Mark's Blog

Excellent short-term missions will always include a thorough follow-up, both with the mission site and with the workers themselves. My last post suggested some of the hard questions that short-term mission organizers must ask the host site. Following up with the short-term mission workers themselves is even more critical—and more often than not, completely neglected.

Follow-up With the Short-Term Mission Worker

As with the mission host, you cannot learn how to do your mission better if you do not ask questions that surface any weaknesses or problem areas.  LST asks every worker to fill out a written evaluation and submit it to us before they return home.  These evaluations cover the following areas:

1. Training. Did your training prepare you well for the tasks you were given? Was there something missing in the training that would have helped? How effective was your team trainer?
2. Physical Arrangements. Was there anything beginning with the travel to site, then the housing, the food arrangements, the daily schedule, even the free time that could have been better and made for a better mission trip?
3. Team Dynamics. How was the team dynamic? Were you able to make good decisions together? Were you able to handle conflict when it occurred? Did you get the help you needed from the LST staff when you asked?
4. The Mission Itself. Were you able to do the work you prepared to do? What surprised you about the work? Is there anything you wish you could have done better?
5. Personal Response. Are you glad you went? What was difficult? What was wonderful? Would you like to do another short-term mission? Would you encourage others to do one?

If you have asked for this kind of evaluation, you have taken the first step in following up with the workers, but you haven’t finished. LST gets this information in written form, but we spend time and money on following up with workers that most short-term missions omit!  Here is what Let’s Start Talking does at every EndMeeting with every worker:

• Help Workers frame their experience! Frames contain the elements of a picture as well as keep extraneous items out of the picture. Workers have already begun deciding what they will include and exclude in their memories and feelings about their mission trip. We encourage them to include everything that gives God glory and exclude the rest.
• Celebrate Workers’ experiences and help them talk about it! Putting words to their feelings and experiences not only helps each worker understand what they did better, but it encourages and inspires others. Real community is built around shared experiences, so a celebratory—as opposed to an inquisitorial–environment in which to first “report” about your mission trip cements both the individual and the communal experience.
• Affirm the faithfulness of Workers. Especially in an evangelistic mission trip, workers often do not get to see the fruit of their work. I usually tell the story of the Ukrainian man who was unmoved by the story of Jesus the first time he read with Craig in 1991. Fifteen years later, the Craig returned to the Ukraine to discover that this same man was a Christian and had written three published books defending faith in God to the scientific community in Ukraine.  After telling such stories—and we have many after doing LST for thirty years—we encourage the returning workers to believe that God can do the same miracle of faith with the seeds they have faithfully planted.
• Prepare Workers for reverse culture shock. Because the links of common experiences between people at home and the workers are broken for a period of time, some workers are shocked to feel like outsiders upon their return home.  They also don’t understand why people are only superficially interested in their mission project. Helping them understand the dynamics of unshared experiences is very helpful in ensuring a better homecoming for each worker.
• Teach Workers how to report well. Since the first question they will hear upon arrival at their hometown airport is how was your trip, we teach them to have a 20-second answer ready. Then we talk about what to include (people stories, work stories) and what to exclude from their private and public reports (free time pictures, problems). We encourage them to seek opportunities to report in order to motivate others to go and/or to give!
• Encourage the workers to continue the mission! The mountain-top experience that most short-term workers have does not have to be a one-time experience.  I share with the LST workers that I believe God has given them special gifts to use in missions—that’s why they have been able to accomplish this mission successfully, from the initial commitment to the fund-raising to the training to the travel to the work itself! But special gifts bring special responsibilities, so what will they do with these gifts now?

Finishing well requires as much effort as starting well! That’s why an excellent short-term mission will finish well with great follow-up!

Next post in this series:  Excellence in Short-Term Missions requires qualified leadership!