere else?
Why do you want to do short-term missions? Is that an appropriate name?
Reference: Smith, Claire. “Mission: Avoiding Fragmentation, Living in Love.” Loving God, Loving Neighbor: Ministry With Searching Youth. Sondra Matthaei, ed. Xlibris, 2008, 127-144.
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