Flying with Two Wings: The Role of Short-Term Missions by Bill Taylor

Benefits:

1. They provide hands-on, direct contact with glocal (global and local) crosscultural mission - whether close to home in your passport country or far from home. You can be very surprised at the richness of crosscultural challenges within our own borders.

2. They stimulate realistic vision for the global task and the church and have the potential of contributing substantively to the global cause of Christ. THis is especially the case when they are strategic on both ends - the sending as well as the receiving. But we have to work to implement this double strategy.

3. They provide an opportunity to see God at work in one's personal life and on the "mission field".

4. They can stimulate thoughtful, significant intercession by driving home the fact that without prayer little of lasting worth is accomplished.

5. They offer reality therapy for those who see missions with fuzzy or rose-tinted glasses.

6. They can convert a person into a lifelong intercessor or missions mobilizer back home. A strategic and thoughtful STM can change a person's priorities and lifestyle, making him or her more radical in faith and future.

7. They can create within those who go a desire to serve more significantly in their home cultures and churches - using newly acquired skills and with a more global perspective. THis is possible when there are substantive pre- and post- STM requirements, equipping and debriefing.

8. Short-termers can witness the impact they can make through their example, evangelism, discipleship or the use or transfer of their specific skills. Through their service they strengthen the on-site, long-term ministry.

9. They provide the foundation for their own potential long-term commitment to career missionary service. All the current servants who know (or who are in process to the field) have had a significant STM experiences that whetted their appetite for more, tested their idealism, screened their decisions and helped them discern where the Spirit would have them serve.

10. They bring glory to the living God through their demonstrated obedience to the sending Lord.

However....

In spite of these ten positive aspects, STM have some shortcomings. Here are seven of them:

1. Overstated importance. Some STM champions proclaim that they have found the decisive answer to world evangelization. This attitude can be found in some STM organizations as well as some local churches. Those who tout this view suffer from an oversimplification of the Great Commission/ Great Commandment. They are looking at the world through a straw - reducing the totality to a single option - when what we need is a broader menu of perspectives.

2. Self-aggrandizement. Some veterans of short-term trips try to pass themselves off as missions or national culture experts.

3. Ignored national ministries. Short-term leaders sometimes bypass the goals and ministries of existing national churches and mission agencies. They don't understand that STM makes its greatest impact when that vision is integrated into long-range plans and programs both in the sending group and in the receiving one.

4. Too limited, too short, too expensive. Often long-term missions are accused of high cost and low value. BUt what about those nine-day, Easter break "Win Russia for Christ" trips to sing in Moscow on Easter Sunday (especially when they miscalculate the date of the ORthodox Church's Easter)? What does it cost to send thirty high-school or college students on such a trip? Is that really the best way to use the kingdom money? Instead of sending a dozen people form Boston to Indonesia for two weeks (discount four days for travel and jetlag, one for sickness, two for tourism), why not develop a really powerful trip to an inner city in United States, Canada or on the Mexican border - at a fraction of the cost?

5. Exhausted long-termers. Short-term trips can go tot he other extreme by demanding too much of the field-based leaders. This saps the limited resources of national churches and expatriate missionaries. When I lived in Latin America, I finally reached the point where I was so frustrated by the demands short-term teams made on me that I said, "Don't send me one more short-termer who can't get around in Spanish!"

6. Limited results. We need to be wary of trips that leave little impact or require nothing after the participants return home. generally, the shorter the trip and the younger the participants, the less that mission trip will affect their lives and those of others. But if leaders build into pre-trip training the serious home-based implications of short-term service, the investment is much wiser.

7. False impressions. Short-term missions may also foster an unrealistic view of t national church and existing missionaries. A short-termer can easily spend a few weeks at a locaiton a nd return concluding, "Wow! These missionaries sure are lazy. We got up at dawn and slogged it out until midnight, witnessing, building the church and running VBS for the kids. But those missionaries did so little!"

- Sure, lazy missionaries do exist. Yet the reality is that the intensity of short-term enthusiasm simply cannot be sustained amid the daily grind of long-term ministry.

Lord I come to You
Let my heart be changed, renewed
Flowing from the grace
That I've found in You
And Lord I've come to know
The weaknesses I see in me
Will be stripped away
By the power of Your love

Hold me close
Let Your love surround me
Bring me near
Draw me to Your side
And as I wait
I'll rise up like an eagle
And I will soar with You
Your spirit leads me on
By the Power of Your love

Lord unveil my eyes
Let me see you face to face
The knowledge of Your love
As you live in me
And Lord renew my mind
As Your will unfolds in my life
In living every day
By the Power of Your love

Hold me close
Let Your love surround me
Bring me near
Draw me to Your side
And as I wait
I'll rise up like an eagle
And I will soar with You
Your Spirit leads me on
By the power of Your love


(Draw me close
Hold me near
Draw me closer
Hold me near
You draw me close to You
And never let me go)

And as I wait
I'll rise up like the eagle
And I will soar with You
Your spirit leads me on
By the power of Your love
By the power of Your love

(Draw me close
Hold me near)