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I started taking my malaria medicine this morning for our missions trip,” our pastor said the other Sunday. Short-term trips are not new to this man. He gets his shots, he goes, serves, encourages and he brings back a fresh global perspective to stimulate his congregation.

Short-term missions should be two-way communication, not a one-way street. But what if these trips are terminal? Dead ends that just inoculate against long-term missions?

As mobilizers with SEND International, my husband, David, and I talk with scores of Christian college students each year. We ask them, “Do you have any interest in missions?”

“Oh, yes,” they say. “I did a missions trip to XYZ when I was in high school. It was awesome.” Interesting, surely, but awesome? Doesn’t “awesome” involve life change?

Awesome is what teens call snow-boarding, skydiving or mud wrestling, isn’t it? These fun, extreme activities give thrills and put pictures on your computer screen. Short-term missions for teens can translate into pictures of orphans they hugged, buildings they built, or the crazy mistakes of travel abroad. Shouldn’t it be more?

“Does missions have any part in your future?” we ask college students.

“Uh, I don’t know. I want to be an engineer (teacher, pastor, doctor…).”

My husband slides the knife in a little deeper. “Do you think Christian engineers need to know anything about missions?”

“Well, maybe, but I don’t think missions is for me.”

Why go, I ponder, if you don’t return with a deep burden for the world’s lost, the missionaries who live daily in another language and culture, and the orphans who see short-termers every year who lack long-term solutions to their problems? My pastor takes the Word of God and the oil of gladness and healing with him, but he returns with fiery coals to dump on his congregation’s hearts. It’s a two-way street.

Wait! Aren’t short-term missions the hot button of the twenty-first century? Aren’t missions helping thousands of people of all ages work alongside missionaries around the world? Yes! Amen! I serve with an organization that each year sends hundreds of short-term workers. Most of our new candidates have short-term missions in their arsenal of experience. We consider short-term the logical journey new missionaries take to move from interest to commitment.

My concern is that short-term can be “awesome” if done well, but can also inoculate if done poorly. When does short-term fall short?

Too young. If we ship trippers overseas when they are too young to process the experience, we risk inoculating them against any further involvement. They have done it already—why go again? What’s too young? Even late high school may be too young for overseas unless the team includes enough adults to help the teens interpret daily what they see and learn. Teens can engage in valuable cross-cultural ministry close to home with no need for a passport or expensive ticket.

Too little connection. We cheat trippers if we send them places where they will never again connect. The younger the team, the more they need to work with missionaries they will see again in their home church, whose names and faces will be an ongoing part of their lives. The other side of connection is that the long-term missionary and ministry need to clearly demonstrate that they want these short-term workers and will effectively use them. The trip’s value may hang on how well the short-termer connected with the missionary and not just the “job.”

Too little training. We do all trippers a disservice if we neglect intense cross-cultural training and team-building before they go, and heart- and mind-changing debriefing when they return. This element helps a tripper process the experience, understand the next steps and discern whether God wants them in long-term missions. And if God doesn’t want them overseas, it will superglue a burden for the world to those who will serve as global Christians in their local church.

Given these caveats, short-term missions can bring good value to the long-term missionary. Short-termers can open doors, knock out projects and enhance the missionary’s credibility.

Bob placed college exchange students in wealthy Paraguayan homes to improve their English, bonding Bob to those families for long-term evangelism. Church teams in Russia have erected scores of “quick-build” churches that make new church plants viable entities in their towns. Sports clinics in Spain put missionaries in the home of every child enrolled. English camps staffed with short-termers in Poland and Czech Republic have captured the hearts of godless people now coming to Bible classes.

Long-term missionaries know how to creatively use short-termers’ skills. These workers bring fresh, highly visible faces to the long-term ministry area.

Done well, short-term missions yield lasting fruit for those going, the home church and the missionary. At the same time, it can also keep them from future heart, mind and pocket involvement in missions. In a world of instant gratification, it becomes just another extreme experience to video and shelve with skydiving and mud wrestling.

My pastor leaves soon. I trust the shots protect him because I don’t want him to catch malaria or dengue fever. What I want him to catch is vision, passion and perspective. I want his service there to enhance his service here. It’s so cliché, but I don’t really care if he accomplishes all that he’s planned to do there. I care about what God accomplishes in him because he went.

Elizabeth M. Givens has been a missionary writer and editor with SEND International for 27 years, serving overseas both long-term and short-term.