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Don’t Report on Your Mission Trip Like This!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on July 19, 2010| 4 Comments »

Do you remember when the missionaries always reported to the church with their slide shows in place of the sermon on Sunday night?   (I know, some of you don’t even remember Sunday night services) Especially during the summer months when many missionaries were on furlough, it seems like we might have at least one report each month and sometimes more often! Perhaps that is why we don’t do it anymore—(I mean the missionary slide show report, not Sunday night—other reasons for that!).

As I look back on the reports as I remember them, they were always VERY long, LOTS of buildings and large group shots, and TOO MANY stories to remember. For that reason, part of the training for re-entry that Let’s Start Talking does with all of its workers is on how to report on their short-term mission project effectively.  First, I’m going to write about the DON’TS and get the negative stuff out of the way.

  • Don’t forget to report! It is an opportunity to share the blessing you have received. It is an act of gratitude to those who sent you and prayed for you.
  • Don’t talk about the weather, the food, or the housing. The audience did not experience it and they really don’t care as much about it as you did while you were there.
  • Don’t talk about the problems that you encountered. Every mission project has problems, but if you survived to talk about it, it wasn’t that big! You run the risk of making parents afraid to send their kids or elders afraid to send their members on future short-term missions because “they might have bad experiences like that last team did!”
  • Don’t tell all the horror stories about the foreign culture, i.e., the gross things you ate or the immorality of the people you worked with.  That’s why you went. Will those stories make others want to do missions? Do they give glory to God?
  • Don’t criticize the mission church, its leaders, or the missionary. That’s the last thing any church needs is some American Christian—young or old—to come in and become an expert on both their work and their context in a week or two. “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” especially when judging someone else’s work. If your church and your preacher are perfect, then you can cast the first stone—unless you yourself are less than perfect!
  • Don’t leave the impression that you went on a church-sponsored vacation! Of course you took lots of pictures during your free time, probably more than during the work itself, so if you show all your pictures, you will unquestionably leave the impression that most of what you did was play and a smaller portion was actually what the church sent you to do.  LST tells its workers to NEVER show free time pictures in reports and NEVER talk about free time. They are not really pertinent to why you were sent, so why include them in your report?
  • Don’t post people’s names or pictures on the internet in your blog or website or anywhere without having asked their permission. In some countries, people could go to prison, while in other countries, it might only be an embarrassment to them. Even in a wide-open country like Germany, LST had one of our workers who read with an Iranian refugee, who was sneaking away from the hard-core, militant Muslims that he lived with in order to read the story of Jesus with her.  What might have happened to him, if his group found his name on an LST report website??
  • Don’t talk too long. LST tells workers to prepare a twenty-second answer for the question: how was your trip? Anything more and people’s eyes start to glaze over. Stick to five-minute reports for the elders and mission committee, 15-20 minutes for classes, but for your own family, you can expand to 25minutes—but just once.
  • Don’t make yourself the hero! Don’t talk about the negative that happened—all of the problems and challenges are included– because it makes you look like a suffering martyr—which very few of us are!
  • Don’t talk about how much good it did you! Now this is tricky because almost everyone comes home feeling the change in themselves because of a rich, mission experience, BUT what you have to remember is that you went to help OTHER people. Your church sent you to teach OTHER people.  What they want to hear is that OTHER PEOPLE were helped.  I don’t mean to say this to negate your own experience, but it is not one that you need to talk about a lot—that’s all.

I wish I could tell you that I have never done any of these reporting sins, but, in fact, I have done all of them at some time.  Anyone else have stories to tell?

NEXT:  So what should you do to report well?

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Quality Leadership: Standards of Excellence In Short-Term Missions

Posted in Christian Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2010| 2 Comments »

We come to the end of this series on the Seven Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Missions. I want to acknowledge my debt and appreciation to the organization SOE that originally published these standards.  This group promotes the standards as well as organizes many groups who voluntarily adopt them. If you would like to read more about the standards and/or the organization, go to their website: www.stmstandards.org and explore it.  Just to clarify, while I have used their standards as the outline, the explanation and illustration of these standards in my blog are purely from me and do not necessarily reflect the intentions or positions of this organization with which neither I nor Let’s Start Talking has no affiliation, but great appreciation.

The last of the Seven Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Mission is qualified leadership. I’ve left this one to last for two reasons: first, I find that qualified leadership is a basic presupposition for each of the other standards. Will the mission be God-centered if there is no leadership? Will true partnerships between those who go and those who receive be established without leadership? Can there be thoughtful purpose and design, appropriate training, and thorough follow-up with leadership?  I don’t think so!

The ubiquitous (sorry, it’s just the right word. Click for a quick definition!) nature of leadership is why everyone writes about leadership. Gifts in such great demand are often neglected, imitated, or abused. Let me explain in our context of short-term missions.

1. Zeal trumps ability in many short-term mission programs. Passion and good intentions are not the same as leadership, but are common substitutes when quality leadership is lacking. Without knowing all the facts, I suspect that the Christian group arrested and held for so long in Haiti for trying to leave the country with a busload of orphans was guilty of only substituting passion and good intentions for quality leadership.

2. Lots of people pretend to be leaders who are not! Again, not all of these people are aware of their lack of leadership gifts, but may truly believe they are leaders. One absolute test of leadership ability is whether and why people follow a particular leader!

I have a missionary friend who certainly believes he is a leader. When he can control a group because of external authority,  people do what he says and stay with him. However, when he tries to lead a group of peers or volunteers, they inevitably either passively or actively rebel against his leadership.

The greatest leader Jesus said of a good shepherd-leader, “. . . the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:4) They do not follow a stranger’s (imitator’s) voice. So it is with those who imitate leaders.

3. Abuse in any form is the polar opposite of quality leadership. You can recognize potential abuse when

a. The “leader” starts by reading the rules for the mission trip.

b. The “leader” starts by describing his/her role on the mission trip

c. The “leader” threatens someone with dismissal from the team if they don’t .

d. The “leader” either does not request or disregards input from others.

e. The “leader” is not accountable to someone else.

f. The “leader” has sole control of all of the organizational elements of the mission trip—money, schedule, resources, planning.

g. The “leader” knows things but is unwilling to share the information with the mission group “until they need to know.”

h. The “leader” uses the “because I said so” line!

If you are part of a mission group with this kind of leadership, you should look for another group to join.  Leadership issues lie at the heart of many of the worst experiences with missions.

Secondly,  I left the leadership standard to the end of this series because I want to segue to a new blog series on leadership—not just for short-term missions, but especially in our churches.  Issues and problems with leadership are also ubiquitous!!  I really want to suggest a different model that would transform church leadership, if we can bring ourselves to implement it.

Well, watch for a new series on 1A Leadership starting soon.

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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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What is Your Teen Doing On The Mission Trip?

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

Fifteen minutes ago I left the fellowship room of the North County Church of Christ, which is hosting an LST YoungFriends group from Dallas. The group in the fuzzy picture is just one of five, composed of teens from the Dallas youth group, some of the North County church teens, and some teens from the community. They are in their C-Groups (Conversation Groups), talking about the story of Jesus and about their lives.  And this is Monday afternoon of summer vacation!

LST YoungFriends is just a mission package for church youth mission trips. What makes it pretty unique is that it is evangelistic! Yes, YoungFriends includes community projects: tomorrow the group is working in a food distribution program; Wednesday it is going to give sandwiches to the homeless in San Diego; and, Friday the group will visit a school in a lower income and higher risk area of Escondido. But what makes YoungFriends different is that the group is partnering with the local teens to offer a way to talk about their own faith—or lack of it.

We did a little review of their training this morning before the first C-Group. We talked about the skepticism local teens might have about joining C-Groups and how to try to alleviate their fears.  We talked about being sensitive to talking about our stuff with kids that have much less. We practiced good relationship-building practices, like share from your own life first, and then let others share as they become comfortable with you and trust you.  I can’t wait to listen to the debriefing from these first groups today, to hear what this Dallas youth group has learned from just the first day of truly reaching out to others from their own lives and with the story of Jesus.

But my question to you today is this: why is an evangelistic youth mission trip so unusual? Take your pick from the following suggestions:

  1. Few adults, including parents and youth ministers, have evangelistic experiences, so they do not even think about it for their young people.
  2. Service projects are easier to plan and more predictable. Anything that involves interaction with people on the other end is a little more difficult to pull off.
  3. Some adult leaders have had such bad personal experiences with combative evangelism or forced evangelism, that they really don’t believe in any form of active evangelism any more.
  4. Doing something evangelistic sounds much more challenging to our teens and might be harder to sell to them!
  5. Some don’t think the kids know enough to tell anyone else about Jesus. Many of the kids in the youth group have not made their own decision for Jesus.

If you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear from you.  What I do know is that our young people MUST find their own faith and learn to verbalize it in a way that communicates to their peers, or we adults will have failed to raise our children in the Way of the Lord!

So allow me the moment of euphoria, watching this bunch of very normal Dallas teenagers, being silly, being loud, but being like Jesus in a very special way, sharing their faith with someone who needs to hear.

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Appropriate Training for Short-Term Missions: What and Why?

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , on June 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A missions minister and I were having lunch one day because his church wanted to begin requiring training for all people they supported on short-term missions. He knew that the Let’s Start Talking teams had a reputation for being well-trained, so he was looking for ideas.

When I told him that the college students that go with LST receive approximately 45 hours of training in preparation for 3-6 week mission trips and that church members going for two weeks receive 20 hours, he literally went pale! His church now requires one Sunday afternoon of training for their short-term workers—which is more than most churches provide or require!

The problem is not that short-term mission leaders do not believe in training, it is that nobody wants to spend the time and energy that it takes to do it. Appropriate training is essential, however, for an excellent short-term mission trip.  Here are some of the characteristics of appropriate training:

Appropriate training prepares the workers for their spiritual work as well as their physical work. While getting materials together or practicing songs or going over assignments or role-playing conversations is appropriate and essential, many of our volunteers are spiritually ill-prepared for the challenges of mission work.  Many have never verbalized their own faith, so they have difficulty responding to questions like “Why do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?” Many Christians don’t know where to start with someone who does not believe the Bible is the Word of God.  When challenged, unprepared Christians may begin to doubt their own faith or to move toward a “all-roads-lead-to-heaven” faith.  Mission trips are spiritual pressure-cookers and tend to bring our spiritual weaknesses to the surface. Spiritual as well as physical preparation is essential.

Appropriate training includes how to work together with others! Just as “personality issues” (a euphemism for any number of our own selfish desires) are a major source of trouble between Christians at home, put 5-6 people together 24/7 for even 2-3 weeks in close quarters under less than ideal circumstances and see how long it takes for the facades of Christian charity to fall.

Appropriate training includes cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity. Who is telling the volunteers about appropriate dress? Who is preparing the team for the toilet facilities? Who is preparing the group for worship in a foreign language without translation? Who is training the workers how to “look and learn”—that is, watching and imitating the local Christians in situations that are unexpected or unfamiliar.

Appropriate training happens before, during, and after the short-term mission trip. Most training needs to be done before the team leaves, but while on the field, situations and questions arise that catch short-term workers off guard. Who helps them sort through their questions and feelings?  And who helps them know how to return home?  LST conducts EndMeetings with all of our workers in which we help them frame their experience, to know how to report about it, and to know how to deal with reverse culture shock.

Appropriate training is done by qualified trainers. This one is so obvious that I just want to warn against one danger, i.e., the person who is the cultural expert because they have been in the country for a week a couple of years ago—you know what I mean! If you haven’t got qualified trainers, find some and bring them in—it’s worth it.

I’m convinced that appropriate and high quality training is why the request for LST teams is still high after thirty years!  The lack of such training is why churches quit sending and people quit going.  Invest the time and energy into appropriate training and you will bring God more glory and honor!  The added value to good training is that what you learn for the mission field always is still valid when you return home!!

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Emergencies on Short-term Mission Trips

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 4, 2010| 4 Comments »

LST once had a team in Madagascar. The evangelist’s daughter was kidnapped in front of the church building where the college team was working by a local gang, looking for a reward. After just a couple of hour,  the girl managed to escape unharmed. The family reported the name of the gang leader to the police who arrested and jailed him immediately. The gang leader, however, bribed his way out of jail and vowed to kill the minister and his family. The LST team was staying in the home of this family.

What would your church/organization do now?

Here are the two most important questions for you to consider?

  1. Are you as a church/organization prepared to deal with this situation for your church members—which means, do you have the personnel, funds, and a plan to take care of your people?
  2. Secondly, how quickly can you implement your plan?

Just to ease your mind, I’ll tell you that within the hour, LST immediately moved the team into a high security hotel, and then flew the team out of the country within twenty-four hours. In addition, LST staff met them in France, let them talk through their experience and their fears, then arranged for them to finish the last three weeks of their mission trip with a church in southern France. When they returned home, not only was the team emotionally and physically healthy, but they also couldn’t stop talking about how God worked it all out for good—whew!

Make sure that either your church or organization has both an Emergency Management Plan and the personnel and funds to implement it twenty-four hours a day while your team is on the field.  Here is a short list of the type of emergencies that you should be prepared to handle:

  1. Travel emergencies – lost documents, canceled flights, unexpected fees, passenger error (goes to wrong airport, checks in too late, etc.)
  2. Medical emergencies – accidents, illness on site, flare up of pre-existing conditions, sudden death
  3. Political emergencies — political violence, curfews, closed airports, police harassment (one LST team suddenly was required to get special visas), political extortion (demanding bribes).
  4. Natural emergencies – typhoon, flooding, earthquake,
  5. Team emergencies – unexpected death or emergency at home, emotional/spiritual breakdown, unexplainable hostility (often culture shock), immoral behavior, disregard of authority, misuse of people or funds.

Emergencies don’t happen often. In thirty years of sending short-term mission teams, LST has dealt, however, with everything mentioned above at least once. You can’t remove all threats, you can’t prevent all emergencies—even with the best preparation and training—but you can be intelligently prepared for the inevitable.

P.S. If you would like a copy of the Let’s Start Talking Emergency Management Policy, I would be happy to send you one. It’s too long to post here. Just email me at LST@LST.org with Emergency Management Policy in the subject line.

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Risk Management in Short-Term Missions: Avoiding Typhoons in Cambodia

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

Just today, Guatemala is preparing for a volcanic eruption and a tropical storm; Belize is flooding, as is El Salvador. Tajikistan has an outbreak of polio, and there are still travel warnings out for Thailand and Sri Lanka. In addition, a major earthquake has struck the Philippines.  Only this last item is listed in the CNN headlines however.  Whoever is organizing your short-term mission should be aware of the natural, political, and cultural risks and have a plan for dealing with them.

Natural risks  – Christians should not be fearful! Being informed, however, and measuring the risks are not acts of fear. It is unfortunate to be stranded in Cambodia because of a typhoon, but it is foolish not to know that July and August are peak months for typhoons in Cambodia and to have a plan in the event one occurs. It is foolish not to know that malaria is also dangerous in Asia and the Americas and not just Africa. Many travel sites, but especially the government-sponsored Center For Disease Control (www.cdc.gov) and the U.S. State Department (www.state.gov) have important information for evaluating natural risks.

Political risks – Christians should not be fearful! Being informed, however, and measuring the risks are not acts of fear.  LST has had workers in Moscow during a political coup, in Yugoslavia when civil war broke out, and most recently, in Thailand during the political unrest and violent demonstrations. In reality, there are very few truly stable governments in the world. How do you make good decisions about going/sending into foreign areas where there is almost always some level of political unrest?

  1. Rely on more than just the U.S. media to stay informed. LST is a member of OSAC –the Overseas Security Advisory Council (www.osac.gov). This agency is run by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security in the U.S. State Department and publishes daily information on all trouble spots around the world. The information is primarily gleaned from foreign newspapers.
  2. In this last trouble in Thailand, LST actually evacuated two teams early because the violence had spread unpredictably. We were aware of surprising developments at least 12 hours before hearing it on U.S. news because we were following local news sources on Twitter (www.twitter.com)
  3. Believe the local Christians with whom you are working. I have found local Christians to be more cautious and more concerned for the potential safety of their guests than the guests themselves. This also means that if they say to come ahead because it is safe, that may be compelling.

Cultural risks – Christians should not be fearful! Being informed, however, and measuring the risks are not acts of fear. Remember the boy who was caned in Singapore for keying a car! Did you know it is illegal to chew gum in Singapore? Do you know what the three T’s are in China that workers should avoid conversations about with locals (Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen)? Do you know that pickpockets work every subway in the world?  Do you know that your passport is the only way to positively identify yourself in a foreign country?

Someone in your church/organization should be responsible for researching cultural risks at your hosting site and then all participants should not only be informed, but trained to avoid risky situations and risky behaviors. Risk prevention begins long before your mission trip.

Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Missions require an appropriate risk management plan. Preventing emergencies is 90% of any plan. Next I will write about your plan for handling emergencies once they occur.

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Risk Management in Short-Term Missions: Don’t take the Lone Ranger!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on May 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s Memorial Day—and I’m working—as is most of the LST staff. We would all rather be taking the holiday off like our friends, BUT Mondays are big travel days for Let’s Start Talking teams. Four teams are leaving today for Brazil, Germany (2x), and Uganda respectively, and five teams are returning to the States from Europe, Argentina, and Panama.

Travel days are high risk days. Just this month, we have had lost passports, floods, canceled flights, and airline strikes to deal with on flight days—so part of our risk management plan at LST is to always have enough staff available on travel days—regardless of holidays—to make sure that we can take care of our workers if an emergency should arise.

Does your church and/or your short-term mission organization have a plan to reduce the risks associated with groups of people—traveling—to foreign countries? This starts with a good screening process for those who want to go in your group.

  1. Are the people who want to go healthy enough? You probably think first about physical risks, but those are the easiest to prepare for—a few special vaccinations or pills will eliminate those problems. Do you also screen for people with emotional or spiritual concerns? The associated risks are much greater with these!
  2. Does the potential worker have a submissive spirit? Lots of people who want to do missions are not willing to submit. They are not team players. There is a place for these people in the kingdom, but you probably don’t want them on your team because they ignore instructions or boundaries and create huge risks for the entire group.
  3. Are they willing to be trained? Self-made missionaries are the worst!! No matter what kind of mission experiences someone may have had, they should be eager for preparatory training for your mission project. Somebody throw the flag, if they are not.
  4. Do other people want them to go? Fundraising for a mission project is one of the best screening devices.  In 99 out of 100 instances, people who have difficulty raising funds for their mission trip also have other issues that make them difficult.  Why don’t their family, friends, and church family step up to support this person—this is a legitimate question to ask. Of course, there is always the exceptional case—but, in my experience, exceptional cases are the exception!
  5. Do they have the gifts that match the planned goals of this particular mission? For LST trips, people need to be comfortable making conversation with people one-on-one.  They need to be native English speakers—yes, and even Texans can qualify!  What are the specific gifts needed for the mission you are planning?

Screening potential workers is a very important step in reducing risk potential.  Tomorrow, I will write about reducing political/cultural risks for your short-term mission.

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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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