Posted on 10/14/2008 9:39:58 AM PDT by Between the Lines
This past summer, from evangelical churches nationwide, more than one million of the faithful departed for the mission field, taking up Jesus' "Great Commission" to "go and make disciples of all nations." The churchgoers hoped to convert souls, establish churches and meet other human needs. But they did not intend to serve for years or whole lifetimes, like such pioneers as Jim Elliott, who was killed in Ecuador in 1956 evangelizing to native people; or Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission; or even the awful fictional caricatures of African missionaries in Barbara Kingsolver's novel "The Poisonwood Bible." These new missionaries came home after only a week or two.
Short-term mission trips to Africa, South America and Southeast Asia have become very popular in the past few years. They are a keystone strategy of evangelical pastor Rick Warren's plans to help Rwanda. These trips, like Christian missionary endeavors overall, encompass a wide variety of activities, from evangelization and "church planting" to health care and economic development. The billion-dollar question, however, is whether they're worth the cost. Are short-term missions the best way to achieve the goals of Christians? Critics argue that sightseeing often takes up too much of the itinerary, leading some to call short-termers "vacationaries."
It's hard to judge the fairness of this characterization, since almost no one runs the numbers. Estimates of how much churches spend on short-term missions go as high as $4 billion a year, according to the Capital Research Center. The literature is sparse, most of it focusing on the spiritual aspects, for the missionaries themselves. And these aspects are sometimes oversold.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Baptist ping
I don’t know anyone who has come back from a short term missionary trip unchanged.
This is how you develop long term missionaries, BTW.
No discomfort, lots of shopping and hanging out in cafes and museums in Milan or Athens or Barcelona. No real command of the local language, either - just doing your best to pitch a Bible study to any English-speaking locals you manage to strike up a conversation with.
So much nicer than spending five years in Burundi among animists learning the language and living hand-to-mouth while you build up a congregation from nothing.
When our church sends out people for a STMT, they usually are busting their rears to build a church or homes somewhere.
We were told that some Macedonians were AMAZED at how hard these Americans would work FOR FREE on their VACATION TIME.
I think a lot boils down to the 'embedded' missionaries who are arranging the trip and shepherding the short-term missionaries, as well as the preparatory efforts in the churches back home. There's nothing wrong with needed relaxation, but particularly if church funding is involved the missions trip should be just that, and any sightseeing should be incidental, IMHO.
Mission or not, it be hard for a Baptist to go to Italy without temporarily converting just for the wine.
One soul saved = worth the cost.
Reading the whole article reveals that some research has found that the returned short-termers experience a psot-mission "high" that evaporates soon after.
This is how you develop long term missionaries, BTW.
The SBC experience seems to be that only a tiny fraction of these short-termers go on to become long-termers.
I went on a number of mission trips with my church group during junior and senior high school (but not overseas). We most always camped out in a sister church in the city we visited if it had shower facilities, and we always worked on a local church-sponsored project like cleaning up property or fixing up somebody’s house. I don’t recall any actual evangelism (preaching or witnessing), though, and we did do a lot of sightseeing.
Speaking of Rick Warren as mentioned in the article, my current church was conducting local and overseas mission trips long before he became a celebrity, and my “vacationary” days occured in the 1970s. It annoys me when journalists and others (including Rick) act as if no Christians or churches in history ever did any social or humanitarian work before Rick came along and promoted it.
The issue here is not that simplistic.
Believers fork over their hard-earned money to the missions.
The mission workers who receive that money have a moral obligation to use those funds as efficiently and responsibly as possible - as in the Parable of the Talents.
Is using mission funds to help save one soul "worth it" when a more responsible use of those funds would have saved a thousand?
Absolutely not.
Let’s see - $5000 for a ticket for a 2 week trip, or support a full time missionary for 3 months...
The “one soul” saved may be a person who will go on to lead thousands or millions to Christ in the future.
The short term mission-vacations allow people who are not going to be full time missionaries to see what’s really going on at a particular mission, and if they believe what they saw is valuable, they’re likely to provide financial support to it over the long term, and encourage friends who haven’t seen it in person to provide financial support as well. I’d tend to be more suspicious of established missions that don’t have a program for short-termers to come out and see and help out while they’re there. Much easier to hide unsavory activities such as luxurious lifestyles for mission leaders, “natives” being used as personal servants for mission leaders, etc. if the folks back home paying the bills have no access to unbiased first-hand reports of what’s really going on at the mission.
One cannot justify one's own irresponsible behavior by pleading that one's shoddy efforts could conceivably yield great benefits in the future.
The emergency room doctor who fatally misdiagnoses twenty patients and correctly diagnoses one cannot plead: "Maybe the one guy I saved will go on to become a really great doctor who would be able to save all the patients that I incompetently condemn to death!"
Your logic is preposterous.
If what is required is organized oversight of missions to make sure there are no abuses, there are much more efficient ways of auditing missions than sending in thousands of inexperienced people to briefly observe them.
Just got back from a 10 day mission trip to the North East Coast of Brazil
Went to a little fishing village Luis Corriea and worked in a community there that has NO evangelical work in the community.
We did not go to build a church, but to build the church.
Partnering with first Baptist Church Luis Corriea our small church from South Central Texas. our 7 person volunteer mission team led 40 people to Christ. A new church work has been started in Coconut Beach because of the tireless work of our 7 person volunteer team and the Church at Luis Corriea.
Our full time missionaries said before we went that they were expecting to maybe start a church in 4-6 months but because of the excitement generated in Coconut Beach they have started meeting with the new believers even now. Glory be to God!
We on the volunteer mission team had to pay our own way (2500.00 round trip non-refundable) The trip took 32 hours to get there from Central Texas. We had to take 9 days vacation and get around Ike to get there. To say it was all worth it was an understatement.
I have also found a new zeal to share my testimony with people here.
On a sad note even if one of our team would want to be missionaries in North East Brazil. Tough luck the SBC is not sending anymore missionaries to that area after our missionaries there retire in three years.
Petty, insulting and off-topic.
What a shining example of Christian witness you've displayed.
The fact remains: Christians are called by the Lord to use the resources they are given efficiently.
Wasting resources that are reserved for mission activity cannot be justified by saying: "Well, we failed almost completely - but the one person we didn't fail may one day grow up to do his job properly - unlike us."
This is essentially the same argument proffered by the bad servant in the Parable of the Talents - except that in this case the bad servant wastes the resources he was given rather than simply maintaining them.
It's an unsustainable argument which you're trying to make - and your detour into personal invective is the least gracious way of admitting the weakness of your case.
Luis Correia already had a church - it is part of the diocese of Parnaiba.
The people of Luis Correia have been Christians for more than three hundred years, since the first Jesuit missions were founded on the mouth of the Parnaiba River, where Luis Correia is located.
Right in the middle of town on Via Jonas Correia is the parish church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, pastored by Henrique Hegeman and Lotario Weber, which has been in there for over a hundred years.
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