In Summary Short-term missions are on the rise. Douglas Millham, director of World Vision’s Cross-cultural Exchange Program, estimates that the number of short-term missionaries from North America increased over ten-fold between 1975 and 1987. Some experts predict the number of short-termers on the field will exceed career missionaries within the next five years. New research, new books, new agencies are all focused on short-term missions. While much is to be said in favor of the movement, Mission Frontiers’ associate editor John Holzmann found some strong counter-opinions. Prospective short-termers would be well-advised to consider both sides.

Experts say there are two basic reasons to go on a short-term mission: for strategic service and personal growth.

Strategic Service

The most common short-term assignments have participants doing unskilled or semi-skilled jobs in order to free up mission funds and long-term mission personnel for the more specialized tasks for which their training has prepared them.

On the other hand, for some agencies with a militant perspective on short terms—Operation Mobilization (OM), for example, “short-term efforts are often seed-sowing enterprises conducted in areas where long-term work is hampered by visa restrictions.” That’s the perspective of Dave Hicks, North American coordinator and USA co-director of OM.

But beyond the strategic service they can provide, short terms have long been recognized as great vehicles for the personal growth of those who participate.

Personal Growth—Basic Discipleship

Ray Howard, Rocky Mountain regional representative for ACMC, former short-term trainer with Inter-Varsity’s Short-Term In Missions (STIM) program, and the current short-term coordinator at South Evangelical Presbyterian Fellowship, Inglewood, Colorado, said his church’s concern is “for the short term to be a learning experience for the individual, . . . a reshaping of a life.”

Short terms reshape participants’ lives by, among other things, opening their eyes to a world that’s bigger than they ever imagined, exposing them to the needs of that world, and helping them to see that their mono-cultural concept of life and reality is much too narrow.

Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and OM, two of the oldest short-term agencies, use these eye-opening experiences to create, in Hicks’s words, “an environment for accelerated growth in Christian character and effectiveness.”

But beyond whatever advantages may be found in building participants’ basic skills and attitudes of Christian discipleship, short terms especially shine when it comes to developing mission vision and skills.

Personal Growth—Missions Discipleship

Nancy Bridgeman, director of Student Mission Advance of Hamilton, Ontario, claims that “only two or three out of every 100 who undertake to go to the mission field actually set out, whereas 25 out of every 100 involved in short-term service become life-long missionaries.”

And as far as she’s concerned, there’s a good reason for that. “We have effective role models in virtually every profession and the opportunity not only to read and hear about the demands and workings of each career, but also to assess first-hand our own potential involvement.”

In the area of missions, however, “people are expected to arrive automatically at life commitment” with nothing more to urge them in that direction than the testimony of missionaries far removed from their places of labor. Short-term missions rectify that situation. They give the needed opportunity for first-hand evaluation.

People on the inside of the mission industry point out that short-term experiences not only give missionary candidates the opportunity to discover what to expect if they join the agency and team with whom they work, but they allow the agencies and teams to see what kinds of people are applying to work with them.

Chuck Houston, a Christian high school Bible teacher, said he was glad he went on a short-term project two years ago. Not only did he feel the work he did was useful, but he discovered some worthwhile things about the team with which he was working: “My personality and the personalities of the people with whom I was working didn’t mesh real well. If I had joined that team on a long-term basis, one of us would have had to leave. We would have come into conflict.”

Warren Day, director of personnel for AIM International, said that he and his wife had three short-term experiences before committing themselves to a career in missionary service. “We had a definite interest in long-term service, but we wanted to know the mission better. We wanted to understand more about the ministry and our ability to effectively function in a cross-cultural setting.”

Structural Problems

But despite the benefits—or potential benefits—of short-term service, it’s not all roses in short-term land. In fact, to hear some people speak, you’d think there is nothing but thorns. The difficulties in short-term missions are both structural and strategic. Steve Hawthorne, executive director of Caleb Project and editor of Stepping Out, a guide to short-term missions (see p. 22), says the main problem with many short-term programs is that they are inadvertently structured to give participants “poor exposure to the world, to the work, and to missionaries themselves.” In the end, they “fail to expose people to the best of what missions can be and is.”

The Case of the Unnatural Missionary

As with cells whose shapes change the moment you try to mount them for study under a microscope, missionaries themselves and the entire mission enterprise in an area may be disrupted by the appearance of a short-term missionary or group.

Thus, while it is generally conceded that the best short term is one in which you can observe long-term missionaries doing their work, long-term missionaries are not necessarily equipped to meet the special needs that short-termers bring with them.

If, as has happened on occasion, their board requires them to sponsor short-termers, the short-term program can be an unbearable burden. “Five weeks every summer they are invaded by a group, half of which ought not to have been allowed to come in the first place.” That’s the way Brent Lindquist, executive director of LINK Care Center, a missionary counseling center in Fresno, California, described it.

Friction develops between long- and short-term workers not only when career missionaries feel pressured into hosting short-termers they never wanted. It also develops when the two parties have different expectations about the purpose of the short-term visit.

If a short-term worker comes to the field hoping to see “what missions is like,” while the long-term worker understands the short-termer’s purpose is to help him any way he can, the short-termer may leave feeling he’s been used and abused.

Hawthorne, speaking from the perspective of a short-termer, said short-termers sent out with the long-term agencies “are often relegated to typing, filing, and babysitting.” Dave Sanford, chairman of the Cross-Cultur-al Studies department at Arizona College of the Bible, described the situation as short-termers being given “all the scut work.”

Of course, “relegation” and “scut work” are the kinds of terms people on the receiving end would use.

But while poor attitudes on both sides of the short-term issue can be accounted for and understood, the results must not be excused or overlooked.

Sanford, for instance, says he’s had to deal with several young people who have come back from a short term “totally burned out” by their experience.

But even in situations where a short-termer’s needs are foremost in the minds of those who care for him, even in situations where “scut work” may never be assigned, the very fact that a short-termer may be so protected could give him the wrong idea of what missions is all about. Sometimes missionaries have to do “scut work”—and they receive no special praise for doing it!

On the other hand, short-termers hardly need to be coddled in order to get the wrong idea of what kinds of spiritual ministries a missionary normally engages in. Due to their limited skills in language or theology, short-termers may be assigned to engage in forms of ministry the long-term missionaries never do.

Page 1 of 3 Next


COMMENTS