Mark's Blog

One of the challenges to short-term missions is short-term planning—which most often results in short-term training—which leads to short-term results! Short-term results lead to disappointment, therefore, short-term interest and short-term funding.  Too much short-term here for me!

Good training for short-term missions requires good planning by those who are responsible. In the previous post, we talked about spiritual training for your short-term team as the necessary foundation for your mission.  Next, let’s talk about training your workers to meet the goals of the mission.

The Planners must know and be able to explain what the goals of the mission trip really are.  If you are going to Honduras with a group of doctors on a medical mission for five days, what are your goals?  If your youth are going to Estonia to do summer camp work, what are your goals? If your team is going with Let’s Start Talking to China for three weeks, what are your goals?

Everybody goes to bring glory to God, but how are you going to know if you have even accomplished that goal? The more specifically you define your objectives, the better you can train your Workers!

For example: at LST, we tell our workers in training that we are a seed-planting ministry, not a harvesting ministry. We are partners with local Christians who will nurture the relationships that our workers have begun and will continue to share the Story with those who will hear, so our goals are

• to start relationships with people by offering to help them improve their English
• to bring them into contact with the Word, specifically the Story of Jesus
• to plant the Good Seed into their hearts and to water it with our love
• to build a bridge from our short-term work to the long-term work of the local Christians.

With these very clear goals in mind, we can train very specifically.

• To meet the first goal, LST trains workers in starting conversations with strangers and in helping them with their English in a way that fosters friendships and trust.
• To meet the second goal, LST created appropriate materials for helping people with their English, which bring them into immediate and direct contact with the Word/Story in a non-confrontational way.  Much of LST’s training is in how to use these materials effectively.
• Third, each LST lesson in every workbook contains seed thoughts, or very specific ideas that can germinate into faith in a good heart. Workers are trained how to plant the seeds in their conversations with unbelievers, as well as how to illustrate the truth of the Word from and with their own lives.
• Finally, LST teams hosts social and service events for the local Christians and the participants, with the goal of building that very important bridge from short-term to long-term.  LST teams are trained specifically in ways to host these events to encourage the greatest participation and the best results.

Every goal or objective of your short-term work—whatever type–should produce a specific training component!  The hard part is defining the objectives specifically enough, but when your goals are truly defined, creating your training becomes much easier.

Every mission trip of every sort is conceived with the goal of doing good and bringing glory to God.  Most trips probably achieve these goals to about the same degree that each of us meets these same goals in our daily lives.  We can do better than that!

Excellent short-term missions will have well-defined goals and all of the workers on these mission trips will have been equipped and prepared intentionally and specifically with these goals in mind.