Short-Term Missions: Is It Worth It?
LAM Magazine
Staff
For others, the images are only positive-a life-changing experience, an opportunity to serve God in a cross-cultural setting and a growing worldview.
Looking at the pros and cons, controversies abound as to whether STM is worth the effort of time, money and resources. For many reasons and under the right conditions, the Latin America Mission believes it is.
Recently Latin America Evangelist, LAM’s award-winning magazine, conducted an informal survey within the Latin America Mission family to determine how influential or impacting short-term missions have been in the lives of LAM career missionaries. Although certainly not statistically perfect, the numbers were overwhelmingly in favor of short term playing a positive role. One hundred and twelve missionaries responded. Of these, 70 or 64% said they were involved in missions today because of a positive short-term experience.
An interesting result of the survey showed that 38 of the 42 respondents who said STM did not affect their decision to become involved in career missions were over the age of 50. On the other hand, nearly all of those who responded positively to STM were younger missionaries. In fact, 60 of the 70 former short termers were under the age of 50.
Explosive growth
Daniel P. McDonough and Roger P. Peterson in their statistical study, Can Short-Term Mission Really Create Long-Term Career Missionaries? explain this phenomena saying, "During the past four decades a wildly escalating, often times out-of- control movement seems to have risen to help mobilize an energized, newer generation of World Christians-pray-ers, send-ers and go-ers alike. That explosive movement?-short-term missions."
STM has only been around since the late ’50s when Operation Mobilization’s George Verwer and Youth With A Mission’s Loren Cunningham "separately developed the crazy notion that missionaries could even be young people with just a few weeks to spare," said McDonough and Peterson. "According to student researcher Thomas Chandler, only 540 individuals from North America were involved in short-term missions in 1965. By 1989, one estimate put the number at 120,000, and just three years later that number had more than doubled to 250,000.
In October 1998, EFMA (Evangelical Foreign Missions Association) vice president and former InterVarsity Missions Urbana director John Kyle put the current figure at 450,000." This shows how the STM movement has grown explosively since its humble beginnings 40 years ago. "I never went on a short-term trip, but probably would have, if it had been an option back when I started out," said Shirley Jamison, LAM missionary to Colombia, working with the LAM since 1959.
LAM’s veteran missionary to Costa Rica, Milré Lisso says, "I wasn’t affected by a short-term experience, since they didn’t do that too much 45 years ago. However, LAM missionary appointee, Suzanne Emery, who will hopefully be coming to Costa Rica in March 2000, came first for a cross-cultural nursing experience 10 years ago. She returned later to work for two and a half years at our Bible Home as a nurse. Now after receiving additional training, she will come back to stay." Short-term ministry exposure can lead to long-term commitment.
The Spanish Language Institute in San José, Costa Rica, did a similar survey to the Evangelist’s, but with students. George Romot and LAM’s Paul Pretiz recently polled language students to find out the impact of short-term missions in their lives. George says, "The current motivational survey indicates that 74% of the language school students have been on a short-term foreign mission trip. The previous survey done by Charles Troutman 30 years ago indicated that only 31% had been to Latin America for various reasons, which included a trip to the mission field." This shows that today’s Spanish language students have already had more cross-cultural experience than those students 30 years before.
LAM’s appointee coordinator, Kathy Clark, has seen similar results from LAM’s prospective missionaries. "I would say that almost 99% of our applicants today have had some sort of cross-cultural experience. This is a big change from even 20 years ago when I started out."
Pros and cons of STM
Of course, there are many factors to consider when evaluating the worth of short term. These may include the length of service, type of ministry, calling and training. "We felt a call first, and that’s why we pursued missions, including short-term missions, as part of our preparation time. However, it did influence how we ended up with LAM and in Latin America. We were so totally impressed with absolutely every LAMer we met during our short-term experience, that we decided, ‘that’s the kind of Mission we want to work with,’" said Paul and Nancy Mauger, LAM missionaries in Costa Rica.
The "Con"-troversies
Miriam Adeney, research professor of missions at Regent College and associate professor of cross-cultural ministries at Seattle Pacific University, in her thought paper for the Fellowship of Short-Term Mission Leaders (FSTML) 1998 Conference, said "short-term missions can be selfish when we use them to meet our own needs." This is something that needs to be considered when STM is approached.
Jim Reapsome, former editor-at-large for Evangelical Missions Quarterly and World Pulse newsletter, says in his FSTML paper, "The primary cause of failure often is lack of pre-field preparation. The whole episode becomes a colossal waste of time, and a drain on the missionaries. To this we have to add the high cost of teams junketing off to exotic places. But we have to examine our total investment in light of the returns, as well as the problems we create. One reason for not converting more short termers to career workers is simply that some agencies do not adequately follow up their short-term people."
Donna Waguespack , an LAM missionary in Mexico City, adds, "I think a church could spend its money more wisely by supporting full-time missionaries on the field. If they support both, that’s fine, but from what I am hearing from those trying to get to the field or stay there, churches in general are saying ‘you can come and recruit-especially for short-term opportunities-but you can’t solicit funds.’ This is a shameful state of affairs if it reflects the church in America today."
There definitely can be negative implications to STM, such as poor pre-field training, lack of post-trip debrief and/or follow up and inappropriate stewardship of funds. Understanding this, LAM and other sending agencies need to continue to look at the big picture, making changes to ensure these areas won’t always remain problematic in STM-even in spite of changing mission paradigms.
The positive side of short term
Sam Metcalf, CEO of Church Resource Ministries, in his FSTML paper says, "the primary beneficiary of short-term efforts are those who go on such trips. What such an experience does for participants-clarifying vision, molding character, and providing a context for the Spirit of God to do significant work in lives-usually outweighs any real accomplishments or lasting results in the ministry context. Throwing people into the insecurity and turmoil of another culture does wonders in the process of sanctification. "Even though there is an exponential difference in the quality and nature of the results in short-term experiences and what career work produces, there is definitely an important niche that well-conceived and executed short-term experiences can and should fill," adds Metcalf.
LAM’s mobilization coordinator, Kristofer Fegenbush, expounds, "Short term is an important aspect of the process of getting people involved in missions. We like to think of it as the gateway to longer-term service. We meet this strategic objective only when good training, on-field ministry experience and follow up can be sufficiently provided.
"We recognize short term as an eternal investment in lives to produce long-term, committed missionaries. Our long-term candidates have STM experience. Someone, somewhere has invested something in their lives. LAM needs to be a part of this work."
Jim Reapsome sums up the positives and negatives of STM saying, "The pros and cons must be weighed carefully. We cannot continue to hop on the short-term bandwagon without looking at some long-term problems. In the end, our best hope seems to be in sending fewer, but better prepared short-term teams." This is the goal of the Latin America Mission and if this objective can be met, short-term missions is definitely worth it.
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