Send Me! Your Journal to the Nations
Getting Ready - Step 3
My Story: Take the Short Step
Short-Term Missions Can Change Your Life
Gene Smillie
It’s a great time for short-term missions! There are more opportunities than ever. If you pay attention during your short-term mission trip, you can learn a lot. And these lessons will apply to the rest of your life, paying dividends over and over.
I went on my first short-term mission when I was 20. I spent a year in Colombia. I picked up the language by living with Colombians. Young, single, and adventuresome, I immersed myself in the culture. I came back to the States eager for more cross-cultural experiences and helped start a Chinese church while in graduate school. Later in seminary, I continued my pattern of short-term commitments. I helped in Alaskan Indian villages one summer, spent a year as an inner city church pastor, worked with interracial youth on an army base, and spent time as a prison chaplain. Later I became a career missionary to Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, where I now serve.
The Attractions
What
are the attractions of short-term missionary service? First, the obvious. It’s
short. You aren’t making a lifetime commitment. This is attractive if you
aren’t sure what you want to do with your life. It’s a way to explore
God’s will - to “get your feet wet” on the mission field and
decide whether longer-time service is for you.
Another attraction is the romanticism of it. Going off to New Guinea or Japan or Eastern Europe for a summer is pretty exciting! Short-term missionary work presents a colorful alternative to everyday options. Sometimes it’s a matter of getting out of a rut and seeing things from a different perspective. This can be a wonderful catalyst for creative thinking - for shaking up your life and getting on with it.
Short-term mission trips are also attractive if you know you want to work in a cross-cultural setting, but you don’t know exactly where or how. A short-term assignment allows you to search out the form and location of your personal missionary calling.
A few generations ago, the “missionary call” was usually a lifelong obligation. This concept has largely been replaced by the idea that God offers us several options - and that we negotiate these options as we go along. Mission boards have adapted to the changing circumstances and attitudes with a variety of missionary service opportunities.
Effectiveness
Mission
agencies also understand the cost-effectiveness of short-term missions. Studies
show that a disturbing percentage of first-term missionaries don’t return
for a second term. There’s a great loss in investment time and money when
someone decides, “I was wrong - God didn’t call me to do this.”
When mission boards allow a person to “try it out first” on a short-term
basis, they know they have a solid, long-term missionary if that person decides
to return to the field.
What’s the actual effectiveness of a short-term missionary? It depends largely on you. Almost everything about your success depends on your attitude. If you expect to serve, you’ll have a great ministry. If you expect to be served, the experience will be hard on everyone. This is true in most areas of life, but it’s especially true for short-termers.
The work you do on a short-term trip usually contributes in some way to the work being done by career missionaries or national Christians. These people have been in a location for a long time before you get there, and they will be there a long time after you leave. Your time with them is an opportunity for you to learn as well as to serve. Or it can be a time of chafing and impatience. The difference is all in your attitude.
Language and cultural barriers can’t be bridged in a few weeks. Of course, if you don’t speak the language, the limits of what you can do as a short-term missionary are clear. But cultural barriers - especially subtle ones - are just as real. If you see yourself as a support person, ready to contribute to an ongoing ministry in any way you can, you will make a valuable contribution to any cross-cultural ministry.
Take Heart
Don’t
be surprised to find yourself facing depression after you arrive on the mission
field - particularly if there are significant differences in what you thought
you were going to be doing and what you are actually doing. This happens to
everybody. It’s called culture shock. And as you begin to discover how
different the new culture really is from the one you’re used to - how superficial
the similarities are that you thought you recognized at first - you may begin
to feel discouraged.
But take heart. Your very newness will attract some people to you, and they will excuse you for most of your cultural faux pas. Very likely they will laugh with you and forgive cultural “bloopers” that would be unforgivable in others. The depression you experience will give way to acceptance of yourself and your limitations in your new surroundings. You will make good friends, gain a deeper understanding of what God is doing in the world, lighten the load of fellow workers, and see yourself in a new light. Be forewarned. A short-term mission can change your life. But that’s partly why you want to go, isn’t it?
Gene Smillie is a career missionary with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA).
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Excerpt from Send Me! Your Journey to the Nations Copyright 1999, World Evangelical Alliance, all rights reserved, reprinted by permission. The entire Send Me! workbook may be purchased online at www.wearesources.org.
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