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Sometimes thought to be critical of short-term missions, Terry Linhart is actually an advocate of mission trips done well. Terry is chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Bethel College and co-author of the books What Can We Do?: Practical Ways Your Youth Ministry Can Have a Global Conscience and Global Youth Ministry: Reaching Adolescents Around the World.
A former professor of Christian education at Bethany Theological Seminary and Candler School of Theology, Don Richter was also the founding director of Candler’s Youth Theology Institute. He’s now the associate director of the Louisville Institute and author of Mission Trips that Matter.
Her husband’s participation in a six-week short-term mission trip prompted Hilary Alan and her family to sell everything and move overseas to serve as missionaries in one of the stricktest Muslim provinces in the world. Hilary recounts her story—a testimony of God’s faithfulness—in her book Sent.
A former regional director for Food for the Hungry International in Central and South America, Steve Corbett has seen the positive and negative impact of missions. He’s now an assistant professor of Community Development at Covenant College and co-author of the book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor or Yourself.
YouthWorker Journal: In the past 20 years, short-term mission trips have become a regular component of many youth ministries. Is this a good thing?
Terry Linhart: It’s been good for one reason: Most who go say they have been the most significant experiences in their lives. They talk about how it’s changed their relationship with Christ and how they see the world. Short-term missions move people to participate in God’s action in the world for the sake of the gospel.
Don Richter: It’s good to involve folks of all ages in God’s sending activity. Short-term missions may be part of this but aren’t automatically. Mission trips have become a matter of practical necessity. As a youth minister, I get more contact hours with my group during a one-week trip than the rest of the year. What makes such ventures good and faithful is communal discernment of how they link our stories to God’s story.
Steve Corbett: Short-term missions are certainly not neutral. A well-designed trip focused on learning about local ministry, its cultural context and the implications for long-term engagement can have a positive impact. Trips that treat doing a project as an end in itself may do more harm than good.
YWJ: How can short-term mission trips contribute to the faith formation of teens?
Terry: Poverty exposes teens’ own materialism. People they meet provide a new narrative for how they see the world. They reconsider their life direction while they serve. When people minister on short-term trips, it’s not just about service but about what the service says about them as people, Christians or Americans.
Hilary Alan: Serving helps you discover your gifts. It gets you outside of yourself. My kids were 11 and 14 when we went overseas. We met with a lot of opposition about taking them. [The time overseas] stretched them. When you’re stripped of everything but the Lord and each other, it matures you exponentially.
YWJ: How do mission trips need to be organized in order to contribute to the faith formation of teens?
Hilary: Start meeting as a team a couple months before you go. Pray for the missionaries on the ground and the work there. Train people in cultural sensitivity. No government would send an unprepared ambassador to another country. We are ambassadors to Christ.
Steve: Trips need to be seen as a 12- to18-month discipleship process. That process includes an orientation to what poverty and good development is. Because good development is fundamentally working with people, not doing things for people, the trip can’t be all about doing something for the poor. Good development work is not primarily about the products of development—the wells, school buildings or rehabbed homes. It’s about how they came about. Local people need to be the fundamental actors in the change. Research indicates what really counts in whether short-term mission trips have any lasting positive impact on the goers is what happens after the trip. It’s important to ask, “What does this trip mean for how I live and give going forward?” and allow for ongoing reflection on what was seen and learned [during the trip].
YWJ: What steps can youth workers take to ensure short-term mission trips benefit the communities they seek to serve?
Don: Fostering the well-being of mission partners requires cultivating long-term, reciprocal relationships. Wise leaders dispel the presumption that our team is taking Christ to others. Similar to those disciples on the Emmaus Road, we walk with others in faith, trusting Christ will accompany us on our journeys. Mission partners serve together, working and playing, rejoicing and grieving as members of the body of Christ.
Hilary: Partner with a team that’s on the ground, and ask, “How can we serve you?” Even if they have a project, encourage and serve the missionaries. The folks on the ground were there before you got there. They’ll be there after you leave. Do nothing to undercut them. If there isn’t a local team, partner with a local church. Let it dictate what you do so you can make sure it’s associated with the body of Christ. Then, if there are converts, there’s an opportunity for follow-up and discipleship.
Steve: Youth workers have to care more about the people they’re going to serve than their groups. The West primarily has defined poverty in terms of lack of economic and physical resources. The solution becomes, “They lack; I have,” so, “I’ll give them stuff,” and, “I can; they can’t,” so, “I’ll do it for them.” While economic lack is real, so is the poverty of being, the sense that “I am incapable of solving my family and community issues.” When outsiders spend a week doing projects and bringing stuff, they can further those feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. That isn’t the gospel. While we’re all inadequate before God, we aren’t inferior to each other.
YWJ: The costs and logistics of mission trips can be daunting. How can youth workers keep this process simple and affordable?
Terry: Estimates a few years ago were that about 4 million Americans were traveling on short-term mission trips costing a minimum of $250 each. That’s $1 billion per year just to go. Youth workers need to be aware of consumerism—that we want to provide students with the greatest adventure. I advocate a two-tier process for short-term work. Set up a local trip. Have students do that before being able to travel farther. Run it the same with training and prep. Then, return to the same place each year so you can brush off the sparkle and see which effects last and which ones don’t.
Don: Congregations deserve to know the actual costs of sponsoring such ventures. Make missions part of the annual budget. Don’t rely on youth to do the heavy lifting via fundraisers. When you have a fundraiser, designate a tithe to give to mission partners for their local ministry. Local and regional mission trips are typically more affordable and easier to coordinate and need to be part of a church’s overall mission strategy with youth.
YWJ: For many youth groups, mission trips have become synonymous with missions. Is this fair?
Terry: With short-term missions, we act one way there, but when we come home, our missional commitment is tossed aside. We care for the poor on a short-term mission trip; but if we meet a poor person in our hometown, our response is different. Living missionally at home interrupts our lives and costs us.
Don: We do youth a great disservice if we equate mission with short-term trips. Mission involves much more than sending people on trips. Attending to God’s mission also involves welcoming those God sends to us. For example, St. John’s Lutheran Church in Knoxville, Tenn., became aware that youth groups were coming to their town to serve. They discerned one of the best ways they could join this mission was to build a shower so they could host visiting groups. Learning how to be gracious hosts may not sound as sexy as traveling to Mexico for a week, but St. John’s has sent quite a few young people to seminary in recent years who found themselves connected to God’s practice of hospitality.
YWJ: What advice would you give youth workers who want to develop a mission strategy for serving their local communities?
Terry: Make books about topics related to missions and global youth ministry a part of your intentional reading. Educate yourself about your home community. Discover the welfare world that exists in the shadows. Find immigrants who have moved to your community who need advocates for healthcare and tutoring.
Don: Investigate what kinds of people God is sending where you live. Figure out how mission trips might help you connect with nearby neighbors. For example, upon learning a number of families in my neighborhood come from Chiapas (Mexico), I might take a mission team to serve there to increase empathy and compassion for folks here. Then I can plan follow-up outreach with the people God has already sent to our doorsteps.
YWJ: How can youth workers foster service as a way of life rather than a week-long event in the lives of students?
Steve: Minimize the fanfare around week-long events. Connect youth with ongoing opportunities locally. Tell youth, “You really want to make a difference? Volunteer for something, and do it for the whole year. Give on an ongoing basis month after month.” The attention span of this generation is short. They’re faced with so many things to get involved with. This week it’s human trafficking, next week it’s AIDS. They need to hear the message, “Stay faithful!” They’ve got to learn to say no to one thing in order to be faithful to another. This will seem less exciting than a trip to the inner city, Appalachia or Cambodia. So what? A core reality of the Christian walk is dying to self. We need to do that as individuals and as local churches.
YWJ: What else do we need to know?
Don: Strengthen faith formation on the homefront by planning ventures that involve youth and their parents.
Hilary: Rather than saying, “We’re going to go and do,” frame trips as, “We’re going to go, see and learn.” Participate in the lives of the people who are serving on the ground. A well-planned, well-executed trip can result in people returning long-term.
Steve: Because short-term missions can harm, as well as help, we can’t live by the motto, “Something is better than nothing.” Short-term missions don’t need to be killed; they need to be reformed. There seems to be a growing voice to this end. That’s encouraging.
Recommended Resources
Serving with Eyes Wide Open by David Livermore
What Can We Do? by David Livermore and Terry Linhart
An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor. HarperOne, 2009.
When Helping Hurts Corbett, Brian Fikkert and David Platt
A Mile in My Shoes: Cultivating Compassion by Trevor Hudson. Upper Room, 2005.
Mission Trips that Matter by Don Richter
Faithful Travel with Rick Steves DVD at TravelStore.RickSteves.com
On Our Way: Christian Practices for Living a Whole Life edited by Dorothy C. Bass and Susan R. Briehl. Upper Room Books, 2010.
Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens edited by Dorothy C. Bass and Don C. Richter. Upper Room Books, 2002. (Download free Leader’s Guide at WayToLive.org)
