Lausanne World Pulse – The Future of Short-Term Missions

By Seth Barnes
May 2010

5. Partnerships Church partnerships that start out as summer projects progress into long-term partnerships with  multi-year commitments and the exchange of pulpits (pastors preaching at the partner church). This is a relational generation and STM leaders today are giving relational ministry priority. Long-term, suburban-urban local partnerships are growing in communities throughout North America. Additionally, the Charismatic Church is growing much faster than the Evangelical Church around the world and will likely be the source of an increasing number of partnerships.

6. More Sponsoring Agencies

More than forty thousand North American churches, agencies and schools currently sponsor short-term missionaries and this is sparking greater innovation and opportunity. Denominations such as the Southern Baptists have established their own internal short-term missions agencies. Other associations like Willow Creek and Saddleback focus on cause-specific missions projects such as AIDS in sub-Sahara Africa.

7. Demographic Stratification
The following are several examples of how mission agencies and churches are using demographics to specialize their trips:

– Teen Missions International offers “Peanut trips” whose requirement is that “you must be [age] seven before the project ends.”

– More agencies like OnMission are offering “vacations with a purpose” which target couples and families.

– Christian colleges like Taylor University (Upland, Indiana, USA) or Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois, USA) feature short-term missions in their athletic calendar and as a part of their academic curriculum.

– AIM offers four-day men’s projects featuring construction of homes in Mexico.

The short-term mission project has become a standard item on many youth ministry calendars. However, many of these trips are taken every other year. Many students have experienced the inoculation effect. They say, “Yeah, I’ve been on a bunch of mission projects—I’ve done that.”

8. Safety Concerns
Tourist terrorism, such as the bombing in Kuta Beach, Bali, will likely spread and become a global blight. US immigration policy has tightened. If other countries follow suit, STMs will become more difficult to organize. Muslim outrage and rioting such as took place outside Paris, France last year is likely to spread. The 11 September 2001 bombings on the World Trade Center led to more parental concerns about youth projects and now constrain STM agencies in their offerings. The possibility of another terrorist attack looms large. In addition, outbreaks such as the Asian Bird Flu, if pervasive enough, could completely shut down the STM movement for a time.

9. From Phenomenon to Fad

Hybrid projects are increasingly being offered. Consider the following examples:

– Some time back, a man called me proposing a short-term missions cruise. The idea was that at each new port, the cruisers/missioners would pour down the gangplank and distribute tracts to the locals. 

– Brio magazine-sponsored trips to Peru for 13-year-olds which cost US$2298.

– Radio station-sponsored trips.

– High school-sponsored trips (where no one was responsible for discipling participants).

– Women’s project to China where a major attraction is shopping.

– Drama projects to Europe where a major attraction is sight-seeing.

The reality is greater numbers of short-term groups are spending money with little missiological impact.

10. Shorter and Longer
Two-week projects were common twenty years ago; today, the six-day project is standard for high school students. High school groups are looking to travel less in order to save money and time. Most people are tactical, not strategic – they are more motivated to fill their calendars than they are to push for missiologically sound partnerships.

On the other hand, FYMissions.com and Missions Year are examples of ministries that offer one-year experiences. SVM2 calls participants to two-year commitment to missions and hearkens back to the Student Volunteer Movement that began with the Haystack Revival a hundred years ago.

We live in a fast-changing world. Change in the way we do short-term missions is inevitable and is driven by a variety of factors. We can’t know what the changes will be, but we can count on needing to deal with them.

Seth Barnes is founder and executive director of Adventures in Missions, www.adventures.org. AIM has taken over sixty thousand people on missions projects.