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Is Your Church Slipping Towards Unitarian Universalism?

Posted in Christian Culture, Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 29, 2010| 7 Comments »

While we were in Vermont and Massachusetts last week, I saw a large number of Unitarian Universalist congregations, mostly meeting in buildings that were at one time Congregationalist churches.  I did some work on the Puritans a few years back, so I began thinking about the history of these churches—and I started to get a bad feeling.  Here’s the super-zipped history, so you can see why.

Although historically tied to the Presbyterian church, this new movement eventually separated themselves from that denomination. As they pursued their independent study of the Bible, they became convinced that the only true path to reform was to return to the practices of the first century church, including adult conversion and the pattern of congregational autonomy.

This new movement flourished, but with time, because there was no higher authority than the local congregation, the movement splintered into Arminianism (legalism), Deism (social gospel), transcendentalism (spirit-filled), and Unitarianism (liberal)—parentheses are my translation into 21st century labels.

I thought this could have been a description of Restoration Movement history to this point in time. If you feel that way too, then read on to see where the future might lie!

Within two hundred years of its beginnings in America, many of the most influential Congregationalist ministers were Unitarians (a belief in the singleness of God and a rejection of a trinitarian understanding, including a rejection of the exclusive claims of Jesus because He is the Son of God).

During this same historical period, the doctrine of universal salvation was at its zenith in America. Universalism teaches that a loving God would not create humans, then send them to hell or eternal punishment.  It is no surprise that after rejecting the divinity of Jesus and opening the doctrinal door to acceptance of everything under God, Unitarians quite easily moved into universal salvation as well. It would be the natural step following their move to a more syncretic understanding of God.

Today, these beautiful old church buildings in New England are no longer Christian churches; rather, they are filled with the great grandchildren of those early Restorationists.  Unitarian Universalists profess the following in their own words (http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml ):

There are seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote:

  • The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
  • Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
  • Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
  • A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
  • The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
  • The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
  • Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Unitarian Universalism (UU) draws from many sources:

  • Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
  • Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
  • Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
  • Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
  • Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
  • Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

I want to think that my church could never slide down this path, but I do recognize some of these footprints in the road we are traveling.  I do believe that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (G. Santayana).

And if this is not what I want for my grandchildren, what must I do today?

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How To Have Friends For Forty Years!

Posted in Uncategorized on July 26, 2010| 3 Comments »

What does it take to stay friends for forty years?  As those of you know who are my Facebook friends, Sherrylee and I have just spent the last three days with David and Malissa Rivoire and Wes and Glenna Harrison, our co-workers in Germany from 1971-1979.  It has been sixteen years ago since the three couples were together at the same time and place, although we occasionally bump into each other at the Pepperdine Bible lectures or some mission conference.  This wonderful weekend in Vermont has just made me stop and think about friendships, so, if you are interested, I’ll share some thoughts with you.

First of all, in many ways, the six of us are very unlikely friends. David and Wes met at York College, then transferred to Harding their junior year. The summer prior to that transfer they worked on Campaigns Northeast, which I was on for the second time in the summer of 1967. Wes and I decided to room together—and I don’t remember whose idea that was—and it doesn’t make any difference.

Dave met Malissa (I don’t remember those details) and Wes met Glenna and the dating dance started for both of them with all the ups and downs. All I remember was that Roy Orbison’s “Your Baby Doesn’t Love You Anymore” was a popular song around our dorm room.

The fall of our senior year, we guys began talking seriously about what we would do after graduation, and we started talking about doing mission work somewhere together. With some guidance from Dr. Joe Hacker, head of the Bible department at Harding then, we decided to go to Germany two years after graduation. The Rivoires, then married, spent those years in Houston, and the Harrisons married the summer after college graduation.

I was still doing Campaigns Northeast every summer. That summer of 1969, a cute girl named Sherrylee Johnson joined us in Scranton, PA for the last two weeks of the summer. That’s where our story starts!

On September 24, 1971, the Rivoires and Woodwards left Houston for Munich, Germany—the Harrisons would join us about 16 months later.  We spent two years in Munich and approximately six years planting a good church in Hanover, Germany. God blessed the work in Hanover, but our work as a team began to end—perhaps a natural conclusion for such organisms.

The Harrisons moved to Kaiserslautern to work with the American military church. Sherrylee and I began making plans to start a Christian international school in Stuttgart, but it all fell through suddenly and left us without support, so we returned to the States quickly and unexpectedly in 1979. The Rivoires stayed in Hanover another four years, then moved to the UK and worked with churches there for ten years.

Since then the Wes has taught at Columbia Christian and is now at Ohio Valley University. David has preached for the church in South Burlington VT for sixteen years. Sherrylee and I spent 22 years at Oklahoma Christian and now the last nine in Fort Worth with Let’s Start Talking.  So what does all this say about friendship?

  • None of us were “soulmates”—those kinds of special friends that click at first sight and are on the same wavelength virtually all the time! We had to work at our friendships, but we did so because we had committed to each other for a season. Our years in Germany were not without conflict, sometimes serious conflict—often personality-driven, sometimes strategical—but we knew our little team was a little church and that we had to love each other because God had brought us together to do something together. So we did, until we felt that God had brought that season to its end.
  • We learned the strength in diversity. As we worked together, we discovered that each couple attracted different types of people and worked in different ways with those people, BUT instead of insisting that all of us—because we were a team–work in one way or with one group of people, we figured out how to work together and bless each other’s individual gifts.  That was a hard lesson to learn, though.
  • I learned that common experiences are what build relationships. Our experiences during eight years in Germany are the reason we met in Vermont.  And I believe that common experiences include common struggle, shared joy and pain, even mild embarrassment that those people know so much about me.  I often felt like we were married to our co-workers. I remember once thinking, we are really family, when I gave David the gynecologist’s report on Malissa that I had already heard from Sherry but that he had not received yet.
  • Our common experiences continue to be our common concerns. When together, we talk about the people in Germany–who is faithful, who is struggling–and the church situations there.

What am I saying about friendship? Just this. It is not about finding perfect friends, soulmates, etc. If you are given such, you are doubly blessed. You should, rather, go ahead and invest the time and effort it takes with the people God has thrown you together with, commit to them, and resolve the inevitable conflicts so that there is no division among you. Then, after forty years, you will still be friends!

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Who Wants To Know What I Want To Say?

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 24, 2010| 1 Comment »

The problem for most short-term workers is not a lack of desire to tell the story of their mission project; rather, it is finding appropriate opportunities to talk to people who really want to hear.  Let’s Start Talking prepares its workers with a twenty-second answer for most people—which is the average attention span for informal mission reports to friends and acquaintances.

The next place everyone thinks about reporting is from the pulpit of your home congregation, where the most people can be addressed—but, unfortunately, pulpit time is as rare as sunshine in Seattle, so let’s spend a few moments listing very appropriate venues where you will find people who want to hear about your work.

  • Church elders/leaders meetings. You will have to ask for this time, but it is worth it. And you may only get five minutes, but it is worth it! Use it to inspire them—to expand their view of the kingdom and to encourage missions. You might change the whole agenda of your home church with such a meeting.
  • Mission committee/leaders. Ask for five minutes and see what you get! Express your gratitude and show them that their investment in you (hopefully) produced glory for God! When you leave, your goal is for them to say, “That was great! Who can we send next?”
  • Adult classes. Build your report into an inspirational lesson. Use Bible texts that have motivated you. Don’t preach; rather, leave the class inspired with a heart for God’s mission!
  • Teen classes.  They never look like they are paying attention, but if you can tell stories about the people you encountered, you are planting seeds for service in virgin soil.
  • Children’s classes. Use a map, show a picture of other children, excite their sense of adventure—which will morph into wanting to do something BIG for God someday.
  • Small groups—I know these are often social, sometimes activity oriented, but what better place to dialogue with people. Leave plenty of time for their questions and interaction.  Tell them that they can do it too.
  • Special groups: Ladies classes, campus ministry devotionals, 39ers nights, etc.
  • Display boards/tables at church.  These will often tell your story for months to people you will never get to talk with personally. Leave some way for people to contact you for more information.
  • Written reports: blogs, newsletters, just plain letters—but use lots of pictures and choose your words carefully. People do not read long stuff anymore.
  • Facebook. Let all your friends know. Label your pictures in a purposeful way rather than just trying to be funny. Include links to fan sites like LST (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Lets-Start-Talking/293788299554?ref=ts) where people can learn how to be involved themselves.
  • Others: small town newspapers, Kiwanis clubs, other churches

And don’t forget, your window of opportunity is probably only open about 6-8 weeks. After that, it will become increasingly difficult to get onto any platform because the experiences themselves are so distant.

What would you add to this list?

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Finishing Well: Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Missions

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

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!

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Asking the Hard Questions: Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions

Posted in Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 30, 2010| 1 Comment »

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.

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Talking to Kids About Movies: “The A-Team”

Posted in Christian Culture, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 20, 2010| 2 Comments »

“Pity the fool” – I can still hear our 10-year-old son laying this line from the original A-Team­ television show that ran from 1983-86. I must admit that I was not a regular viewer, but for some random reason, we saw it last night in Flagstaff, AZ, on our way home to Texas—and we both enjoyed it.

Virtually all of the characteristics of the TV show are maintained in the film: same characters, same plotlines, new high-tech ways of exploding things—and everything explodes—and, although some people die, it is so cleanly done, you sometimes wonder if they were killed or not!  We laughed a lot, and although the film was a bit too long, maybe it was just because it was midnight when it was over!

The main audience for this film is probably 10-15 year-old boys and then the mid-thirties guys who want to relive their childhood. No matter which children we are talking about, here are a few things that would make good conversation about the film.

  1. Make sure everyone knows the movie is really a cartoon! Just like the coyote gets boulders dropped on him and Elmer Fudd’s rifle blows up in his face, there is lots of violence but it is not real—and not intended to be.
  2. What a great film to instill the value of team work! Much of the film is spent getting the team together—twice—after being split apart.  The bad guys even put them in different countries because they know that individually they are harmless; together they are impossible to stop.
  3. It’s a great opportunity to talk about how you deal with conflicts of conscience. B.A. Baracus (the Mr. T character) becomes a pacifist in a stint in prison and tells the team that he can’t kill anybody anymore.  He sticks to his position even though he is threatened with death and could easily fight his way out of it.  What a great ethical situation to talk about. Of course, Hannibal is able to share another viewpoint and the real Baracus comes back, but even that is an opportunity to talk about how we train our consciences.
  4. Take the opportunity to teach your kids about Gandhi and the non-violence movement that he used to overthrow the British in India.  Both Baracas and Hannibal use Gandhi to ground their philosophies, so it is a natural time to teach about a man who changed western culture. I myself would extend that conversation to Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Dr. King consciously imitated Gandhi, so there is an obvious connection.

Don’t get too heavy though. It is just a cartoon.  Let the kids enjoy it.

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From Pecos to Escondido: The Road Trip Continued

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 12, 2010| 2 Comments »

American highways are remarkably free from roadkill! Yesterday we drove 934 miles and I don’t remember seeing anything dead on the road at all. Did you know that most of the roadkill in Australia are kangaroos! And you see a  lot. In fact, many people have those big cowcatchers—I don’t know what else to call them—on the front of their vehicles because hitting roos on the roads is so common.

You’ll remember from yesterday that Sherrylee and I decided at the last minute to drive to California to help with an LST YoungFriends project at the North County Church of Christ in Escondido, just north of San Diego. You can read about the first 446 miles in yesterday’s posting—but you can start here also. The great thing about journeys is that they have an official starting place, of course, but today’s start is just as much of a start as yesterday’s start.  There must be a sermon there somewhere!

After a quick stop at the ubiquitous Wal-Mart in Pecos, Texas, we got on the road again. Sherry enjoys reading aloud while I drive, so she suggested reading the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. Yes, we are pretty weird, but don’t worry, we balanced it with a Robert Ludlum novel later in the day.

We have been reading and talking about Roman Catholicism for some time, since her brother recently became a Catholic priest.  Yesterday, most of our reading and conversation was on sacramentalism, but that is a topic for another blog.

The amazing thing about driving in Texas is that when you get to El Paso, your halfway to California. Of course you have to speed past the sand dunes in Monahans, the Davis Mountains and Fort Davis, McDonald Observatory near Alpine, and the many great Tex-Mex restaurants along the way or you will just turn around and say, “Why would I ever want to leave Texas!!”

The only thing I really found interesting in New Mexico was driving through Lordsburg.  Who knows what classic journey film has Lordsburg as the stagecoach’s final destination?

Now Arizona has Tombstone and Yuma, but we missed the 3:10 train. I forgot about the time zone change! We didn’t stop, but if we go back that way, I’m planning to try to stop and sightsee.

At some stop, we balanced our morning catechesis with an audiobook from Cracker Barrel (where else?) called The Bourne Deception—the full 17.5 hour/15 disc version. Pretty good deal for $3.50!  It was so good that we skipped supper. Our only interruptions were the Border Patrol control points—something we had never seen before.

The Board Patrol check Points reminded me of the Arizona controversy. We were waved through easily, but I couldn’t help but think about it being a different story if we had been Latino—either of us.  I’m all for controlling our borders better to prevent illegal aliens from entering, but if you have ever been a foreigner in a foreign country (stranger in a strange land is the biblical phrase) and been discriminated against, you would know how humiliating and offensive any form of profiling or discrimination is.

When Sherrylee and I lived in Germany and were looking for an apartment, we would occasionally call about one that looked great to us, only to be hung up on because we were aliens with an accent. That was almost as bad as the people who used the less formal language forms when talking to us as if we were either children or stupid. Well, you can see that I am sympathetic with aliens from my own experience of being one.

You have time to think about many things on a road trip!

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Roadtrips

Posted in Other, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 11, 2010| 1 Comment »

Sherrylee and I love road trips!  I’m talking about where you throw stuff in the car, take off, and drive for hours and hours.  In this day of instant gratification, which includes getting to places quickly from wherever we are, road trips seem a thing of the past, but since I’m writing this in the breakfast room of a Holiday Inn Express in Pecos, Texas—8 hours from Fort Worth and 12 hours from Escondido, CA.—I want to tell you about ours, so you can see what you think.

Yesterday about 11am, we decided that I needed to go to Escondido, where LST is sending a YoungFriends group from Dallas for a week-long mission trip. We sometimes do this to simply provide a little help to both the group sponsor and the hosting church. Since our daughter Emily and her family are in Escondido, Sherry wanted to go too, but have you looked at last minute ticket prices lately! She suggested that we leave right away and drive—1394 miles—19+hours!  In less than 10 minutes, we had decided to do it—so we agreed to leave at 2pm.

She went to the Hair Cabin for whatever, and I tied up stuff at the office, then stopped the mail for 10 days, ate lunch with the staff, and went home to pack.  Packing for road trips is soooooo easy because you don’t have to worry about weight, you don’t have to worry about how many ounces of liquid, you can take your good shoes, your running shoes, AND your flipflops—and they don’t even have to go in the suitcase. The best of all is being able to hang your clothes in the backseat. What a luxury!

We were almost giddy as we drove out of the city right before rush-hour traffic—about 3:30, not 2pm—but that’s OK.  The first thing we did was play the alphabet game. What—you’ve never played. You have to find all the letters in proper sequence, call out the word that contains the letter—which means your opponent can’t use that letter in that word—and you can’t look backwards!  Oh, yes, and it has to be on a sign, not anything moving.  Sherry and I are fierce competitors, so I will confess to one tense moment when we both saw the J in Justin Boots at the same time. I think I really beat her, but it was so early in the trip, we agreed to both claim it as a tie—any sacrifice for matrimonial harmony!  Ultimately my generosity paid off because I found the Z in pizza just outside of Abilene and won.  We’ll see what happens today!

And we always stop at Crackerbarrel restaurants on road trips—mostly because of all the fun things you can do there!  First, you can walk around and say, “Who do you think would buy something like that?” Then we look at the pictures on the wall and see if any of our forefathers are memorialized in their antique pictures—well, those pictures are of somebody’s people!! Don’t laugh.  Then we always try to beat the little triangle peg game that they put on each table.  Sherry was obsessed yesterday, so I cheated and found a clue on the internet about where to start that let both of us beat it once—but then we couldn’t repeat, so I bought her one to bring on the trip as we left. Oops, now I know who buys that stuff!!

Don’t forget to go to the bathroom at Crackerbarrel—except be careful. In nine out of ten Crackerbarrels, the men’s room is on the left and the women’s on the right, which only sets us Stammkunden up for an embarrassing moment if we ever walk into the exception! I’ve done it several times, I confess.

Next we listened to 4-5 episodes of Garrison Keillor’s Stories from Lake Wobegon podcasts off the ITouch that my kids gave me several years ago! What great kids. We tried listening to Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which I had downloaded for free a couple of months ago. It was a little heavy for the mood yesterday, but it might work today.  If not, we’ll stop at the next Crackerbarrel and rent an audiobook on CD—see why we always go there!

We pulled into Pecos, Texas about 11:15 last night, couldn’t find the hotel, drove around until we found something open where we could ask. Soon we were in our room—but the toilet was broken—so then we were in another room, tired, but glad we were on the road—together!

I wonder what today will bring?

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No Whiff of Dishonesty!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 28, 2010| 5 Comments »

Whether you are a church organizing your own short-term mission or you are an individual Christian wanting to join a short-term mission project, you need to be concerned about the comprehensive administration of the short-term mission. The SOE uses this broad term to include the following:


  1. Integrity of the organizers
  2. Competency of the organizers, especially in the area of risk management, and
  3. Capability to support and deliver of the organizers.

Let’s look at these standards in three rapid-fire blogs.

4A – INTEGRITY

Yesterday, we had a fairly lengthy discussion about which countries to advertise as LST sites for 2011. It is tempting to use “attractive” countries in our promotion, even if we seldom send teams there.  A few weeks ago, we debated at length a video clip that showed an LST worker reading with small children. Little children are huge emotional magnets for recruiting workers—but only seldom do our workers read with young children, so it is not typical of the LST experience.  These were discussions to insure LST’s integrity.

Is there honesty in promotion of your short-term mission? Check the motivations you appeal to in your promotion? Check the description of activities as compared to what the work will primarily be.  Is the host culture as needy, as irreligious, as unhealthy, as secure as it is described?

The world of advertising that we live in has skewed our sense of honesty—not to the point of lying, but to spinning the truth.  Speak the truth…in love, and you will honor God!

Is there transparency in all areas of the finances? How have the costs for this short-term mission been established? By whom?  How carefully are funds collected and dispersed? Is there an accounting process that includes accountability to someone external to this particular project? Do all participants have access to financial information?

LST has three people who do nothing but work with the finances and accounting for the monies we receive and dispense. There are strict protocols in our office about who can open an envelope with money in it, for instance, and that same person cannot record and deposit that money. Each LST team does simple accounting with the money that they are using in their LST project.

Then we have a yearly audit by an outside accounting firm, who spends days in our office, going through receipts, deposits, even the accounting books of the individual LST teams that went overseas.  Their audit is something that LST will provide to anyone who requests it. In addition, LST files a Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service, that discloses again all important financial information—and much more. The Form 990 is public information and accessible to everyone! It’s like publishing your personal income tax filing on the internet.

Are the results of the short-term mission reported honestly and accurately? Sometimes results are vague because the organizers had no measurable goals; that is double trouble in my opinion! Other times results are skewed to justify the expense and effort. That is dishonest. Most often, results are simply not tracked or measured.  Not measuring, not assessing is not honest either. How do you know you encouraged the host church? How do you know people grew spiritually?

Nothing alienates people from Christian missions faster than the hint, the whiff of dishonesty! If you are the organizer, you must ensure integrity at every level. If you are joining a team, make sure the organizers are transparent to a fault.

Next #4b:: Appropriate Risk Management

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Liberty, Equality, Fraternity for Short-Term Missions

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 23, 2010| 3 Comments »

My son was part of a short-term mission trip several years ago that was building a church building in a third world country.  After working for about a week, digging the footing for the concrete stone building, pouring the concrete for the foundation, and then building up the wall about 2-3 feet, someone realized that they had not put any doors on the building!

I know, you are thinking that this was a freudian slip, but, in fact, the story becomes worse. So the Americans spent the rest of the mission time, tearing down a major portion of the wall that they had just built and rebuilding the wall, this time with gaps for doors.

The rest of the story I cannot verify firsthand, but my understanding is that another group went to the same area a year or two later, and the church had torn the whole building down because it never met either their needs or their standards.  There is a message in this story for those who would plan short-term missions projects.

Just having manpower and money will not get you to the goal. Mutual design is also imperative. Without reflecting on any real person’s motivations, my best guess is that the Americans showed up with a plan. The locals were asked to validate it, which they did because what else can you do in the face of money and power!  The results speak for themselves.

Mutually planning the mission activity is the only way to hope for an effective outcome. Sure, mutual design does not guarantee a positive outcome, but it certainly increases the prospects.  By mutual design, we are talking again about a partnership between American Christians and hosting nationals with (to borrow from the French!) liberty, equality, and fraternity on both sides.

Here are some reasonable questions for both parties to ask in preparation for any short-term mission trip:

  1. What are the common goals of both guests and hosts? Is the primary goal to please the host or to please the American guests? Is there a way to plan the mission so that both sides feel like their expectations will have been met?  Before an LST project ever occurs, an LST representative sits down with the hosting leader/leaders and tries to describe in their context what might occur when an LST team arrives. We talk about how we spend money, how teams are typically housed, what each day looks like, what the teams typically do on Sundays–no part of the project is intentionally left out.  Then we listen to how they believe an LST team could work best in their context. Where there are differences, we make great effort to work them out–or we both agree that perhaps some other form of mission would be better for this particular site.
  2. What preparation and follow-up are expected from the hosts/guests? What are the hosts/guests expected to do both before and after the mission project? LST projects expect the host church to advertise prior to the team’s arrival, for instance. How they advertise is left to the expertise of the local Christians? If both of us find this acceptable, we go forward with our planning!  Local Christians are expected to make plans for follow-up to LST projects. LST teams are expected to leave all contact information necessary for follow-up with the local churches. When one of our teams does not do this, we think the mission church has a right to be upset with us!
  3. Who pays for what? Unfortunately, fairly simple questions like this create much of the havoc on short-term mission trips. LST promises to pay for all food, local transportation, laundry, and the social events that are part of a typical LST project. Hosts are asked to arrange for housing and advertising.  Some hosts have no housing options that they can afford, in which case we ask them to work out mutually acceptable housing arrangements with us BEFORE our team arrives. Often their solution is a nice American-style hotel–which we most often decline because we can’t afford that either. So we continue to dialogue until either there is a mutually acceptable solution or there is no solution; in the end, we both know that we have made a mutual effort to find a mutually acceptable solution, but have failed–usually with a promise to try again next year.

Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Missions puts great emphasis on the ability of both the American guests and the national hosts to implement what they have accepted as their responsibility.  When there has been full liberty to both negotiate and to decline, when there has been equality assumed by both partners, and when brotherly love (fraternity) is the framework of every conversation and interaction, then nothing short of a REVOLUTION will be the result–a revolution that both we and God will delight in!

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