How should churches get involved with and think about short-term mission trips?
Churches should view short-term mission trips as an opportunity to serve workers they support. This means that churches should begin by asking whether or not the missionaries want them to come on a short-term trip. Next, churches should ask the missionaries how they can best serve them, and then be willing to do whatever they ask, even if it’s a week of childcare so that the workers can train or plan together.
Churches should view short-term mission trips as an opportunity to encourage workers they support. Churches should use short-term trips as an opportunity to encourage missionaries through fellowship, spiritual conversation, and blessing them in whatever ways they can think of.
Churches should view short-term mission trips as an opportunity to serve and encourage workers they support. Short-term mission trips will have the most impact if they are carried out with workers the church has a long-term relationship with. This will help sustain those relationships, will enable the short-term trips to be more strategically useful, and will give aspiring missionaries first-hand training in what could be their future mission field.
For more great resources from Mark Dever and 9Marks Ministries, visit www.9marks.org