Why We Didn't Cancel Our Short-Term Mission Trip

Jared C. Wilson

Jared C. Wilson Blog | July 10, 2012

In a few weeks, a team from my church in Vermont will travel to Honduras on a short-term mission trip, joining a team from Houston, Texas led by my father each year. It's been fashionable of late to criticize short-term ventures like these, to question their helpfulness, and indeed, some short-term trips are conducted in poor ways. But we opt not to opt out of short-term mission trips. Here's why:

1. Our church has placed a high priority on missions funding, but up to this point, not on missions sending. Some of our folks have been on mission trips before, but never as a part of a team sent from our church. As far as anyone recalls, this is the first mission trip from our church. As her pastor, I want to cultivate the value of sending people, not just money, and while sending long-term ministers of the gospel is always the goal, we have to start somewhere.

2. We want to see what God is already doing in Honduras and meet brothers and sisters in Christ who look and talk different from us. We are going not as tourists but witnesses and learners, not as saviors but friends and helpers. God is already at work in Honduras, and we are eager to see how Christ's Church is growing in the gospel there.

3. They want us to come. They've asked for our help.

4. My dad (who is a layman) and his church have an ongoing relationship with the primary church and pastor of our visit, one that involves regular financial and prayer support. He leads a short-term trip to the same place each year to add to this support and encouragement. In short, the short-term trip is not a "wham bam" kind of endeavor, but part of a larger developing relationship with a local church on the field and ongoing support of her pastor and his family.

5. Many long-term missionaries hear the call after first taking short-term trips. We want this trip to be a part of the way our church will come to share God's heart for the nations. It's not a box to check off on our religious duty list or a way to indulge our privileged white people's messiah complex but a way way to obey the call of Christ to make disciples of all nations and to see how God might use this short-term trip to make us obedient in "bigger" ways, hopefully in the raising up of full-time missionaries and church planters.

Comments:

sam zerkle

July 15, 2012 at 11:00 AM

...in view of all the back and forth ridiculousness that goes on between proponents and critics of various "issues", i sometimes feel as though critiques of critiques like "why you should cancel your short term mission trips" are suffice it to say, silly. it almost feels like a media scheme for publicity. When obviously you agree with 99% of everything the original writer said, for some reason you felt the need to pose a response, the reason for which is not in the least clear to me.... just curious,