Preparing A Team for a Short Term Mission Project

I have been preparing teams for short term mission project for 20 years. Twenty years ago good thinkers and career missionaries saw the benefit of short term teams and began to think through how to best provide quality preparation for teams. Our own staff helped with some of the developmental processes for a group of short term mission leaders developing standards of excellence in STM's.

Now, 20 years after I started preparing teams, there are so many more resources for team prep, so here are just a few more.

First of all let's start with a simple team outline. Thee points that you and the team can refer back to, build session prep around, and lean on before, during and after the short term project. First of all, before I let you in on this simple outline, let me say that this outline is not just a short term mission outline, it really is a life outline. The outline applies to work, and family...and of course the mission project.

Every team leader I have prepared has been sent out with this simple outline, developed by former World Vision staff Doug and Jackie Milam. To go as:
1. Learners
2. Servants
3. Story Tellers

First of all every short term mission team is a group of students. Ask any previous participant in and STM and they will tell you most about "what they learned", "what God taught them". Imagine being a professional block layer going to a different culture with the attitude, "teach me how you lay block", the impact is that a relationship is built. Learners instead of teachers. Will there be opportunities to teach? You may ask. Yes, but step one is be a learner, seek to understand rather than be understood first.

Secondly as servants. Jesus came as a servant of the world. John 13: 3 "Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him."
We will work to serve those we have come to serve certainly, and those on our team as well. John 13:35 says, "By this shall all [men] know that you are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." This is a bit radical...if your team were to love one another, all men would know that your team are His disciples. That's huge, and we will talk about how even to prepare a team for loving each other later.

Thirdly your team will go as story tellers. I Alabama, where I grew up, a story teller was a liar. That's not what we mean here. We are talking about having a team member prepared to tell his/her story. The story of what God is doing in his/her life past and present. I came to Christ when Barry Stephens explained God's love to me with a little booklet called "Steps To Peace With God". It was a great pictoral of where I was or actually wasn't in my relationship with the Lord. We are talking about something radically different here. Your story, His story in you, is powerful. It is simply what God has done in you, it is unique and powerful, and has an impact on those who will hear it. Later we will talk about the key elements of story telling, but for now just know that you have a life that is interesting, ever changing, full of drama and waiting to be told!

I'll stop here today, but look for more over time, or feel fee to call me with your questions about team preparation. Love to hear your experience.

Teachers Helping Teachers-Shrot Term Mission Project

No one is more passiont for helping teachers than teachers! It shows every time we take a group to Montego Bay, Jamaica to work at our three ministry locations, all of which have active schools. Usually in a team of 50 adults there is a teacher or two from the U.S. or Canada. They love joining a class and helping a teacher teach, even though for many of these teachers this represents a week away from the regular work of teaching back home. They are passionate.

This year two of those teachers had an idea: Why don't we return next fall (2009) with a team of teachers who could be substitutes for classes while giving Jamaica teachers a chance to attend seminars. Those seminars would provide tools for teachers to use in the classroom, share common victories and hurdles and walk away refreshed. There would be times of prayer for teacher, and the beginnings of cross cultural partnership.

Well the date is set and we are hoping for 25 teachers to join us in Montego Bay, Jamaica October 11-17, 2009. If you are a teacher, you have a passion to help others in your field and would like to travel off the beaten path....this is for you! Contact Mission Discovery 800-767-8720 for more information or visit www.missiondiscovery.org.

Who Can Go On Short Term Missions

For years Mission Discovery has offered a Pre-Field Orientation to prepare group leaders for the best possible "team experience" on the mission field. The PFO breaks down to a model of 6 ideas. To have a team arrive on the field as learners, servants, and story tellers. Focus is given to considering three more areas of preparedness: before the project, during the project and after. Most of the deep thinkers would agree that the above mentioned six elements are the gist of preparing a team.

I am beginning to be bothered though by the tremendous weight placed on STMs to produce "long term missionaries," and students who return to serve their community back home. Another study laid monetary giving as a proper measure of the productive short term mission experience. Great goals, but a one or two week short term mission project is, after all, one component in the youth leader's discipleship of his students. I have long believed that the short term mission experience has no similarities to the long term work of a missionary on the field. Short term missions, more than likely produces...more short term missionaries. The work of a missionary is hard, methodical, sometimes filled with long gaps of apparent lack of progress, study, etc. I have always believed that the goal of a short term mission experience is to produce "World Christians", not vocational Christian workers.

34 years ago I was a youth pastor. One night after youth group a parent walked in my office just to chat. "You must have a long term view of these young people you work with?" he said. "You have to imagine them walking into your office at age 34 and saying 'thank you for where you led me.'

That was one of those moments that helped shape my view of what I was doing. I began to develop memories around teaching. I looked for anything I could do to break the routine of "youth group" on the youth floor.

I got really excited about our mission project preparation because the material we used prepared a student for life, not just "mission trip". These were life skills. Being able to tell the story of what God is doing and has done in you life or Story Telling is a daily part of my life, and can also be for the middle schooler who learned how to tell his story before his mission project to Mexico.

I thought differently about the results of our mission project experience. What if a short term mission project was the start of someone working in his local government to effect change for the Kingdom's sake there? What if a short term mission project led a student to break up with his girl friend? What if a short term mission project helped a student choose how he looked at future purchases? It seemed to me that these were actually the very things that "missionaries" where hoping for from those they worked with in foreign lands. At our churches mission conferences missionaries talked about their disciples becoming high ranking officials, or mail men who could spread the gospel delivering letters, or customs officials.

Acts 1:8 offers the reader the opportunity to be a "witness." A witness is someone who sees an event and reports it. The scripture indicates that the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. This is an open invitation to everyone. I can't believe I am saying this, but it is an open invitation to the prepared and the unprepared. Either who see Him will have accomplished Jesus simple call, "You WILL be my witnesses."

Remember it is not short term mission project that lead participants to radical change, it is an encounter with God that takes the willing heart to the next most difficult journey.