Why I am Glad I Participated in Short-Term Mission Trips
There has been a lot of pushback on the once popular practice of churches sending teams on short-term mission trips. While this was once a respected act of ministry, many see it as at best, church vacations and at worst, damaging activity toward that are supposed to be helped.
Part of the narrative is the current trend of being critical of all things evangelical culture, short-term missions being a core part of that value. As we look to some of the red flags of evangelical culture, we can easily look at everything through the lens of toxicity.
I have participated in a couple of short-term missions myself, both while I was in my twenties. One was a month long mission to England (with a week in Germany) with Operation Mobilization and the other a week long mission to Trinidad with the youth group of the church I was volunteering at.
I am thankful for those experiences, especially the one with OM. I am not in naive enough to think that I went as a “saviour missionary” who went and transformed other people’s lives through my high quality ministry.
These short-term missions were pivotal in my personal discipleship and they were probably as transformative for me as any other experiences during that time. I look back at those experiences, not with regret, but with a deep thankfulness for what I learned and how I was challenged. Yes, part of the discipleship was learning from things done on those trips that could have been done differently.
Part of the pushback from the critics of short-term missions is that the cost to those who people are ministering to is too high for any supposed personal benefit to the short-term missionary. That is a conversation that must be had.
I will say that it is not clear at all that all or even the majority of short-term missions have been harmful to the people in the host country/community. Of course there have been bad experiences, toxic missionaries, harmful activities, and traumatic events.
But I cannot think of any activity that the church is involved in that we cannot point to some examples of how it has gone terribly wrong. If the measure of whether something should continue is the absence of any bad examples, then we will have to cease all activity.
None of this is to offer a blanket statement of support of short-term missions. The concerns that are raised should not be ignored but should be addressed.
Most importantly, it must be clear that the short-term missions are usually more cross-cultural discipleship trips than a mission in which one group provides lasting assistance to another group. Hopefully the host community does benefit from the trip, but we must avoid the saviour mentality for short-term missions.
There will be some people who will regret their involvement in short-term missions. It is possible that the experience was so bad that they cannot imagine any redeeming qualities. It may also be that short-term missions are so wrapped up in an evangelical culture that has harmed them that they must run in the opposite direction.
That is fair and I do not judge. All I can say is that I am thankful that I have participated in short-term missions and I believe that I am still benefiting from those experiences today.
