I’ve made several trips to the post office in the past few days, mailing support letters from members of our mission trip team to their family and friends, asking them to support their trip prayerfully and/or financially.

While standard in many settings, the practice of using support letters to raise money for short-term mission trips is not without controversy. Despite this, I require short-term mission trip team members to write support letters for international trips. Here are four reasons why support letters are an important part of mission trip preparation:

1. They’re educational. I used to think the act of writing support letters would increase the likelihood that students would one day support full-time missionaries. Unfortunately, the few studies I’ve seen on this suggest that for the most part that isn’t happening, perhaps because many of today’s high school students simply do not know full-time missionaries. As a result, they have no idea how such missionaries raise their support. While I still hope students one day will support full-time missionaries, I now advocate requiring team members to write support letters because of the teachable moments they provide us. In the process of teaching students about support letters, we can share the stories of missionaries with them. When we teach them what information to include in their letters, we can give them support letters written by missionaries currently in the field as examples. These simple practices make the abstract idea of mission work tangible and concrete. This, in turn, extends the impact of mission trips beyond the two weeks we actually spend in another country.

2. Logistically, writing support letters invites people outside your immediate congregation to partner with you in your mission trips. By requiring students to send their letters to people outside your faith community, you can help prevent mission trip fatigue within your own church community.

3. For those families for whom money is not an issue, the act of writing support letters teaches humility as nothing else can.

4. For those for whom money is a struggle, the act of writing support letters teaches dependency on God. While the Bible is filled with stories of God’s provision, the truth is few, if any, of our students have found themselves in situations where they have had to depend only on God’s provision. Writing support letters forces students to do just that: to recognize that once they’ve written their letters, the outcome is completely out of their control. As a result, they are left with no other choice than to pray and depend on God. Such situations exponentially stretch and grow students’ faith.