Copyright Josh Cooper 2008.
This post is the beginning of a five part series exploring the legitimacy and beneficiality of short-term mission trips (STMTs). The following article was written by myself and three of my fellow seminarians for a course we are taking called Missional Church.
Section One – Introduction
Background
The concept of sending mission teams for short-term work has grown increasingly popular in U.S. congregations. People are not excited about sending their dollars off to faceless mission agencies; they want to become personally involved. Encouraged by the testimony of others who have had a life-changing experience in a Third World country, they want to "do mission" themselves (Jeffery, 2008).
This statement reflects a shift within the postmodern church that affects traditional ways of mission (long-term), and brings the popularity to other, new ways, especially short-term programs like mission trips. According to the literature, the number of North American short-term mission (STM) participants grew from 125,000 in 1989 to an estimated 1 to 4 million in 2003 (Ver Beek, 2006). At the congregational level, this is perhaps best called a “grassroots movement” in which pastors are expected to take a group of congregants oversees on these trips. Many churches today organize mission trips to fit around school and work schedules, holidays, and vacations. One survey found that two out of three people served for two weeks or less, the blocks of time fit within Spring Break, annual vacation time, holidays, and summer vacation (Priest et al., 2006).
Not only are congregations catching the short-term missions fever, pastors are also participating in greater numbers. In a 2004 survey of 120 M.Div. students enrolled at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), 62.5% of the respondents reported having been on mission trips outside the United States, and more than 97% of these students expect to participate in these trips in the future (Ibid).
According to the Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, the rapid growth of the STM movement is due in part to efficient travel that allows people to journey to anywhere in the world in relatively short time. However, despite the ease of travel there seems to be a growing desire to serve without committing to a long-term missions career. Though there is much discussion about the legitimacy and benefits of STM trips, “it is obvious that short-term missions is a powerful and effective force in the modern missions movement.”
Our Purpose
In light of the growing interest and practice of STMTs within the church of which each of us my soon take leadership roles, the authors of the present paper agreed to embark together on a learning experience surrounding this topic. Our purposes are three. First, our goal is to trace and evaluate the literature that critiques short-term mission trips as well as conduct our own interviews, in order to identify dominant views of what makes these trips “legitimate and beneficial” at the individual, congregational, denominational and international levels. Second, we will also reflect on the degree to which these views reflect, or not, an understanding of the church as “missional” as we are coming to understand it in the course: the church as called and sent by God to be God’s instrument in the in breaking of the reign of God. Third, we will also attempt to identify pitfalls of current approaches as well as articulate ways to avoid them.
Our Survey
In order to achieve our goals for this project, our team assembled a list of seven questions by which we asked all participants to respond. At the individual level, author CT asked men from his congregation to participate in this project. At the congregational level, our team surveyed 6 pastors / lay leaders who participate in STM trips on a regular basis. The pastors / leaders represent the Wesleyan and Baptist denomination from states which include, but are not limited to: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. At the denominational level, our team surveyed two denominational leaders from the Christian Reformed Church and two denominational leaders from the Reformed Church in America. Finally, at the international level, our team surveyed Thai Christians from several backgrounds: pastors, lay persons, seminary students and lay church members, most of them do ministry or attend a church in Bangkok, the most influential area of Christianity in Thailand. In this part of the study we desired specifically to understand the understanding of mission outside North-America since STMTs are taken not only in American, but indeed in the church worldwide, including the Thai church. In doing this, we hoped to expand our understanding of how STMTs are understood and carried out outside North-America. As noted above, our classmate Mee surveyed Christians in his home country, Thailand, where he feels the idea of mission and missiological theology have not been developed or emphasized generally in churches and seminaries.
Each of the participants at each level were asked to respond to the following questions:
1. Have you (your church, denomination) taken part in a short-term missions trip (STMT)? If so describe.
The purpose of this question was to give the respondents an opportunity to express freely themselves about short-term mission trips and to get a feel for what they think of them. We listened carefully for indicators of what they think the purpose for these trips is, and how they relate to the church’s mission, their own lives, etc.
2. What makes a STMTs, in general, “legitimate / beneficial”?
This question was more specific to our research question, what do they think either individually, or as a church or a denomination makes these trips “legitimate” in general?
3. Was your specific MTMT “legitimate / beneficial”? Why/why not?
This question was asked in order to get the respondents to reflect on their own (or their church’s, or their denomination’s) practice of STMT, whether they should be considered legitimate, and why or why not.
4. Since we have been talking about short-term mission trips, please define what you think the word “missions” means, for you (your church, your denomination).
This purpose of this question was to get the respondents to reflect on their idea of missions and a “missional church.”
5. Do you think that STMTs “fit” into this idea of “missions”?
This purpose of this question was to get the respondents to reflect on how their idea of STMTs fits in, or not, with their ideas of mission, and a missional church.
6. Are there any pit falls with STMTs?
This is the last part of our research question together with the next follow-up question.
7. How did you (your church, your denomination) avoid pit falls in the past, or how do you (your church, your denomination) avoid pit falls in the future?
A follow-up to question 6.
A Missional Expression?
For the purpose of ascertaining how short-term mission trips (STMT) are “legitimate” and “beneficial” as well as what pitfalls are associated with STM trips from a missional perspective, we will use this paper’s definition of what it means to be missional. Our definition of being missional is – being called and sent by God to be God’s instrument in the in-breaking of the reign of God.
As we talk about being called and sent by God, we recognize that our call, and the sending that relates to that call, is given by God, through the Holy Spirit. Thus, we are called and sent by the Holy Spirit and we depend upon the Holy Spirit to teach us how we are to be instruments in the in-breaking of the reign of God (Guder, 1998).
Charles Van Engen writes, “The Holy Spirit’s work always seems to surprise us, to stretch us to the limits of our normal expectations, and to point us in directions we have never considered before” (Van Engen, 2007). These words illustrate for us that being missional is not about our deciding what it means to be called and sent, rather it is about listening to where and how God is calling and sending us so that we might proclaim the in-breaking of his reign.
Thus, to be missional is to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. To do so we must seek the direction of the Holy Spirit through prayer and discernment. “Only through prayer,” Van Engen continues, “do we prepare ourselves to examine our own motivations and goals in evangelism, and to appropriately participate with the Spirit in this wonderful adventure of being used to bring God’s presence to bear in the life of another” (Ibid). Though this statement has evangelism in mind, it illustrates how important it is for us to seek God’s will and the guidance of the Holy Spirit through prayer.
So, we are called and sent by God, through the Holy Spirit, to be God’s instrument in the in-breaking of the reign of God. To do so we must be prayerful and discerning what that specific calling and sending will look like. But, what are we looking for? What is mission? What types of activities are missional?
We are coming to see through this course that mission is any type of action by the body of Christ that bears witness to the hope that we have in the present and coming reign of God. Mission is eschatologically-grounded. Our hope as Christians ultimately rests in the fact that Christ will return and make all things new. Though the reign of God is not fully consummated, the Kingdom of Heaven, as announced by Christ, is already here even as we wait for Christ to return and complete the task of ushering in His reign of shalom. Also, as members of the Kingdom in this world, we are to point to this coming shalom through our present actions. Thus, mission is any activity that works toward bringing about shalom in the present, and thus bears witness to the shalom that is to come. We work at bringing temporal hope to the world so that the world might see the eternal hope that is brought about by the reign of God (Brueggemann, 2001).
To be missional then is to be called and sent by God as God’s instrument in the in-breaking of the reign of God. To be missional is to be called and sent by listening to the Holy Spirit and allowing ourselves to be used as instruments that bring hope to the world; hope that points to the consummating reign of God (Ibid).
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