In Summary One of the most popular articles in the KB, and with good reason!

We hear much in missions circles about short-term outreach teams, their exploits and adventures. Usually, however, we hear only from the perspective of the team itself. This article, written from the perspective of a long-term missionary, is intended to bring a dose of reality to those planning and preparing for a short-term outreach.

So you're ready for the Great Missionary Adventure. You've got your visa and your airline tickets, had the immunization tablets and shots, bought lots of film for your camera, and made some contacts with mission bases in your target country. You've heard about some short-term trips that didn't turn out quite as expected, but you're sure that this will be different. After all, you have a genuine burden for the people you will be visiting, and have received definite confirmation that the Lord will use you and your team to reach the lost during this trip.

So, what remains in your preparation?

My answer to this question would be one word: "lots". My experience with short-term teams and visitors has convinced me that we need to emphasise some basic points in order to increase the effectiveness of such teams and decrease the possibility of unpleasant things happening during or after the team's visit.

Let's consider the ten commandments of short-term outreach. Bear in mind that these are written for outreach teams, such as church groups or teams from a Bible school, who have no specific technical training, and who are coming to work alongside an existing long-term base. There will be some exceptions to these rules, such as in the case of pioneering ministry to unreached areas, and the case of teams which have been formed of trained individuals for a specific technical task (ie medical, disaster relief or community development).

We'll begin with the most important commandment:

1. Thou shalt always remember that the primary function of a short-term team is to learn, and not to help.

After months of preparation you're finally going to The Mission Field - and now someone tells you that you're going to learn and not to help! What about all those lectures about serving, all that preparation for witnessing, and those prophecies about the souls that would be won into the Kingdom through your visit?

Try for a moment to see things from the perspective of the long-termers - those who have been working for maybe years in the same location, learning the language, gaining the trust of the community and living the gospel, often at great personal cost. A short-term team, especially one without local language skills, cannot possibly understand the often complex situation of the field: the superstitions and prejudices, the previous misunderstandings and perhaps even misrepresentations of the gospel, the way the culture views foreigners and Christianity, and the sometimes tangled relationships between local churches. All of these things take time to understand and appreciate, and quality time on the field is one thing that the short term team will never have.

So what, then, is the purpose of a short-term mission? My belief is that the primary benefit of a short-term trip is to expose the team members to something a little like the reality of the mission field, to give them a taste (albeit, often sugar-laden) of the reality of the call, and to perhaps motivate them for later involvement in world missions.

Am I saying that God won't use short-termers during an outreach? No, not at all. He can use all of us when and how He pleases, and often surprises us with the ways in which His grace can flow through us to the needy. However, we must remember that the task of evangelism and discipleship is often a long-term job, and obviously the long-term workers will play a more decisive role in this work.

That brings us to the second commandment, which is like the first:

2. Thou shalt always defer to the long-term missionaries, even when thou dost not agree with them.

Remember that the long-termers, for all their human frailty, have spent more time on the field than you, and have consequently gained a greater understanding of the local situation. Try to respect their wishes and advice about security, team activities and timing, and even seemingly little things like dress code. They may not always be able to articulate or explain the reasons behind their decisions, however it is important to remember that they do have experience on the field that the short-termers do not have.

That is not to say that you cannot recommend different activities, or question the reasoning behind current practices, however this should always be done in an attitude of humility and a willingness to learn.

3. Thou shalt surely leave all thy agendas at home before thou arrivest on the mission field.

It is essential that a short-term team be very flexible about the activities they will be involved in, and the results they expect to see. If you feel that God has shown you a strategy or revealed a plan for your team, be sure that all of the team's activities are approved by the leadership of the base where you will be staying. Short-term team which are truly coming to serve and work alongside the long-termers will gladly abandon their own plans and expectations in order to help in the base activities; however teams who come with their own agendas will often be, at best, a distraction from the true work of the mission project, and could even be counter-productive.

What if you feel that God has given you an activity or strategy for your team which doesn't fit in with what the project is doing? My advice would be to present your ideas to the leadership of the base where you are staying, and then leave it all with God. Maybe He will change the hearts of the leaders, maybe the idea was from God but the timing wasn't for now, or maybe you just plain heard wrong. Whatever the case, respect the wishes of those who are hosting you, and under no circumstances go against their advice or authority.

4. Thou shalt be prepared to spend large amounts of time doing nothing, for thus verily is the way of the mission field.

Short-termers, especially those who have not been exposed to different cultures, can often be frustrated by the time that is apparently wasted in travel arrangements and appointments which fall through. It is not uncommon for a team to wait several days in order to visit a project or activity, only to find it cancelled at the last moment! Yet all of this is a very real part of the mission field. Many cultures don't have the same value on efficiency and time management that we Westerners do, and for them it may be perfectly normal to spend several days - or more - waiting for a contact to arrive.

For this reason, it is important that the team leave plenty of slack time in their schedule to allow for missed buses, guides or interpreters who never turn up, weather conditions which may make travel impossible, and a thousand and one other reasons why things will not always run like clockwork.

Short-termers may feel that they have spent so much money in coming to visit, that they deserve priority treatment in order to obtain "value for money". Yet, we must remember that the team’s visit is probably taking workers away from their true work and is, in reality, often an interruption in the busy life of the mission project. With this in mind, the short-termers must be prepared for days of inactivity, foregoing their own plans and expectations if necessary.

5. Thou shalt be careful to obey, in all details, the security rules and advice of the project which thou visitest.

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Paul Cull works in Nova Friburgo, RJ, Brazil with the Comunidade da Colheita church. He leads a ministry called Avivamento Já and has two web principal websites: www.paulcull.org and (portuguese): www.avivamentoja.org. His e-mail address is paul@paulcull.org


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