CBN has published an article discussing whether or not short term missions are effective for the kingdom. You can click here to read the full article “Are Short-Term Mission Trips Effective? - Christian World News - CBN Here are a few highlights:
- A Burden Instead of Helping: The articles highlights a couple instances where the short term mission team actually created more of a burden for the full-time missionaries there. Not all full-timers are able to effectively use a short-term team. “There have been teams of young people that have come down, their hearts are in the right place, they love God, but a team of 125 people, the logistics are huge on the missionary family.”
- Amazing costs: “The money that they spent on food alone was enough to pay for one of our week trainings for the Kuna on the island,” he explained.
- But what about evangelism? “I’ve seen someone show the Jesus film over three nights and a handful of people got saved,” Brummett responded. “And the last night they let a Kuna pastor that preached and thirty five people got saved. He preached to his own people in his own language with his own heart, and that had a tremendous impact.”
- Do short-terms missions help generate full-time missionaries? “Because the expense the church is going through yearly to send people overseas, we should be seeing more career missionaries,” he continued. “In fact, the opposite of that is true: we’re seeing less and less long term missionaries.”
- Should short-term missionaries stop going? None of the missionaries CBN News interviewed said that churches should stop their short-term programs, but rather need to re-think their focus and make sure missions dollars are being spent wisely - and not neglecting those who have given their lives to full-time service.
This website and blog, MissionFundraising.com, is dedicated to helping people raise financial support for short term missions, upgrading the support level for full time missionaries, and providing necessary resources for church planters. The points raised in the above article are worth discussing. We continue to support those going on short term mission trips, yet feel it’s important that the trip be well though-out with specific, achievable goals. As someone who has been both a short term, and a full time, missionary, I agree that evangelizing in a foreign country by short term-ers may not be very effective, and may even cause “damage” in the eyes of the local church, or the resident full time missionary. Providing for specific physical needs (medical, building, sanitation) may be a better choice for short term trips.
What’s your view? Please make your own comments by clicking on the “comment” link.
Gary Skrobot
Info@MissionFundraising.com
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