Mark's Blog

After a brief hiatus, I am returning to the blog series on Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions. If you would like to read or re-read the previous posts in this series, please look for them in the Categories box to the right of this column.

Yesterday at a local airport hotel, I met with eighteen LST workers for what we call an EndMeeting. EndMeetings are mostly for our workers, but we collect their host site evaluations at that time as well. LST has insisted that all our workers participate in EndMeetings in spite of the extra cost in both time and money because an excellent short-term mission project always will include thorough follow-up with both the workers and the mission sites.

Follow-up with the Mission Site

At LST, we ask every mission site to complete an evaluation form that asks all of the hard questions.  If we don’t ask the hard questions, then we will only get the answers that we want to hear—which will not reflect the truth!  And if we don’t hear the truth, how will we know if we have been helpful, if we have served the Kingdom well, or if we have brought glory to God?

Here are some of the questions every short-term mission project should always ask as follow-up to their mission project:

1. Did you receive all the information you needed from your visiting group in order to prepare for them well? Did you receive it in time to prepare well? What would you like to have had prior to their coming that you did not receive this time?
2. Was the visiting group a good number for you? Did they seem prepared for the work they came to do? Did they adjust culturally? Did they seem to get along with each other well? Were their leaders/sponsors cooperative?
3. Did the mission project meet your goals for it? Were you happy with the local churches involvement? What would you do differently with a similar group?
4. How will you follow-up this mission project?  Is there anything the group should have done that would make your follow-up more effective?

I once read an article about a plumbing company that always followed up its house calls with the request for a simple evaluation by the customer: how would you rate our service on a scale of 1-10? What made this plumbing company outstanding was that although they almost always got an excellent evaluation, they were not satisfied with a 9.5 average. They always asked, “What could we have done that would have earned us a 10?” The difference between good and great work for God is often just that extra .5 that can only be achieved with the determination to be a 10 for God! That is the attitude that all involved in the leadership of short-term missions should have.

Tomorrow, I will finish this post with suggestions on ways to follow-up with the workers themselves.