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Archive for the ‘Christian Missions’ Category

Reversing the 80-20 Challenge in Our Churches

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , on June 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

What are the goals you have for your church?  Aside from the very specific goals of painting the auditorium or getting new elders next year, would any of these be your goals?

  • More of our members get into the Word
  • Greater prayerfulness
  • Increased generosity
  • Greater personal engagement

I can’t imagine any healthy, growing church that is not keenly conscious of the need to grow in these areas almost all of the time!

I know several churches that are doing The Story series this year to encourage serious Bible study. Another church is reading the entire Bible in ninety days together, with Sunday sermons tied into the weekly reading.

Has your church done the forty days of prayer exercise?  We did it for our neighborhood a few years ago. Some do it for special contributions or special outreach events.  Or has your church done a twenty-four hour prayer vigil. Many African churches have these on a monthly basis.

Generosity is tougher on our congregations. You might have done a Dave Ramsey series or Crown Ministry if you are at a larger church.  Smaller churches seem to be limited to the occasional sermon which encourages generosity.

Unfortunately, the 80-20 Rule still prevails at most congregations, no matter what area of body life that we talk about.  Eighty percent of the members do 20% of the work and 20% of the members do 80% of the work.  Giving and praying seem to follow the same 80-20 pattern.  So we hire involvement ministers to motivate us to do what should be the most natural functions of every member of the body, that is, to do actively what we were created in the body to do!

What if you could lead your church into one opportunity, one activity, one exercise, or one ministry that would address all of these critical spiritual needs at once, AND what if you could expect a 70% success rate with the members, AND what if it was something in which virtually ALL of your members could participate regardless of age, Christian experiences, family situations, or most other external factors?

Have you read Dr. Craig Altrock’s book called The Shaping of God’s People:  One Story of How God Is Shaping the North American Church Through Short-Term Missions The Shaping of God’s People:  One Story of How God Is Shaping the North American Church Through Short-Term Missions ?  His book is the result of his dissertation research for some of our finest scholars at Harding School of Theology.

What makes this study so important is that his conclusions are not just anecdotal or random, but rather these results are disciplined, quantitatively verifiable, and peer-reviewed conclusions.

A group of approximately 800 short-term mission workers who had participated in a foreign short-term mission with Let’s Start Talking, including people whose experience was up to twenty years prior to the study, were asked to report in a variety of ways on how their short-term mission experience affected them.  The briefest of summaries is as follows:

  • 77.5% reported that they read Scripture more often and more missionally than they did before their short-term mission trip.
  • 86.1% reported that they pray differently–more intentionally and specifically after their short-term mission.
  • 72.6% reported that they are more generous, that they give more to support the missions of their churches after their short-term mission project.
  • 72.6% reported that they are more involved in their church, especially outreach activities, after their short-term mission project.

What this says to me is that the church that wants to dramatically reverse the 80-20 ratio in their church should make good short-term mission experiences not just one of many opportunities, but rather an expectation for all the members of the body, something that everyone will do.

Good short-term missions experiences will transform first your members, then your congregation! 

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10 Tips for Hosting Missionaries In Your Home

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , on May 30, 2012| 8 Comments »

The Shero Family

For the last five days, Sherrylee and I have had the privilege of hosting Phillip and Laura Shero and their three children in our home.  They are long-time missionaries in Uganda and currently involved in a huge project, launching Livingstone International  University, a Christian liberal arts. If you are interested in learning more about their project, go to this Youtube site and watch their three-minute video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URyp-r7l6TI

The Sheros are just the latest in a whole series of missionary families that we have hosted in our home from a single overnight to 4-5 months.  Most are on furlough, some are returning to the U.S. permanently, and some are “regulars” who stay just short bursts once or twice every year.  Regardless of how long they stay or what country they have come from, they have always been a blessing to us—and we do our best to be a blessing to them as well.

We are eager to host them well because we have been so well hosted in our travels. The gift of hospitality comes naturally for some—but not for all, so a few minutes ago, I asked Sherrylee and the Sheros to just name some things that are important to remember when hosting missionaries for several days or weeks.  Here’s the result of our brainstorming:

  1. Don’t own them! Just because they stay in your home doesn’t mean that you are supposed to plan for them, organize them, or protect them from other church members.  In fact, having them in your home may very well mean you see less of them than other people!
  2. Give them a key to your house!  The key needs to be more than just symbolic, it needs to mean real  freedom to do whatever they need to do, to come and go as they please, and to not have to depend on you. (And don’t expect to get it back. I’m sure there are keys to our house on every continent!)
  3. Make everything that you need easily available for them. If you have two cars, can you loan them one?  Give them your security key and password for your home wifi network.  Show them where all of the remotes for the TV, DVR, etc. are and in what order to use them.  If you use it in daily living, make sure they can also use it!
  4. Give them the space they need to pack, unpack, and repack.  Especially the missionaries to Africa carry back huge amounts of luggage filled with essentials that are unavailable to them except when on furlough in the States. For days before they leave, they may have 10-15 loads of goods they are trying to pack into the same number of airline-regulation trunks, perhaps in your loft or den or their bedrooms and the halls.
  5. Don’t go shopping with them! Missionaries may need to spend a year’s worth of money today to get what they need, but they don’t know if you understand why they need to buy 10 pairs of shoes. And maybe they need to buy a certain brand of electronics because that brand is repairable in their country and the cheaper or better brand that you prefer is not—but they don’t want to have to explain every decision like this that they need to make.  It’s just so much easier if you are not there.
  6. Don’t insist on feeding them! Missionaries often eat around the clock because they are always being invited to breakfasts, lunches, coffees, dinners, for desserts, and meetings in between with snacks! At their “home,” they often would just like to skip a meal or just have Cheerios for breakfast, or grill themselves a cheese sandwich for lunch.
  7. If you REALLY want to do something special for them, have a group of the people they need to visit with—as large a group as your house will accommodate—over to your house.  If they have 10 couples that want to spend time with them, that is 10 meals out or 10 days of long evenings with kids that are tired, or 5 visits and 5 disappointed couples.  You can do something HUGE for them if you would invite their 10 couples over for a grill out or just for dessert and prayer time—but with lots of time for everyone to have a few minutes with your guests.
  8. Invite them to do something fun!  Offer to take them to a ball game or play golf or go to a movie or take them to your favorite fishing hole.  Sometimes they have so much they have to do, that they don’t feel like they can take time for themselves.  Make them an offer—but it has to be one they can refuse without feeling guilty.
  9. Treat them as part of your family.  Let them raid the refrigerator, come down in their pajamas, leave their bed unmade, get up whenever they want to—treat them as you would want to be treated!
  10. Finally, and this is directly from Phillip Shero:  Serve them Blue Bell Ice Cream—preferably cookies and cream!

Having missionaries in your home is truly having the opportunity to entertain angels; these messengers of God will bless you richly!  Just don’t do it “unaware” of their special needs.

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A Preview of Pepperdine

Posted in Other, Re-Thinking Mission Work, tagged , , , on April 30, 2012| 1 Comment »

Sherrylee and I are leaving Seattle tomorrow for Malibu and the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. PBL is the last great Christian college lectureship among Churches of Christ. The main force  behind the lectureship for almost three decades has been the director Dr. Jerry Rushford. This is his last lectureship; he has passed the baton to Mike Cope and Rick Gibson, who assume the responsibility for the future of PBL.

I think they will do a great job, but maintaining the quality while updating the format is a daunting challenge. As great leaders should, they have already begun asking and receiving input from a broad spectrum of people who have vested interest in the welfare of the lectures. 

I pray they do well. We need this forum for our conversations.

Dr. Dan Rodriguez

On Wednesday, we will be discussing the current state of missions among Churches of Christ, and on Thursday, we will go forward to what Churches of Christ need to do to have effective mission efforts in the next fifty years.  I think it will be an exhilarating conversation with these men who are passionate and informed about missions.

Dr. Dan Bouchelle

I hope to provide at least a summary of the two classes on Wednesday and Thursday for you to read—perhaps even an audio file for you to be able to listen, but today I thought I would give you a copy of the handout I will use on Wednesday.  You’ll recognize it as a summary of the blog series I did on “Re-Thinking Mission Work.”  If you want more explanation and detail to flesh out these thoughts, you can find that series in the side panel.

Even if you can’t come to the Pepperdine Bible Lectures, I hope you can enjoy a portion of it vicariously through these next posts. 

Overview of ”Re-thinking Mission Work in Churches of Christ”

By Mark Woodward

The current model for sending, supporting, and overseeing missionaries from Churches of Christ needs to be re-thought for the following reasons:

  1. The selection process is mostly self-selection with only minimal help from experienced missionaries or those who have skills or information that could guide the selection process.
  2. The choice of mission sites too often is an uncoordinated, non-strategic choice with little input from experienced or engaged persons.
  3. The preparation for mission work, if any, is not readily available for most people who would like to become missionaries.
  4. The support gathering system among Churches of Christ not only discourages the vast majority of potential missionaries from even beginning, but also most of those who do attempt to work their way through it.
  5. The “sponsoring church” system neglects spiritual oversight, is occasionally about strategic oversight, and mostly about financial oversight.
  6. The role of either elders or general mission committees to oversee missionaries/mission churches puts the decisions about mission work too often into the hands of well-intentioned people who have little or no personal experience in missions, and little or only secondhand primary information about how to do missions.
  7. The relationship between the missionary and his/her overseers is generally an employer/employee relationship with financial arrangements being the most important control mechanism.

Some of the changes that I would like to suggest that Churches of Christ implement in order to change our paradigm for missions.

  1. Mission committees should be restructured to have as their sole responsibility, implementation of strategies for raising up and surfacing  missionaries from their congregation.
  2. Hopeful missionaries should be expected to seek experienced and skilled help, either inside or outside of their home congregation, for making all of their First Decisions (Should I be a missionary? Where should I go? Who should I go with? How should I prepare?)
  3. Primary oversight of a missionary should be in the hands of Christians who know the person intimately and care about the proposed work, who likely are even personally involved.
  4. Every Missionary Hopeful should be expected to spend two years in an apprenticeship on the field with a Master Missionary before they are supported to work independently.
  5. Financial support and oversight control need to have more separation, so that both are in the hands of Christians who love the missionary and care about the work.

You can read the expanded blog articles on “Re-Thinking Mission Work” at www.markwoodward.org.

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Should Your Kids Go To Haiti?

Posted in Christian Missions on April 9, 2012| 1 Comment »

On Easter Sunday, I visited with two families about doing an LST project this year and both discussions revolved around children of various ages going with their parents, so let’s talk about that again.

As I am writing, I want you to know that our seven-year-old grandson Carter is on a mission project to Haiti with his parents. Three other grandchildren are scheduled to go to Rwanda with their parents for two weeks this summer—so that pretty much tells the story of where our family stands about how important it is for children to go.

Let’s start with the good reasons for either staying at home until your kids are teenagers or leaving the kids with grandparents for a couple of weeks and going alone.

  1. My kids are too young and won’t even remember the trip, so it is not doing them any good. That is all true, but they will look at your pictures and see themselves and when they are old enough to remember, it won’t be the first time for them, so they will be more confident.
  2. Kids will just slow us down in what we can do! That’s true too! But they will add a completely new and full dimension to your work, i.e., people are attracted to children, AND they are often willing to trust parents of children more readily!
  3. It’s a lot of trouble to take kids. That’s true! But older kids are not necessarily less trouble than small children. Also, you can make it less trouble by deciding the kids don’t need all the paraphernalia they get at home—starting with portable beds, chairs, swings, etc for small kids up to DSes and rechargers for young teens.  Go primitive! Simplify for two weeks! It may change your life forever J
  4. It costs a lot more to take kids.  That’s true. It’s an investment in building their faith, so what is it worth to you?
  5. My kids have summer activities! That’s true, but if that is the reason for staying home, what are you teaching your kids? That T-ball is what life is about, that swimming lessons are more important than missions, or that the whole family’s spiritual calendar is built around their schedules?  I don’t think you believe any of that, so you really don’t want to leave a different impression, do you?
  6. The kids don’t want to go!  The worst reason of all! So your middle schoolers are deciding what is spiritually good for themselves? God gave kids parents for a reason!

As you can see, all of your reasons for not taking your kids on a mission trip are true reasons—but they really don’t reflect your own values, so . . . let’s take the kids!

Look at the great things that are going to happen:

  1. Best family time ever!  Even on vacations you probably will not have as much time together, nor a context for the best conversations ever!
  2. Best lessons that you can teach your kids about serving God!  Mom and Dad really love God and are willing to do special things for Him; I want to be like Mom and Dad.
  3. Best way to take your children’s focus off of themselves.
  4. Best way to show your children how others live differently!
  5. Best way to help your children want to believe and share their faith with others.

 Research (The Gospel According To Generation : The Culture of Adolescent Belief (Lewis, Tippens, and Dodd) has shown that summer mission trips correlate at the top of those adolescent experiences that help secure faith in your children!

Last year, Let’s Start Talking sent 58 children on mission trips with their parents! Some went to Chicago and others went to Beijing, but all those parents made it work!  And all those children were blessed. What we generally hear is that the children want to go again and again!  OK, so you want your kids to beg you to go to Disney World or to Haiti?

Your reasons to hesitate are all valid concerns—but  choose to let God merge your desire to serve Him and your commitment to your children. Let Him blend them into one and the same!

Your two greatest commitments with those you love the most in the same place – that’s powerful!

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Guest Post: “Why Is Jesus Worthy” by Richard Oster, Jr.

Posted in Bible Study, Christian Missions, Other, Uncategorized, tagged , on March 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

 Dr. Richard Oster, professor at Harding School of Theology, has a topic-specific blog called 7 Subversive Letters which opens the letters to the seven churches recorded in Revelation 1-3 in a very enlightening way.  These short writings hint at what is soon to become a book on the same topic.

I recommend to you both Dr. Oster and his blog.  I hope this taste will encourage you to investigate his writings further.

WHY IS JESUS WORTHY?

by Dr. Richard E. Oster, Jr.

I suppose that this question has more than one answer.  It is clear that John the prophet embraces the conviction that the Messiah Jesus is worthy. One of the best known and favorite perspectives on this topic is given in Revelation 5:12 where John relates Jesus’ worthiness to the fact that he was slain to redeem humankind: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev. 5:12).  Believers are probably attracted to this perspective because it reminds them of Christ’s sacrificial death and bloodshed on their behalf.

In our enthusiasm for this popular interpretation of Christ’s worthiness there is a related idea given by John that has sometimes been overlooked.  In Rev. 5:9 John writes, “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” There are really two points in this verse; there is the traditional understanding focused upon Jesus’ vicarious death and secondly Jesus’ worthiness because of the global consequences of his death for the Christian mission.  In making this second point John tries to move the readers beyond two typical misunderstandings. The first of these tendencies is one that hides and secludes salvation from others because of feelings of nationalism or ethnocentrism.  The second misconception that John’s teaching combats is the idea that converts to Christianity are there to bolster the agenda, needs, programs, and budget of the church.  John’s emphasis is upon the fact that Christ’s role in the first instance is to purchase man and women “for God.”  The church never owns Christian converts; their only rightful owner is God.

It has been easy for a complacent church at times to laud, magnify, and praise Christ for his redemptive work on the cross, but manifest less enthusiastic about a commitment to the style of globalism in missions contained in the words “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9b).  One does not need to have advanced theological training, or even know Greek and Hebrew, to realize the necessary connection in the heart of God between a believer’s embracing the personal benefits of salvation and then showing a commitment to the globalization of those benefits.

Living in an empire such as Rome’s, a believer would clearer and frequently see the signs of Roman colonialism in Roman artwork recorded on coins, in statues, and on major monuments.  Christians knew they lived in an Empire that controlled the lands and seas between the rivers Thames and Tigris.  When Rome thought of “tribes and languages and peoples and nations” they imagined more areas to conquer, to dominate, and to exploit for their resources, both human and material resources.  It was difficult in antiquity to surpass Rome’s activity in human trafficking.  John the prophet, in contradistinction to the prevailing regime, saw “every tribe and language and people and nation” as parts of God’s alienated, but beloved, creation, longing for a partial redemption in the present, and a complete restoration and redemption in the New Heaven and New Earth (Rev. 21-22).

You can read the complete series at 7 Subversive Letters

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Germany, Jesus, and a Muslim Woman!

Posted in Christian Culture, Christian Missions, tagged , , , on March 2, 2012| 3 Comments »

Germany is really a lot older than the United States. When we lived in Germany, many cities and towns were celebrating 1200 years of documented history. By contrast, when we moved from Hannover, Germany to Oklahoma City in 1979, we were shocked to discover that the city sprang into being just ninety years earlier on April 22, 1889. We saw a television interview with Oklahoma Belle Cheever, the first person ever born in Oklahoma City!

Because Germany is older and because one out of six Americans has German heritage, and like my own family– my great grandparents were born in Germany—what the German immigrants brought with them is still fairly fresh in its social influence, I continually find that much of what goes on in Germany is a foreshadow of what will be a strong tendency in the United States in the not too distant future.

For instance, the rise of theological liberalism and the abandonment of personal faith became currency in Germany in the 19th century, so that by the mid-twentieth century, the Christian churches—especially the protestant Lutheran churches—were socially active, but spiritually empty.

Is the American church on the same path, lagging just a few years behind? 

Another example is that in the place of a strong Christian epistemology, Germans moved to an amoral, secularized social structure, which some might argue produced the horrors of WWII.  With that war only twenty-five years past when we lived there, we were amazed at how virtually everyone we talked with said, “Ich war nicht dabei!”  (I wasn’t involved!)

Our first home in Lohhof on the outskirts of Munich was just minutes away from Dachau.  The smells of the local industries as well as the fertilized fields were all around us on those days when the wind was moving.  But no one had ever smelled anything from a concentration camp in their backyard! No one ever wondered why all those people went in and never came out! I can’t help but believe that a hundred years of secularizing their churches had something to do with the average person’s fear and lack of involvement.

Is a post-modernist America slowly following Germany down a path that has no moral road signs? Is a “whatever” society the forerunner to one where everything from political executions to torture to even worse atrocities could be perpetrated because the majority of people sind nicht dabei?

In the 1950s, Germany needed more laborers to help rebuild it after WWII, so it encouraged immigration from southern Europe, especially Turkey.  First, Turkish men came in thousands, planning to return home with their earnings, but by the early 70s, numbers grew to almost 1 million because they stayed and their families were allowed to join them. By the year 2000, there were 2 million Turkish citizens in Germany. Today, there are perhaps 3-4 million Turks or about 4% of the total population of Germany.

And now Germany is into its second and third generation in some Turkish families, but in 2010, Angela Merkel, prime minister of Germany, declared that integration of the Muslim Turks into German society had “failed utterly.”  She went on to say, “At the start of the 60s we invited the guest-workers to Germany. We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn’t stay, that one day they’d go home. That isn’t what happened. And of course the tendency was to say: let’s be ‘multikulti’ and live next to each other and enjoy being together, [but] this concept has failed, failed utterly.” 

A new study has just been released in Germany about the role of Islam in the integration process of Turkish people (both German citizens and non-citizens) in Germany—and it is not encouraging. Read this article from one of Germany’s leading magazines Der Spiegel (English version):

Now what makes this interesting for Americans today is the growth of Islam in the United States. USA Today ran a headline this week that said “Number of U.S. Mosques up 74% Since 2000.”

My two questions as both a Christian and an American are

  1. How can Christians speak the Good News to Islam in a way that it will be heard?
  2. Is increased diversity, specifically a growing Muslim population in the U.S., going to be good for the whole community?

Here is what gives me concern:

There exists a cultural memory of Western, aka, Christian war against Islam summarized in the word crusade, but including so much more than those medieval battles. Islam believes that it is under siege by the West.  You can read this from those who have studied Islamic cultures today, but it is also my own personal experience in visiting and working in Turkey over the last decade. (Read this excellent report on why the Muslim world is mad at America. to better understand what the Muslim world thinks about us.)

We Americans cannot at the same time wage war against Islam and show them we are Christians by our love.  If we choose to abandon our Christianity, opting for a secularized society, one sanitized of Christian values—which is the direction, I believe, our country is obviously going—then I am afraid we are copying the German story with integration, one that does not have a happy ending!

If Jesus were living in Israel today and John were writing his gospel, he would record a conversation in his fourth chapter between Jesus and a Muslim woman at the well!  While Jesus would be offering her living water. his Christian disciples would be shocked that Jesus was even talking to this woman in her burka. Jesus would tell her about her life and describe it to her, but in a way that she did not feel judged or condemned, rather that she had met someone who told her truth!

Sure, she would try to divert the conversation from her personal relationships by saying the Muslims worship Allah, the one true God, and that Christians worship three gods and lead decadent lives! But Jesus would just sweep that whole conversation aside. “It’s not about our cultural wars,” he would say, “it’s about the One God—and it is about the Messiah—and I am he!

The woman would be so taken with what Jesus said that she would drive into her village and tell all her friends and neighbors about the one who told her the truth about her life and who offered her that which would quench her thirst forever.

Speaking the truth in love—just like Jesus did! I think that is the only answer.

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Don’t Forget the Words!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , on February 10, 2012| 1 Comment »

Every short-term mission project should include an evangelistic component. Unfortunately, most mission trips planned by churches in recent years are better described as service projects.  I would include in service projects providing medical services, building houses or church buildings, painting or other construction type tasks, taking clothing, food, shelter, and friendship to orphans, the poor, or victims of catastrophes.

Jesus went healing the sick and giving cups of cold water. James says this is pure and undefiled religion. And Matthew records Jesus saying we will be judged for our compassion, so service projects are projections of God’s Goodness by His people in this broken world.

But Jesus came not only healing the sick and feeding the hungry, but also preaching (Matt. 4:23; 9:35)!   Jesus says, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life “ (John 6:63). Just moments later, Peter answers Jesus’ questioning of whether the Twelve would stick with him now that he has started preaching and was becoming much less popular than when he was feeding the thousands: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68)

The words of Jesus are full of the Spirit and Life, not the good deeds of his followers. For this reason, I believe that every mission trip should include a plan to share the Words of Jesus!

One of the reasons many mission trips default to service projects without the Words is because many Christians do not believe they are prepared to speak the Word.  Preparations and training for short-term missions should include skills training in faith-sharing!

Allow me to draw on the training provided by Let’s Start Talking for some concrete suggestions for specifically training your volunteers to share the Words of Jesus!

  • In LST’s very first training sessions, workers are asked to begin verbalizing their faith.  Many have never done this, so it takes a friendly, safe environment and some prodding, but usually it is a marvelous experience for the whole team.  One way of doing this is just to go around the team and have everyone tell the story of their baptism, including talking about what people influenced them and taught them and what prompted them to obedience at just that moment in their lives.  For more reticent groups, LST’s training suggests that each person literally draw a picture of their faith. They are given pencil and a blank piece of paper—and no further instructions.  The results are usually poor artwork, but dramatic insights. Of course, each person explains their picture to the whole group, thereby taking first steps in verbalizing their personal faith.
  • Teach the workers the plan for sharing their faith! Since LST is primarily a faith-sharing mission, the plan is to serve those we meet on the mission trip first by helping them with their English, but LST workers are specifically trained to use the stories of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke as the English “workbook.”  LST workers learn to wait for, but to expect the participants to ask questions about what they are reading together. When the participants raise the questions, then LST workers know that they have been asked to share their faith.  That’s the plan for all LST workers.
  • Equip the workers to execute the plan by identifying the specific skills they will need.  The greatest temptation of untrained workers is to start preaching to the participants before their ears are ready to hear.  Other typical failures of untrained workers are that they don’t listen to the person they are working with, their answers are too long with too much information, and/or they are easily led by the participants away from the gospel story into peripheral questions.  Because of these tendencies, LST training addresses extensively:
    • Learning to wait until asked before sharing
    • Listening more than talking
    • Staying focused on the Story
  • Practice with the workers what they will be expected to do!  Training or equipping is not just telling workers what they should do and how.  Until they can actually do what is expected of them, they are not trained.  If you are responsible for training your workers, you must not only demonstrate to them, but see them demonstrate the skills they need.  LST training does this mostly through role-playing.  Role-playing is not the same as the real moment, but we have found nothing better for training purposes than an experienced person sitting together with a new worker and pretending they are in a conversation session.  Each person who participates in an LST project will have done role-playing on multiple occasions before they have completed their training.

 

To summarize, with clear goals and objectives, you as the organizer should be able to develop your training strategy by determining what tasks need to be accomplished and what skills are needed to accomplish those tasks.  You will choose people for your mission trip who can accomplish those tasks, then equip them with the skills they will need to be the very best workers possible.

Let’s not let the sharing of The Words become a rarity simply because our people have not been taught how to do it.


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Can I Mumble On My Mission Trip?

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , on February 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

When you have clearly stated goals for your mission trip and well-defined strategies for meeting those goals, then you will know whom you should take with you and what skills they will need.

Most people who want to go with LST have the basic skills to accomplish their tasks effectively, but some people do not. LST mission trips are 90% building relationships through friendly conversations with people who want to improve their English language skills.  One young man from small-town USA wanted to go with us one year, but nobody could understand him when he talked because he mumbled badly and swallowed his words.  LST sometimes has university students from non-English speaking countries who want to go with LST teams—and who often speak English very well for a non-native speaker—but we advise them not to because our experience is that people in other countries do not want to practice their English with non-native speakers.

Some people hate to make small talk; others are not empathetic enough to understand why others can’t speak English right!  Some people hate travel; others hate sitting all day.  These are not moral failures or lapses in righteousness, just different gifts for different members of the Body!

People who are painfully shy or hard-core loners will probably find an LST mission project challenging.  These same people will have all the skills for a different kind of mission trip, however, where verbal and social skills aren’t so critical! The organizers of mission trips must pray for wisdom and discernment—and then not be afraid to use them in recruiting and selecting the best workers for their project.

Here’s a short list of suggestions for you:

  • Determine what tasks are required by the objectives of your mission project
  • Recruit workers who have both the desire and gifts to accomplish the objectives of the mission project.  Every member of the body is made for the work that he/she does best.
  • Don’t be afraid to suggest alternatives for some people!  Asking somebody to do something that they can’t do is not being kind, nor is it putting the health of the Body first!
  • Be responsible for the well-being of everyone that you take with you!  We actually took the mumbling young man—but we spent a lot of extra time making sure both he and the people he worked with were happy.

So now we have clearly stated the objectives and goals of the mission trip and we know who needs to go on the trip, so the next step in designing our preparation and training is to determine good ways of either developing or honing the special skills we might need.

Skill training for short-term missions will be the next topic in our series on Preparing for Short-term Missions.

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Preparing For Short-Term Missions: The Source of Training Specifics!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , on February 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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.


 

 

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Only 10,000 Hours to Go!

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , on January 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

In the first month of my first semester at Harding, a senior student named Ron McFarland walked up to me in the aisle before chapel and said, “Hey, would you like to go on a mission campaign?”  Completely intimidated and equally ignorant, I replied confidently, “Sure!”

I went to an interview with Owen Olbricht for a spot on the Campaigns Northeast team from Harding for the next summer.  One of the first questions he asked me was why I wanted to go—and I literally had no answer because I had no idea what a missions campaign was!  I was only 17 years old and already felt like I had gone to the moon to leave Texas and go to Arkansas to college.  Clueless!

I was accepted—but was completely unprepared for what I had committed to do—so, of course, I was afraid and tried to drop off the team at least once.   Ignorance, inexperience, fear, and no relationship with anyone else going all were a certain recipe for disaster. The promise of training was my only hope!

 In retrospect, the training I received was minimal. The twelve of us met weekly in a classroom of the Bible building. Sometimes we had mimeographed handouts of information on Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and other exotic religious groups we would certainly meet in Pennsylvania. We did go over the Salvation Sheet, which is the outline of scriptures that we used to present the need for salvation to those who agreed to study with us.  Mostly, we listened to stories from people who had gone before.

Six years later, Sherrylee and I left for full-time mission work in Germany. This was shortly before the introduction in our fellowship of mission majors, mission internships, and psychological testing. In fact, our only training for the mission field was our experiences on Campaigns Northeast.  Four summers of knocking on doors, talking with literally hundreds of people of all sorts about salvation, and working with mission churches in the Northeast United States may have been the best training available at the time.

Here’s what I know about training for missions—or equipping, as we prefer to call it now:

  • Everyone who does short-term or long-term missions needs serious preparation! Don’t put your youth group on the bus, don’t let your retiring Boomers on a plane, and don’t send your preacher overseas without their having been equipped and prepared for the foreseen tasks.  This is so obvious, but most short-term workers go ill-prepared!
  • Preparation and training involves more than just providing information! Reading a book on cultural faux pas in China is helpful, but not enough! Telling the youth group not to wander off is a start, but not complete. Some of the poorest works I know about were instigated by academic-type missionaries who knew everything about their field and about missiology—but did not know people.
  • Nothing can replace experiential training! We learn by doing. In my day, that meant we learned by trial and error on the field. Today, supervised internships and mentoring programs offer great opportunities for long-term workers to receive hands-on training.  Short-term mission workers are the ones who often are short-changed here.  In fact, short-term missions are often used as a training event—which is one of the reasons for the distaste for short-term missions among some missions people.
  •  Short-term missions should not be used as a training exercise when they involve real people!  It’s like sending an army recruit to the battlefront for two weeks to teach him how to be a soldier. Or sending a first-year medical student to operate on people for a couple of weeks to give her a taste of what it is like to be a doctor.
  • There is no single perfect path for mission preparations.  A short-term trip to China and a short-term trip to Africa may have some common moments, but MUCH of the experience will require very different skills, therefore, very different preparation.  In fact, mission preparations for sub-Saharan  Africa would be very different from preparations for North Africa.  So why do we think that one curriculum, one missions philosophy, or even one mentor can adequately prepare missionaries for the diversity of the world we live in??
  • A spiritual and theological preparation is foundational to any mission work, either short or long term!  Needless to say, these areas are most often assumed to be in place, and, therefore, skipped over for lack of time or money or personnel, or whatever!  But do you know what those teenagers believe who are going to Honduras?  You may know what they have been taught, but do you know what they believe?  So you have found someone willing to go to China, but what is their picture of church?  If their only reference is American church, they most likely can only operate within that frame.  But that frame doesn’t really work in China today, so now what??

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell describes the 10,000 Hour Rule, which he identifies as the 10,000 hours of practice that great success requires.  Abraham Lincoln reportedly said,“ Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

I wonder if all of our mission workers wouldn’t be much happier and much more effective if we recommended—no, insisted—on more and better preparation—somewhere between four and 10,000 hours!

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