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Avoiding the Pitfalls of Short-term Missions
Counting the Costs &
Getting Short-term Missions Right
There are few subjects in the mission world as controversial as short-term missions and their impact on field mission work. Few would argue with the powerful impact that short-term missions are having in mobilizing pastors, churches and young people to support missions or to go as missionaries themselves. There are, however, many questions that still swirl around the effectiveness of these short-term mission efforts and their sometimes detrimental effects to ongoing mission work on the field.
Missions Frontiers Magazine January 2000
Could it be true that a good portion of our short-term missions effort actually hinders God’s work?
Rick Johnson, Director of
International Action Ministries
Pitfall #1
Thinking That Short-term Activities Equal
Mission Work
Defining Our Terms:
Short-term Missions: one week to two years involved in supportive activities
Career Missions: life time calling to vocational ministry of establishing and strengthening new congregations
Examples of Common Short-term Activities:
Youth group trips to conduct VBS type Bible clubs with drama and/or puppets
Building construction projectsChoir tours Disaster relief projects/feeding programsSports evangelismPrayer walking Crusade evangelism through translatorsChristian film showings
Understand the DifferenceEach of these activities is valuable in their own right and have their place in supporting mission endeavors.
We affirm the commitments and sacrifices of those who take part in these activities.
But we realize they are not the same, nor do they fulfill the functions of the church planting missionary.
“Missionary” zeal without knowledge A Czech pastor writes:
“Will we survive western missionaries?”We were flooded by missionaries, in 1990-
91, I had one visit a day on average … some were jewels and came to serve, others came to do their own thing and we had very bad experiences
It was very common that some people coming from the West wanted to perform
some drama, hold a meeting. They turned to us to arrange it . We were supposed to organize all the permits, to rent a hall, to arrange and distribute the leaflets -- they generously paid for it, performed their act -- and went back home. Then we received their newsletter about how they “did a mission campaign” in Eastern Europe. They did not bother to consider if their activity was really worthwhile, what its real impact was, if it was really the thing we needed, and if we would not have been able to do the same thing better …”
Problem: Blurring of TermsWe are all witnesses. But we are not all missionaries, in the classical sense.
Example: we use terms like youth or summer “missionaries” but wouldn’t use terms like summer pastor/teachers or summer elders because we understand the difference between a young person doing summer witnessing and a trained and biblically qualified minister of the gospel doing church planting discipleship.
“In other words, the worker from afar is not, in a classical sense, a missionary -
he or she is not in such cases going “where Christ is not named.” Such
workers from afar are, however, often very valuable to the work as doctors,
dentists, or professors from afar.”
Dr. Ralph D. Winter
U.S. Center for World Mission
Pitfall #2
Thinking Short-term Activities Can Take the Place of
The Long-term Presence of Career Missionaries in Fulfilling Our
Great Commission Responsibilities
Common Limitations:
short-termers often have little appreciation for the complex issues they will face such as poverty, crime, and the effects of spiritual darkness and occult practices
some short-termers are overcome by stresses of the mission field and can’t contribute, but must be cared for by others
Common Limitations
short-termers can not function effectively without long-term missionaries; this can consume vast amounts of the missionaries already limited time and energy
short-termers without language cannot relate deeply with most of the people
Common Limitations:
short-termers are often not culturally sensitive and damage relationships that have taken years to establish by being critical or projecting the image that they feel superior
short-termers sometimes feel called to disregard local customs as a matter of principle if they feel they are wrong (example: women’s issues)
Common Limitations: short-termers don’t have realistic
understandings of what they can accomplish in a given time frame and leave unfinished projects behind that stand incomplete for years or divert the missionary's funds from other projects, or
short-termers have a tendency to put the project completion before the people and damage relationships
Common Limitations
Some short-termers have a tendency to promise to do things and/or provide gifts for the nationals for which they can’t or don’t follow through
Some short-termers don’t consider the warnings about security issues and lose tools and resources that are hard to replace
Common Limitations
Some short-termers get the impression that missions is something anyone can do with limited training and little experience
Sometimes short-termers who have a bad experience are not on the field long enough to put in perspective the negatives and subsequently don’t seriously consider career missions
A Startling Fact!
We are not replacing the career missionaries that are now retiring with other career missionaries that can take their place.
As good as many short-term activities are, they cannot begin to replace the ministries established by the career missionaries.
Pitfall #3
Using up Resources Doing Short-term Activities
Which Should Be Reserved for Establishing and Strengthening New
Mission Congregations
Do the Math!The cost of an average short
term missions crusade for two weeks
Average round trip air and expenses: $3200
(for 30 individuals)
$96,000Two weeks -- 1year, 8 weeks
The cost of an average career missionary
presence for
two families for 1 year
Annual Support per family: $35,000Building, maintenance for bases,
churches, etc.: $1000/month (for two families)
$94,000Two Families -- Two years
Consider these examples:20 teams of 43 people
to assist 290 churchescost/person: $2,595 total costs:
$2,231,700.00 for 860 volunteers for 14 days
could have provided 47 missionary families with $35,000 support and $12,000 project funds for 1 year
A short-term Youth agency will send 7000 teens to 32 countries for two months each summer at the range of cost/youth of $1500 to $3500
total cost $17.5 millioncould have provided
for 372 missionary families
A Changed Life?!
Sometimes short-termers change but not always in the best direction. Instead of increasing their support of missionaries involved in establishing and strengthening churches, they begin saving for their next short term cross-cultural experience or worse become disillusioned and never go back.
Appropriate Short-term
sending church families to get to know and encourage the missionary family they support on field
sending proven young people, who are considering career missions, during their college years to evaluate the kind of additional training they will need
Appropriate Short-term Missions
Coordinates with the missionary on the field, heeds his advice and strives to avoid the negative limitations of short-term.
Understands that getting to know and encouraging the missionary and his wife and family is as valid as “doing something.”
Coordinates projects and only starts what can be done properly and be finished in the allotted time.
Appropriate Short-term Missions With Youth:Takes advantage of local opportunities in
home community and country that take less
financial resources and have fewer cultural
and language barriers.
Helps proven young people visit the
mission field before their ministry training
to know how to prepare themselves.
What a contrast! pioneer missionaries,
who founded the modern missionary movement, who packed their belongings in their coffins because they were aware of the likelihood that they would die on the field serving others
short-term ministry opportunities which promise rich benefits to the volunteer who is only asked to ‘commit’ to what sounds a whole lot less than a year and which can usually be financed by others
Drastic times call for drastic measures
Develop discernment in evaluating short-term opportunities
Help shape your church’s mission policy to avoid the pitfalls
Promote and participate in proper short-term and pay for it yourself
Consider the joy of lifelong service and ask God to let you have the privilege of going yourself
Short-term service is no substitute for the
bedrock of long-term missionary commitment.
Luis BushInternational Director of the AD 2000 and Beyond Movement
Let us commit ourselves to:
Doing the kind of short-term experiences that result in more actual support for classical missions
Putting more church starting missionaries on the fields
To discuss missions further
Contact me by e-mail at
or call 828-735-0013
more information is available at our web site:
www.mastersmission.org