The church in El
Cruce de las Yayas
Serving their communities
Sometimes we ask ourselves if short-term trips are worth doing. What is the actual impact that we accomplished through them? There is a heavy financial, time, and talent investment in carrying out short-term trips. Proverbs 19:2 (NIV) tells us, “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.” We must have knowledge of how to make short-term mission trips without hurting the communities where we go.
The true is that short-term mission trips without intentional planning could do more harm than good. Researchers have confirmed what the Bible teaches on how to make lasting impacts on a community
There are several components that make Short-term missions trips (STMT) effective. I will share a few here. For Short-term missions to truly work, here are a few helpful things:
Go in with a long-term view of working in a community - STMT can't be a drive-by event. What I mean by this is that it cannot be a one or few-time event. The group must be committed to the community and their people that they will work for a long time- until true kingdom changes happen. What needs to happen is that the local community should become self-led, self sustain, and self-propagate (the 3 selves). This means that they will grow in reaching their own people, can support their own community development financially, and be able to teach others in other communities
STMT must aim to build long-lasting relationships - These relationships are channels for true transformation to occur
STMT must focus on training than on doing the work that the local people could do - Training the local community to do the work of the ministry is what the Scriptures call us to in Ephesians 4. This will avoid dependency and empower the local believers to grow
The above picture is from a group of believers from El Cruce de las Yayas where Breath of Life International is ministering. We had a short-term team there this July. We trained them on how to serve their communities. The picture they sent us after we left is a large group of them going to a neighbor who is cleaning pigeon peas. The church went to help them clean them, sit with them and listen to their struggles. This church is putting into practice the training that they received.
Let’s pray for this community to continue to put into practice what they learned during our training.
Want to join us on a future mission trip?