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In examining the city, we examine ourselves and our capacity for cultivating communities of belonging in urban contexts. Through seeing the city as a cultural and theological text, critical engagement with urban literacy focuses on reading for themes of density, diversity, and disparity. In dialogue with Seattle’s Rainier Valley, the process of theological reflection on the nature of place, neighbor, and community moves the church in the city into participation with the missio Dei.

What is the city?

How can the city become a place of shalom, where its disparate inhabitants understand that their peace and prosperity are bound to one another?1 And how can the church be an agent of this divine wholeness and mutuality in the city? In various ways, these questions have preoccupied my research and involvement in the city for years. Unfortunately, defining the term city is deceptively complex. Part of this complexity comes from the fact that “scholarship devoted to the city has yet to find a commonly accepted definition of either a city or the city. The diversity of cities makes such a question extremely difficult.”2 What, then, are we to make of the urban environment that frames so much of our lives?

We may know that a city is comprised of people and places, along with institutions and infrastructure, but as Aristotle noted in his philosophical treatise Politics, “a city . . . is more than the sum of its parts.”3 Beyond the physical geography of settlement space, cities—and their growth, politics, economics, and social influence—are arguably one of the most significant, pervasive cultural realities shaping our world today. As the majority world continues to march inexorably toward an urban future,4 in North America we face issues of urbanization that are both similar to, and distinct from, our global neighbors.

The similarities of cities are rooted in common urban issues: congestion, pollution, segregation, resource allocation, and so forth. But one of the things that makes North American urbanism distinct from its counterparts in the majority world is its virtual invisibility. Whereas the relatively recent and dynamic urban growth in developing contexts has drawn the attention of the world, many North Americans remain largely oblivious to the structures and systems of the city.5 Particular facets of the urban environment become like wallpaper, just a function of the background as we go about our daily routine.

Thus, the location of this grocery store, the length of that freeway, the height of this apartment complex, and the size of that ethnic enclave become little more than incidental geographic realities. Sadly, this lack of critical engagement with the urban environment has been tragic for the church in the city. Particularly as more Christians (especially Evangelicals, a broad tradition of which I am a part) jump on the “missional bandwagon,”6 the hypocrisy of global advocacy without local engagement is glaring.7 As John Perkins, the legendary civil rights advocate and grandfather of Christian Community Development, says, “it’s easy to give out of abundance and help the poor Africans ‘over there.’ But white Christians hesitate to cross the tracks in their own hometown and meet their brothers and sisters on the other side.”8 This hesitation to “cross the tracks,” whether literally or metaphorically, can be traced in some ways to a fear and ignorance about life in the city.

But is the city—in all of its complexity and brokenness—only something to fear? Or worse, a problem to solve or people to “rescue”?

It is assumed by many people that the terms “urban” and “problem” are synonymous, like “urban” and “decay.” There are many things wrong in cities. But the easy juxtaposition of urban with problems and the automatic connection between cities and social ills have become so pervasive that they have clouded our judgment, polluted our language, and infected our analysis. Cities . . . are a mirror of our societies, a part of our economy, an element of our environments. But above all else they are a measure of our ability to live with each other. When we examine our cities, we examine ourselves.9

Ultimately, the city is not only about “us” and “them,” or the many serious problems created by cyclical poverty, class consciousness, and structural racialization, important as those issues may be. Rather, the city is fundamentally about our generative capacity for life together as we imagine and embody places that cultivate communities of belonging instead of exclusion. This cultivating work is central to the vocation of the church. However, before we can realize this vision of the city as a place for human flourishing, the ability to live with each other requires a particular kind of literacy of urban contexts.

Reading the City

Stated succinctly, the city is a cultural text. To see the city as a text simply means that its many facets and features need to be read and interpreted in order to understand its meaning. The art and science of interpreting cultural texts is a whole field of interdisciplinary discourse that cannot be summarized concisely,10 but for the sake of brevity, reading the city as a text essentially means paying close attention to both the whole and the parts of the urban environment as we observe and make sense of its significance. In the same way that a critically engaged reader of Scripture must utilize the tools of biblical exegesis to parse paragraphs, examine contextual details, and reflect on layered metanarratives, so must an astute reader of the city bring thoughtful, critical inquiry to the task of “urban exegesis.”11

Theologian Kevin Vanhoozer, in emphasizing the importance of cultural literacy, says that “Christians must learn to read the signs of the time. . . . Most of us learn to read and write. . . . What we do not learn, however, is cultural literacy: how to ‘read’ and ‘write’ culture. . . . The focus is on reading culture and involves critical engagement, not merely passive consumption.”12 Urban literacy begins with seeing the city as a complex cultural text loaded and layered with meaning. Rather than allowing ourselves to remain passive consumers of the city, dialogical engagement with the urban context calls all city-dwellers to recognize that “the city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, by wandering through it, by looking at it.”13

As we encounter and become conversant with the city as a cultural text, urban literacy helps us to know what we are looking for as we read and engage urban contexts. In my ongoing reading of the city, I consistently examine three interrelated descriptors of the urban environment: density, diversity, and disparity.14 Density describes the physical context of the built environment in the city, from both a structural and human perspective.15 Diversity describes the varied social context of the city, with an emphasis on race, ethnicity, class, and religion as elements of both social cohesion and division. Disparity describes the economic and political context of the city as density and diversity often work together to accentuate the stark contrasts of wealth and power with the poverty and marginalization that characterize the urban environment.

By overlaying these thematic descriptors on the city, certain spaces and places that rise to the surface accentuate the distinctly urban contours of the city. In other words, reading the city for these themes highlights the cultural texts that exemplify the convergence of density, diversity, and disparity. These cultural texts could be a particular neighborhood, a certain historical event, or a dynamic social movement. However, what matters most in reading these urban texts well is not only being able to interpret them in their particular urban contexts but also being able to “exegete” their meaning in a theological context. How do urban cultural texts help us to reflect on the nature of God, the identity of the church, and the mission of Christian community? The meaning that arises from this reflection is simultaneously social, ethical, and missiological in nature, and, like any complex text, is always multivalent in relationship with the hermeneutics of the reader.

The Columbia City Neighborhood

One such urban cultural text that has shaped a reading of my immediate community is the Columbia City Landmark District, a small but dense commercial area that serves as the social and economic hub of the neighborhood. Contained in a relatively short four-block stretch of Rainier Avenue South, right in the heart of Seattle’s Rainier Valley, the Columbia City Landmark District is on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, quaint storefronts and turn-of-the-century architecture frame each urban block in a seemingly innocuous restoration of this once dilapidated business district. Yet behind the trendy boutiques and new restaurants is a very particular history—one that connotes community pride and successful revitalization for some but class tensions and deep resentment for others. Whenever a neighborhood changes, there are always people on both sides of the change. Developers, investors, business owners, families, and residents interact in a complex, dynamic process that can shift the socioeconomic trajectory of a community, and sometimes evidence of these changes is inscribed in the physical geography of the built environment.

Angie’s Cocktails, a fixture of the “original” Columbia City, was a symbolic tavern of the old neighborhood. Described by some as a classic “dive bar,” Angie’s was a favorite watering hole of local clientele for decades, particularly among the African-American community. With as many surveillance cameras as there were barstools,16 regulars came to shoot pool and enjoy cheap drinks, but for many newcomers in the neighborhood, a few too many incidents of alleged criminal activity damaged the bar’s reputation beyond repair.17 Polarizing perspectives on the controversial bar had long fragmented the community.

In 2000, directly across the street from Angie’s, the opening of the Columbia City Ale House signaled the changing demographics of the community. Offering “fine ales and splendid food” according to their elaborate, full-service menu, the new Ale House catered to a growing population of hipsters and professionals with very different tastes than those of the regulars at Angie’s. Noticeably more upscale and attentive to aesthetics, the Ale House predictably attracts a customer base that is mostly white. And as one might naturally expect, the Angie’s and Ale House crowds do not mix.

To the casual observer, these two bars, one on the west side of Rainier Avenue and the other on the east, are divided by what would appear to be little more than fifty feet of asphalt and sidewalks. But locals know all too well that the cultural, socioeconomic, and historical distance is much greater. In this particular context, Rainier Avenue signifies an invisible boundary that segregates the gentrifiers and upwardly mobile professionals of the future from the humble, working class roots of the past. Both groups are working through these social tensions in the present, but they are doing so independently of one another and on either side of Rainier Avenue.

Despite cohabitating in this dense urban environment, the various barriers between the Angie’s and Ale House groups nearly invalidate their proximity. And as a microcosm of the larger Rainier Valley community, one of the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse urban areas in the US,18 the apparently peaceful coexistence of people from different backgrounds does not necessarily lead to a truly multicultural community. Instead, in some cases, the density and diversity of Columbia City serves to exacerbate the socioeconomic disparity between various stratifications of the social order. While Southeast Asian immigrants and recently resettled East African refugees lament the closure of a small corner store that sells a seemingly odd combination of halal meats and garden-grown Asian herbs, white gentrifiers cheer the opening of a pricey, all-organic grocer offering artisan foods.

Given the multifaceted complexity of this kind of urban cultural text, what is the meaning—social, theological, or otherwise—of the city in this context? How does reading the city closely help us to make sense of the urban environment for the constructive purposes of cultivating communities of belonging and human flourishing?

Urban Theological Reflection

Noted Christian “urbanologist” Ray Bakke has often said that before we attempt to devise a missiology for the city, we need a theology of the city.19 Too often, eager pastors and practitioners equipped with the best of intentions have rushed to strategize about urban ministry programs without any robust ontology of the city. But how can we design and implement effective urban ministries without a theological understanding of what exactly the city is? Unfortunately, these strategic efforts often fall short due to any number of oversights and misunderstandings, ranging from unintentional cultural paternalism to an underestimation of the entrenched nature of structural challenges in urban systems.

In conjunction with Bakke’s merited admonition, it is also true that good missiology has a deep theological foundation in the identity of a sending God and the ecclesial community of a sent people. With its proper orientation around the missio Dei, urban missiology that takes the city seriously must first begin to unpack the theological—and therefore missiological—meaning of density, diversity, and disparity in the urban context.

This abbreviated urban contextual theology20 will simply trace the contours of density, diversity, and disparity by reflecting on the nature of place, neighbor, and community in the city. Each of these reflections is dialogical in nature in the sense that urban contexts do not dictate theological discourse in a systematic fashion. Instead, like all cultural texts, the city conveys a plurality of meanings, and the role of theological reflection is to enter into the discourse of the city with both contextual considerations of complex anthropological realities and a strong sense of the deep wells of the Christian tradition.

Density and Place

The particularities of the Columbia City neighborhood—its people, history, character, geography—reinforce the unique nature of place in the city. As people humanize urban space, it becomes a particular place in the same way that a family’s memories make the space of a house into a place called home. The full dimensionality of “place” is much more than the physical mechanics of geography or sensory perception of one’s surroundings.21 “ ‘Place’ is one of the trickiest words in the English language, a suitcase so overfilled one can never shut the lid. It carries the resonance of homestead, location, and open space in the city as well as a position in a social hierarchy.”22 Thus we can speak of physically “going to this or that place,” socially “knowing your place” in a relational context, and existentially “understanding our place in the world” all in the same sentence. A theology of place in the urban context must see this multifaceted nature of place as more than just theologically neutral territory.

Unfortunately, the concept of place in the frenetic urban environment of Western society is largely a pragmatic, consumer-driven idea often motivated by little more than comfort or convenience. The places where we live, work, worship, shop, and play reflect projected images of a class-conscious “lifestyle” with little to no awareness of the ethics of place, the patterns of structural inequality, or the politics of fear in the city. Urban density, it seems, is just so inconvenient and unappealing. Is it any surprise that our churches have largely departed from the city for greener pastures?

For the past two decades . . . we have been abandoning our strategic locations within city cores and traditional neighborhoods, and we have tried to create for ourselves a new kind of society in the form of suburban megachurches. And as individual Christians, we have marched right along with the rest of our culture and moved our homes outside of the urban core into the sanitized world of the suburbs. Even when we have not participated directly in this radical shift, we have come to view the particularities of functioning in the midst of the city (restricted parking, unsympathetic neighbors, and pushy transients) as inconveniences rather than as opportunities for ministry. . . . Unfortunately, if we were to take a hard look at how Christians in this country have come to view their cities, we would have to conclude that our views have not necessarily been shaped by the Bible, prayer, or meaningful discussions among fellow Christians. It might be more accurate to say that the fear of cities, or the fear of one another, or possibly the love of convenience has been the actual basis of much of our current perceptions about the city.23

Jacobsen’s conviction that the church has succumbed to fear and comfort over compassion and service is a timely critique for a self-focused, therapeutic Christianity. Generally viewed as a place of congestion, inconvenience, crime, and immorality, the urban context has too often become a place to avoid, not a place—as the prophet Jeremiah admonished exiled Israel— to “seek the peace (shalom) of the city” (Jer 29:7; author’s translation).

However, urban density is not only a problem to be solved, or an inconvenience to overcome. Density in the city confronts North American individualism and privacy and helps people to see that public places in the city, when truly shared and stewarded by a neighborhood, can help to cultivate communities of trust and mutual care. Density may force us to encounter “the Other” and to begin to see the imago Dei in all people in surprising and refreshing ways. Though segregation and fear persist in my neighborhood, there are also signs of hope. Columbia Park, built over an old dumping ground, is just two blocks from where Angie’s was recently closed. On a good day, it’s a place where people are moving from co-residents to becoming neighbors as children play together, families enjoy the farmers’ market, and friends gather to share a meal under the shade of an evergreen.

Diversity and Neighbor(ing)

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14; msg). Eugene Peterson’s well known paraphrase of this memorable introduction in the first chapter of John’s Gospel is more than just a clever rewording of this incarnational doctrine. That God chooses to dwell among us and become our neighbor is a powerful biblical metaphor that must inform our praxis as we strive to love our neighbors as ourselves. Though “neighbor” is traditionally a more static category of people, this theological concept of “neighboring” in the city is a dynamic verb of action and engagement.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, the passage opens with an abrupt interaction between Jesus and an expert in the law about what must be done to inherit eternal life. It is important to recognize that the qualification of faithfulness to the Shema (Deut 6:4-9) that is outlined by the lawyer and affirmed by Jesus is portrayed in an intentionally active light. The discussion is not merely theological and propositional; it is by definition connected to the concrete reality of neighboring in the world. “That the practice of God’s word is the central issue in this narrative unit is obvious from the repetition and placement of the verb ‘to do.’ . . . In this way the first segment of this unit (vv 25-28) is bound together with references to praxis.”24

The defensive question “And who is my neighbor?” that the lawyer poses to Jesus is one of justification and avoidance. But Jesus replies with a radical narrative of countercultural neighboring, one in which traditional cultural categories were shattered in favor of a different definition of neighbor. After the priest and the Levite had failed to intervene on behalf of the beaten man, “the audience may well have expected the third character in the story to be an Israelite layman, thereby giving an anti-clerical point to the
story. . . . Jesus, however, deliberately speaks of a member of a community hated by the Jews.”25

Jesus’ unexpected inclusion of a Samaritan in the story is a turn that surely would have shocked his listeners. Nonetheless:

What distinguishes this traveler from the other two is not fundamentally that they are Jews and he is a Samaritan, nor is it that they had high status as religious functionaries and he does not. What individualizes him is his compassion, leading to action, in the face of their inaction. . . . The parable of the compassionate Samaritan thus undermines the determination of status in the community of God’s people on the basis of ascription, substituting in its place a concern with performance, the granting of status on the basis of one’s actions.26

Over against all the other social and cultural identifiers at work in this context, compassionate action is what differentiates the Samaritan and defines him as a good neighbor.

That a nameless Samaritan—perceived as less than fully human by many first-century Jews—embodies a Christlike ethic of love and service to neighbor should call into question the ways in which racialization and class consciousness have accentuated the segregation of neighbors in the urban context. Diversity in the city is an opportunity for Christians to see the unique particularities of their neighbors as a vital, indispensable contribution to the wholeness of the community.

Angie’s and the Ale House represent disparate communities that are in fact bound to one another. Though race remains as a deeply problematic barrier in this context, the city can become a place where communities move “from exclusion to embrace.”27 Angie’s closure is in fact an opportunity for people in the neighborhood, especially those committed to the work of reconciliation, to create a new and hospitable place for neighboring together in friendship.

Disparity and Community

The ubiquity of socioeconomic disparity in the city has conditioned people to accept the stark contrasts between the rich and the poor (and the powerful and powerless) as inevitable, or perhaps even necessary. In Columbia City, residents in million-dollar homes look across the street at government-subsidized public housing, while wealthy, single professionals wait in line for groceries behind a family surviving on food stamps. Is this kind of disparity “just the way it has to be”?

If the church is to become a community of belonging both for and with its diverse neighbors in the urban context, then it must consider ethics of redistribution that effectively model care and concern for the poor. Unless the church is able to truly see the poor as neighbors to whom it is accountable, people will not understand the heart of the Prophets and the importance of economic justice for the marginalized in the eyes of God. Until the church is willing to see “poverty as a scandalous condition,”28 the community of faith will not fully grasp the deep compassion of YHWH revealed in the righteous anger of Amos, the indignant admonitions of Isaiah, and the somber laments of Jeremiah.

To be a Christian community that practices redistribution is not to adhere blindly to human models of economics that preclude private ownership or wield an authoritarian rule. Rather, to be a generous and hospitable Christian community is to seek the heart of God in the fair and equitable treatment of the poor so that the whole people of God, and not just those with economic means or political resources, will be able to live under the gracious care of a generous, reconciling God. The church must model this kind of community, especially in the urban context, where the exploitative market forces of gentrification and unrestrained capitalism too often run rampant, deepening socioeconomic disparities and trampling on the poor in the process.

A steadfast devotion to communal economic justice is perhaps the most prophetic and countercultural commitment the church can make in an age of unbounded hyper-consumerism. Becoming a community of redistribution flies in the face of a society where cutthroat social Darwinism, left to its own devices, would have us all chasing after “the wealth of nations”29 at any cost. Moreover, Christian redistribution is not simply about taking resources from the “hardworking haves” and giving them to the “nonworking have-nots”; quite to the contrary, it is about sharing that with which we have been entrusted as stewards and giving back “to God what is God’s” (Mark 12:13-17; niv).

As Columbia City continues to undergo significant economic changes with an influx of new wealth, questions about displacement of the poor are ongoing. In a neighborhood that has known socioeconomic disparity for much of its history, the role of the church as an inclusive, bridge-building community is increasingly important. Making room at the table and extending hospitality to those on the margins is the church’s Eucharistic offering to the city.

Conclusion

Density, diversity, and disparity in the city make for interesting urban reading. As critically engaged interpreters of cultural texts, the church must see the city in all of its complexity, brokenness, and beauty. It is important to remember that the ministry of place-making, reconciliation, and communal justice is always participatory and collaborative. We participate with the missio Dei as image bearers of the divine community, and we collaborate with our neighbors as co-learners. And along the way, the church in the city lives into its vocation as a called and sent people.

It is a healthy reminder:

Christianity entered history as a new social order, or rather a new social dimension. From the very beginning Christianity was not primarily a “doctrine,” but exactly a “community.” There was not only a “Message” to be proclaimed and delivered, and “Good News” to be declared. There was precisely a New Community, distinct and peculiar, in the process of growth and formation, to which members were called and recruited. Indeed, “fellowship” (koinonia) was the basic category of Christian existence.30

May the bold witness and compassionate care of the church continue to grow this fellowship into the city and beyond.

David Leong, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Missiology at Seattle Pacific University where he directs the Global and Urban Ministry Program in the School of Theology. He can be contacted at leongd@spu.edu.

Bibliography

Bakke, Raymond J. A Theology as Big as the City. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997.

Barthes, Roland. “Semiology and the Urban.” In Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, edited by Neil Leach, 165–72. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Brueggemann, Walter. A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Clay, Grady. Close-Up: How to Read the American City. New York: Praeger, 1974.

Conn, Harvie M., and Manuel Ortiz. Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, & the People of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001.

Florovsky, Georges. Christianity and Culture. Vol. 2 of Collected Works of Georges Florovsky. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1974.

Gorringe, Timothy. A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Translated and edited by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973.

Harvey, David. Social Justice and the City. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009.

Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.

Hirsch, Alan. “Defining Missional.” Leadership Journal 29, no. 4 (Fall 2008), http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/fall/17.20.html.

Inge, John. A Christian Theology of Place. Explorations in Practical, Pastoral, and Empirical Theology. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

Jacobsen, Eric O. Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith. The Christian Practice of Everyday Life. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2003.

Leong, David P. Street Signs: Toward a Missional Theology of Urban Cultural Engagement. American Society of Missiology Monograph Series 12. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012.

Lewis, Mike. “Angie’s Keeps Columbia City’s ‘Essence’ Alive as Area Changes.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 28, 2007.

Livermore, David A. Cultural Intelligence: Improving Your CQ to Engage Our Multicultural World. Youth, Family, and Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009.

Marsh, Charles, and John M. Perkins. Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community. Resources for Reconciliation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

Marshall, I. Howard. The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

Oakley, Allen. Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: Intellectual Sources and Evolution. International Library of Economics. London: Routledge, 1984.

Rainier Valley Historical Society. Rainier Valley. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.

Short, John R. The Urban Order: An Introduction to Cities, Culture, and Power. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

Swanson, Judith A., and C. David Corbin. Aristotle’s Politics: A Reader’s Guide. Continuum Reader’s Guides. New York: Continuum, 2009.

UN Population Fund. “State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth.” New York: UNFPA, 2007.

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. “What is Everyday Theology? How and Why Christians Should Read Culture.” In Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends, edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson, and Michael J. Sleasman, 15-61. Cultural Exegesis. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007.

Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996.

The task or honor of teaching the Christian disciplines to those living in poverty is often avoided or met with cynicism. There is an underlying assumption that they are not capable of the higher order of thinking that is necessary to experience the profundity of these practices. It is, however, not only possible but also vital. Five topics for consideration—awareness of culture of the poor, relationship, appropriate language, story, and community—are discussed to assist in this endeavor.

Spiritual disciplines are exercises that usher one into God’s presence, where God then has the opportunity to transform our lives. Richard Foster brought these ancient practices back into popularity with his book Celebration of Discipline. In it he designates the internal disciplines of meditation, fasting, prayer, and study as well as the external disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service.1 Through these practices, we make ourselves available to God’s shaping. A transformed life is a gift from God, not something we can accomplish by our own efforts.

My journey teaching the disciplines to those in poverty began in my work with a nonprofit employment readiness program. It began with an eye-opening conversation with the executive director. She sat across the breakfast table from me and talked about the struggle she was having with her volunteers. “They are well-meaning and loving, but they talk over the heads of the students as if they weren’t there. Or they treat them as children, even though some of them are twice their age. There is also a lot of ‘us’ and ‘them’ language. Can you help them change their perceptions to be less discriminatory?”

I offered several training sessions to the staff on working with the poor. Many of these volunteers had little experience with this socioeconomic population. They were surprised to realize that some of their interaction with the poor was discriminatory. The director also asked me to share a discipline with the students—the process of Examen—a practice taught by Ignatius of Loyola. Shortly after I began consulting with this nonprofit, I was sitting in a residency for an extension program on leading contemplative prayer groups and retreats. It was a time of rich learning and deep experience with God. Yet all was not right. Having been introduced to the population in the nonprofit, I looked around at the other participants. They all looked like me. There was some ethnic diversity, but we certainly were in the same tax bracket. The program cost $4,000, and although churches sponsored some of the individuals, I knew the cost was out of reach to many. I again was seeing a form of discrimination. Those from the poor population were excluded. How could we open this wonderful opportunity to those in the lower income bracket? I had the opportunity because I had the means, and yet the need for the transforming experience of the disciplines reached beyond economic barriers.

As the title suggests, this article will address engaging the poor in Christian spiritual disciplines. The literature on the coupling of poverty and the disciplines suggests that, although not difficult, the disciplines are advanced teaching—profound and targeted for those with a higher educational level. It focuses attention on teaching these disciplines to those ministering to the poor. The practice of the disciplines encourages workers to lean on God for strength in the midst of ministries that are demanding and can lead to discouragement and burnout. Thankfully, the gap is closing, as there is an increase in programming that offers spiritual formation to those in poverty. We are all in dire need of encouragement. Regardless of socioeconomic level, we need avenues to let go of our heavy burdens and lean into God’s loving embrace. The challenge lies not in the lack of receptivity, but in the perception of those who might teach as well as the manner in which they do so. In order, therefore, to consider teaching the Christian disciplines to those in poverty, I offer the following topics for consideration: the relevance of the disciplines for the poor, an awareness and respect for the culture of the poor, a focus on relationships, appropriate language, the role of story, and the importance of community.

Relevance of disciplines for the poor

It would appear that many do not think the poor capable of practicing Christian disciplines. As with the above-mentioned nonprofit staff, they are often relegated to a “less-than” status, viewed as childlike, incompetent, or uninterested. Teaching that is offered may be limited to the requirement of chapel attendance in order to receive a meal or regular attendance at a bible study or church service. But the in-depth experience of being in an intimate relationship with God is saved for those who are in a better financial situation.

The assumption that the poor are not capable of spiritual disciplines finds some support in the theory of Abraham Maslow. Maslow offers a hierarchy of needs that has had a significant influence on Western perception.2 The hierarchy suggests that until a person’s basic needs are met, they cannot rise to higher-order thinking—the abstract thinking necessary for spiritual thoughts and ideas. This would necessitate that a person must be clothed, sheltered, fed, and secure before they have the ability to be insightful and retrospective. Although beneficial in encouraging the addressing of needs, this theory has been used in a subtle way to encourage classism. There are many who do not fit this hierarchy; artists like Rembrandt or Van Gogh, or the many self-actualized in large poor countries like India. Those who have participated in a mission trip to a majority-world country have experience that confirms this critique. They have seen the hunger for a relationship with a personal Lord in many who have few earthly possessions. Unfortunately, this theory continues to influence those who work with the poor. The belief is that one needs first to lift them out of poverty, and then they can delve into the depths of spiritual life.

Jesus was not bound by this perception. There are many examples in the Gospels of Jesus offering deep teaching to those who had little in the way of material possessions. In Matthew 5-7, Jesus spends the day on the side of a mountain offering some of his most profound teaching to a poor population. He ends the day by feeding them—expressing concern that they might grow faint from lack of food. He did not wait until they were fed to address their spiritual needs. He offered spiritual sustenance that would carry them in and through their difficult physical lives.

Many have followed the example of Jesus in meeting the spiritual needs as well as the physical needs of those in poverty. William Creed, SJ, founded the Ignatian Spirituality Project in response to the need of the homeless for spiritual guidance.3 He began offering retreats to this population that combined the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola with the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-step program. They address both homelessness and issues of recovery by focusing attention on the third step of AA—placing one’s dependence on God. What he began in Chicago is now offered in many cities across the nation. People are being transformed as they learn to center their lives on God and his kingdom. The success of this project speaks to the spiritual need that it meets.

I have personal experience regarding the relevancy of the disciplines for the students in the above-mentioned employment readiness program. The program targets the unemployed and underemployed, many of whom come from generational poverty. For several years, I led each class in the process of Examen. Examen, or examination of consciousness, is a process taught by St. Ignatius of Loyola as a part of the spiritual exercises.4 This was offered in the first couple of weeks of each cohort and was quickly embraced by all the students. It gave them an opportunity to share their blessings and their struggles and pray for each other. Although most were living chaotic lives, they were able to let go of that in order to invite God into these struggles and to praise God for their blessings.

Awareness and respect for the culture of the poor

The second topic for consideration when teaching the disciplines to those in poverty is that, in general, there are differences between the values of the poor and those of the middle class. Recognizing this allows an attitude of respect for the strengths of each socioeconomic class. Ruby Payne, an educator in the inner city of Houston, brought national attention to this issue.5 She found that the pedagogy she was using was not as effective with children living in poverty as with those coming from middle-class homes. In order to address this problem, she looked at the differences in these contexts and articulated an understanding of the cultural differences of the socioeconomic levels. She stated that when one is in the midst of a culture (i.e., poverty, middle class, or wealth), there are values of the culture that are invisible to that individual. The cultural values must be made overt in order to recognize them.

Her intent was to assist educators in recognizing that their values may not be applicable to a poor student’s socioeconomically shaped culture. However, the student’s own values may still be worthy of respect. This is similar to the experience of being in a foreign culture. Perceptions vary in other cultures about food, money, relationships, possessions, and many other aspects of life. Yet, one can still have respect for them. Thus in working with the poor, a person from a middle class context can see characteristics of generational poverty as cultural differences and treat them as such. Without this insight, generalizations may be applied to all people in poverty rather than the few to whom they apply. Common generalizations are that those living in poverty are lazy, manipulative, or taking advantage of the system. Although Payne’s work is anecdotal in nature, her contribution is to spotlight the unrealized biases from which one may operate. Further research is necessary to substantiate her claims.

Respect also is important at the individual level. Often society—including those in the church—offers the poor the dregs. Holding a person in respect is manifest in the way they are treated. For example, the LaSalle Street Church in Chicago reaches out to the homeless through a ministry they call “Breaking Bread.”6 Through this ministry, they show value to the homeless through the way they treat them. They invite them as family to the table. Real plates and silverware are used and the church serves these guests to a sit-down meal. This is the entrée into the church, but it goes further in the depth and intimacy into which they invite the homeless. The church integrates them into the church life and expects them to fully participate.

The implication is that the poor have something to offer the body. And of course they do. They certainly do not have the material distractions that can get between them and God. I had the privilege of teaching a course on disciplines of Christian living at the Tennessee Prison for Women. It was a course with fifteen inmates and fifteen traditional undergraduate students. Some of the women inmates (or “inside students” as we called them) had a depth of faith and intimacy with God that was inspiring. They had nothing else to cling to, so they learned to cling to God.

Appropriate language

Despite the rich depth of the Christian disciplines, they are in reality simple ways to connect with God. Along with the awareness and respect for the culture, a third topic of discussion is that one must have the ability to speak the language of the population. One would not use difficult foreign language or illustrations if in a different culture, and one should not use complex, specialized language with a group of people who typically are poorly educated or even illiterate.

We again turn to Jesus and his example of teaching deep theological concepts to the poor. He used their language and taught by referring to common everyday events. Lessons were taught by talking about a sower who went out to sow, a man on Jericho road, a rich man and his tenant, or a widow with a mite to offer at the temple. The people understood these situations and could relate to the lessons imbedded in them. This same method is applicable to working with the poor today. They certainly are not all uneducated, but the vast majority is, and it is important to make the teaching simple and relevant to their everyday experience.

John Hayes, director of InnerChange Ministries,7 uses curriculum that is present-oriented. He states that if they speak about the past, it is disregarded. If too much about the future, it can be dismissed or feed into the sense of hopelessness pervasive among those in poverty. They focus on Jesus and the Gospel writings. In addition, they have found that they must encourage action as well as reflection. The listeners invest in the teaching if they are encouraged to be introspective and incorporate what they hear into their lives.8

Another example of keeping language simple is to use common everyday expressions to explain many of the classic spiritual disciplines. One can talk of “listening prayer” or “listening to God” rather than use the language of contemplative prayer. Or when teaching the aforementioned Ignatian process of Examen, the teacher can speak of sharing the “highs and lows” of the day rather than the consolations and desolations. More complex language can gradually be introduced if there is a reason to do so, but it is more important that the words used to discuss a discipline do not discourage its use.

A focus on relationships

The fourth topic for consideration when teaching the Christian disciplines to those in poverty is that one must be attuned to the importance of being in relationship with students. Payne suggests those in poverty value relationships above everything else.9 A person living in poverty may think, “If the rent is due tomorrow and my sister needs money, I will give my rent money to her.” People are the highest priority. This behavior may appear to be irresponsible to someone from another socioeconomic class, but in reality, it is a variance in values.

Teachers must establish friendships in order to move into a teaching or sharing relationship. Furthermore, the friendship must be valued in its own right rather than as a means to teach. One should not view the person in poverty as a project to salve an uneasy conscience. Many churches like the idea of reaching out to the marginalized until it moves beyond theory. The question must be asked, “Can I open my circle of friends to include a person living in poverty?” The book Same Kind of Different as Me shares the relationship of Denver, a man who was homeless, and Ron, an international art dealer.10 Ron’s wife brought him into the relationship and he was unsure of what he was getting into. He soon developed a liking for Denver and wanted to pursue the friendship. At the beginning of their interaction, however, Denver asked Ron if he was in the relationship for the long haul or if it was just “catch and release.” He was not interested in investing his time or energy if Ron was going to walk away when he lost interest. When one has little else, the people in one’s life are highly valuable.

Being in relationship with another is inherent in the Ignatian Spirituality Project and their offerings. The staff spends time with participants in various venues. They select individuals to attend a daylong or overnight retreat and lead them through the spiritual exercises and the twelve steps. This is followed by an invitation to monthly groups that meet on an ongoing basis. They take pains to ensure that participants have every opportunity to attend. The staff offers rides, the day is scheduled on the same day every month, and contact information is updated at each meeting to keep up with the transitional life styles of those in poverty. The participants and staff form deep friendships.

The deep friendships come as a surprise to many who begin working with those in poverty. One quickly moves from a superior perspective to the recognition that they are gaining as much as or more than their students. Staff develop an appreciation for the richness of these individuals who were also made in God’s image. And as in other relationships, there can be disappointments. If one goes into a relationship with the expectation of gratitude or repayment of the gift of friendship, one may become disillusioned. The friendship does not negate the chaos and coping skills that have developed in the individual’s difficult life. One must enter the friendship with an open heart and give freely of oneself.

My husband, Randy, walked alongside a woman for many years. She was hardened, tough beyond her years, and looked much older than she was. He and some others set her up in an apartment and helped her get established. Yet, she was very difficult to be in relationship with. She would periodically disappear for months at a time and then call needing help out of a difficult situation. Those who befriended her learned to accept her as she was and offer their friendship without strings attached.

Significance of story

The fifth topic is that of the value of story telling. Oral tradition is important to those of lower socioeconomic status, again due to low levels of education and illiteracy. The ability to entertain others through one’s words is highly respected. After years of trial and error, InnerChange Ministries learned to recognize the value of story and developed a way to use it in working with those living on the streets. They use story intentionally at several levels. First, they start with the individual’s story. They listen, learn, and highlight aspects of the story that the storyteller may not see. This is similar to a counseling technique called Narrative Therapy. The therapist listens to a person as they explain their story through a problem-saturated lens. As a person outside the story, the therapist is able to hear and accent parts of the story that are positive. The client is so close to their situation and so discouraged that they cannot see the victories and the strengths inherent in their story. So it is with Hayes and his ministry team. They hear aspects of the person’s story that offer a much broader picture—both negative and positive. As people outside the person’s life, they can see through a different lens and, as believers, they can see how God has been working in the life of the individual.

Next, InnerChange Ministries’ approach invites the poor to see themselves as part of God’s story—as part of something bigger than themselves. The staff has a familiarity with the individual’s personal story, so they can make a connection to both the biblical narrative and especially that of the gospel. This necessitates the inclusion of the spiritual history of the community in the story. Focus can be given to both the overt spiritual history of local churches and Christians and to the manner in which God works through the goodness of community members. Including this history demonstrates how God has been working throughout the years and invites them into the effort. Not only does this offer the individual the opportunity to learn of their significance in the eyes of God, but it moves the story of God from that of institutional religion to a personal, relevant offering.

Community

The final issue to address when teaching the disciplines to those in poverty is that of community. Community is similar to the topic of being in relationship but it does have unique characteristics worth mentioning.

In the employment readiness program mentioned at the beginning of the article, the students found in their cohort a healthy community. For some of them it was the first they had experienced. As graduation drew near each semester, the students from most cohorts expressed concern about losing this vital link to their new way of being. They feared that if they went back into their old communities, they would return to their former lifestyle. The director of the nonprofit worked very hard to offer them opportunities to stay connected with their new community.

This also comes into play when offering the disciplines to those who live in poverty. The communal nature of the teaching offers a support group for learning and an opportunity to wrestle with unfamiliar ideas and experiences. The Ignatian Spirituality Project views community as a key to their success. They keep their retreats small, limiting them to twelve to allow for transparency and intimacy. The members hold each other accountable, taking each other to task when they are not honest. They also offer each other a forum for confessing their spiritual struggles and for working through the exercises.

Steven Hebbard is another who has found community to be central in teaching the poor.11 He founded the Karpophoreō Project, a communal garden, in Austin, Texas. The Greek word comes from Colossians 1:6 and means “bearing fruit in every good work.” The project brings ministry staff alongside those from the neighborhood to raise the garden. People in the neighborhood soon realize that Steven and the others are worthy of their trust. The staff uses the gardening to teach spiritual lessons and invites the participants to worship with them. They offer an example of bearing both literal and spiritual fruit through communal experience.

Grace Episcopal Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania, chose to stay in the inner city as their neighborhood declined, while many of the other area churches fled to the suburbs.12 All but a few of the members drive past other churches on their way in to worship and fellowship. They work in collaboration with the residents of the neighborhood to provide a food closet, AIDS service center, GED classes, and other services. They know they are needed, so they are committed to staying. The neighbors are open to participating in the liturgy of the worship because of the church’s social action. The two depend on one another, and none of it would be possible without the culture of solidarity that has grown up in their unusual community.

Conclusion

Teaching the disciplines to the poor is a task worthy of our efforts. We approach this opportunity with recognition that those in poverty have a deep hunger to be in relationship with God. We use appropriate language and understand that we may see the world through a different socioeconomic lens. And we offer relationship and community to those we are teaching. This is more than a casual message; it is about sharing in the kingdom together. Teachers soon discovers that they are receiving much more than they are offering. The experience is richer for the mutual learning.

Jackie L. Halstead, PhD, LMFT, is the Director of Programming for the Institute for Christian Spirituality and an Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee.  She teaches courses in spiritual formation, Christian disciplines, and the life of the minister. Jackie’s doctorate is in Marriage and Family Therapy. She specializes in working with clergy and their families. Jackie speaks on the national and international levels on topics of spiritual formation, relationships, and mental health. She can be reached at jackie.halstead@lipscomb.edu.

Bibliography

aha! Process Inc. http://ahaprocess.com.

Byassee, Jason. “The Church Downtown: Strategies for Urban Ministry.” Christian Century 125, no. 5 (March 2008): 22-27, 29.

Carnes, Tony. “Back to the Garden: Row by Row, Urban Christians Learn to Bear Literal and Spiritual Fruit.” Christianity Today 55, no. 7 (July 2011): 56-58.

Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. 3rd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

Hall, Ron, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent. Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006.

IgnatianSpirituality.com. “The Daily Examen.” Ignatian Prayer. http://ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-examen.

Ignatian Spirituality Project. “Welcome to the Ignatian Spirituality Project.” http://ignatianspiritualityproject.org.

InnerCHANGE: A Christian Order Among the Poor. “About InnerCHANGE.” Explore. http://innerchange.org.

Malloy, Patrick L. “Grace in the City: Urban Ministry in the New Normal.” Anglican Theological Review 92, no. 4 (September 2010): 769-76.

McLeod, Saul. “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” Maslow. Humanism. Perspectives. SimplyPsychology. http://simplypsychology.org/maslow.html.

Payne, Ruby K. A Framework for Understanding Poverty. 4th ed. Highlands, TX: aha! Process, Inc., 2005.

St. Milletus College. “Panel 3: Urban Spirituality and Discipleship.” Seek the Welfare of the City. http://www.stmellitus.org/sites/stmellitus.org/files/panel_3.mp3.

Short-term foreign missions by North American Churches of Christ began in the early 1960s, slightly later than but parallel to Evangelical developments. Initially, whether large or small, they were all evangelistic. Within three decades STMs became more numerous and more diverse: medical, construction, instruction, and evangelistic efforts were all called “missions.” Effectiveness also varied; some were well organized and well executed while others were amateurish with very limited benefits. Currently, STMs remain quite numerous and diverse in nature and purposes.

The subject of this article is restricted to North America, because members of Churches of Christ in other countries are also engaging in short-term missions (hereafter STMs), though to a lesser degree than in North America. Further, although the focus is on Churches of Christ, the study will make some reference to the Protestant experience with STMs since, especially among the Evangelicals, similar dynamics and categories of concerns are found in both groups. Moreover, both groups experience successes and failures.

When participants in STMs undertake biblical justification for the activity, they point routinely to Jesus’ sending out of both the twelve (Matt 10:1-42) and the seventy-two (Luke 10:1-20) on a short-term basis.1 Others would refer to the short-term evangelistic and church-planting journeys of the apostle Paul and his companions. In many cases, however, leaders and participants undertake STMs on the basis of various pragmatic assumptions: “more workers will hasten the progress” or “with many abilities we can have a greater impact,” and so forth.

The Beginnings

Members of Churches of Christ have undertaken numerous short-term efforts within North America for many years, though not called “short-term missions.” Many groups and individuals have been sent or have gone voluntarily to help small churches with vacation Bible schools, to repair or erect a church buildings, to contact people in homes and streets to advertise a forthcoming evangelistic effort—all to accent local church work. In the 1940s and 1950s, Andy T. Ritchie, Jr. led students from Harding College during the summer periods to various places in the USA and Canada to make contacts during the day and support the evening evangelistic meetings. But STM work outside of North American is another story. Prior to the 1960s, most of the workers who went out on “mission trips” headed to distant countries with plans for long-term work.2

North American Protestants point to 1945 as the beginning date of short-term international work because in that year the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Church became the major initiator of that type of effort.3 As for Churches of Christ, Barney Morehead claimed “the first planned campaign of this generation” occurred in 1929 when Mr. & Mrs. S. P. Pitmann from Nashville visited Japan and joined six American missionaries and fifty Japanese Christians in the city of Ota. “This effort included personal work, tract distribution, and street preaching.”4

Otis Gatewood, American missionary to Germany following World War II and a prominent promoter of global evangelism in the late 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, claimed that the 1961 campaign in London, England was the first full-fledged effort outside of North America both planned and conducted primarily by North American personnel.5 Through discussions with an English evangelist, Leonard Channing, the Hillsboro congregation of Nashville, TN conceived the idea as early as 1959 of planting a church two years later in the Wembley section of northwestern London. They decided to begin the effort with a “campaign for Christ” with workers going door-to-door during the daytime in an effort to advertise the meeting and, when possible, set up studies with the local people. Each evening for nearly three weeks in June, Batsell Barrett Baxter, preacher at Hillsboro and professor at David Lipscomb College, would preach. About thirty-five guest workers from the USA and Canada participated in that effort. Both the Christian Chronicle and Gospel Advocate gave ample coverage to this new mode of evangelizing outside of North America.6 In the same location the Hillsboro church conducted a similar campaign in the summer of 1963 in which a much larger number of people of all ages, from teens to those in their seventies, engaged in the daily work. The time was divided between Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire (some 30 miles away) and Wembley, with less tangible results from those efforts than from the 1961 thrust. In those early campaigns it was already clear to those who did evaluations that some principle of “diminishing return” emerged when more people spent less time in short-term work, at least in the UK.7

Soon after those two initial short-term campaign-type evangelistic efforts occurred, several others from the USA began leading such groups to other parts of the British Isles, especially England and Scotland. Fred Walker of Lipscomb led a group from Tennessee to Glasgow, Scotland, as did Ivan Stewart. A group from the Broadway church in Lubbock, TX went to Liverpool, England, and another group went to Edinburgh, Scotland with George Bailey of Abilene, TX preaching each evening. All of these occurred in the British Isles in the 1960s. Results were mixed.8

The number of short-term efforts mushroomed within a decade or so as various people led “campaigns for Christ” to several English-speaking countries, including Australia and New Zealand; and similar efforts were conducted in various cities in the USA. All of those efforts, at home and abroad, were evangelistic in nature. At that time (unlike today) “missions” meant “evangelizing.”

Causes

Several things seem to have fostered those early international efforts. Theologically, members of Churches of Christ had convictions that people were lost without Christ and that they needed to be taught the gospel of Christ. Further, after the Second World War several cultural conditions made possible the efforts. The War sensitized people to a larger world, and international travel had become more available and affordable after the War than before. Churches of Christ were numerically larger than ever and the national economy enabled churches and members to have more funds for various uses. Additionally, going on a short-term basis and doing what they were able to do gave ordinary people the opportunity to help with the task of evangelizing outside of North America, previously not possible on a short-term basis. Further, a more competent and visionary leadership had emerged from growing churches and several decades of work by the various Christian colleges and universities. For some of the same reasons there was a huge jump in the number of long-term missionaries who went out at that time.9

Evangelical Parallels

A comparison to the development of Evangelical STMs is useful at this point. In the 1960s “a Chandler survey of 85 predominately evangelical mission boards disclosed that in 1965 only about two percent of their personnel were considered short-term (appointments usually between three months to two years).”10 By 1970 the percentage had increased significantly. Specifically, in 1965 some 580 persons were involved in short-term missions, but by 1970 their number had increased to almost 4,000. At the same time long-term personnel experienced a slight decrease. By 1973 short-term personnel comprised between 10% and 12% of the total work force of 118 US mission boards that made short-term appointments.11 In the first twelve years of the Evangelical Missions Quarterly (1964-1976), no less than twenty articles on short-term missions appeared. From 1979 to 1989 the number of short-term workers increased 600%, from 20,000 to 120,000 among Evangelicals. Church periodicals urged people to turn vacations into vocations.12 By the mid-1980s it was estimated that over half of the Evangelical overseas personnel were short-termers. The number of organizations which promoted short-term missions grew in the 1980s from a dozen or so to 450.13 It is noteworthy, however, that some missions boards made no provisions for short-term efforts. In addition to North American efforts, Evangelicals from Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Guatemala, Brazil, South Africa, and other countries were engaging in STMs.14 Many organizations that specialize in short-term work had sprung up, like the STEM Ministries in Minneapolis.15 Numerous publications are now available; indeed, their number is legion. They include training manuals for both visiting workers and hosts. Today, wisely or not, welcome or not, thousands of Evangelical people and millions of dollars are involved in short-term missions annually.

For Churches of Christ in the USA the data are not as complete as they are for Evangelicals, but the available evidence reveals many parallels. In 1973, Churches of Christ could count 1,623 active missionaries outside the country, practically all long-term workers.16 That number gradually decreased for several reasons while the number of short-term workers increased. In an average year after the fall of the Iron Curtain there may have been as many as 5,000 or more persons from Churches of Christ in the USA and Canada who raised funds to go on STM trips. When students from the Christian colleges and universities are counted with preachers who went on preaching/teaching trips to India and the former Soviet Union annually, and the very large number of young and older people who went to Belize, Mexico, Honduras, the West Indies and the British Isles with church groups, the number easily reached 5,500 to 6,000 or more in the 1980s and 1990s. For the 20th edition of the Missions Handbook, the 2007-2009 edition, Missions Resource Network (Bedford, TX) reported that Churches of Christ had 695 people who were serving 4+ years while those serving less than one year were 7,790. Tentmakers numbered 14. Churches of Christ ranked 5th in the number of short-term workers sent out.17 The most recent count (2011) indicates there are around 450 family units involved in long-term work outside the USA.18 In other words, if two workers are counted for each family unit, Churches of Christ may currently have nearly ten times as many people involved in short-term as in long-term work. Two factors only slightly mitigate this reduction in the number of full-time workers. First, the bulk of current evangelistic work in India, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and possibly Asia is conducted by nationals. That is an occasion for rejoicing. Second, some American missionaries completed their assigned tasks and returned to the USA, leaving behind functional churches.

Diversification in Forms and Purposes

Initially, practically all short-term work was evangelistic in intent and practice. In recent decades, however, STMs have taken on very different forms with varies purposes among both Churches of Christ and Evangelicals. Evangelistic efforts themselves have varied. Michael Landon’s “descriptive analysis” of evangelistic efforts reduced short-term works in the 1980s to four types: (A) College or Preacher Training School students who do door-to-door work in English; (B) Older people in large numbers, as with Ivan Stewart’s and Fred Walker’s groups who do door-to-door work; (C) Multi-age adults in smaller groups who seek to teach; and (D) Preachers who go to developing countries to provide teaching at a higher level for national preachers, teachers, and other Christian workers.19 Landon did not study the non-evangelistic STMs.

Certainly since the 1980s “missions trips” have proliferated in both number and nature. STM groups began to go out from churches, schools, and campus ministries. For many years groups of university students from Texas A&M have gone on STM trips, especially to Thailand. In recent decades many have gone out under the auspices of Eastern European Missions for a variety of purposes. But multiple individuals, too, have mustered groups to go with them. Some entities were created to promote and operate short-term work fully or partially. Cases in point are Let’s Start Talking, Demar Elam’s Open Door Ministry, Health Talents International, and groups that mobilize people to go to China to teach English in the universities and speak of Christ as they have opportunities. Such entities may or may not do their work under the auspices of a congregation or a school. The diversification of forms and purposes was seen in groups’ going out to build or repair buildings, provide medical and health care, teach English as a means of making contacts, work with youth or orphans, do camp work, disciple people, plant churches, strengthen churches, do research, build water towers, and sing in the plaza to attract people—all billed as “missions trips.” People in large churches who answer requests for help on “missions trips” are familiar with the plethora of requests for financial support of a wide variety of “missions opportunities.” I once answered a request from a 16-year-old girl who had already made 12 trips to Mexico and wanted to go again. She gave no details about what she planned to do. Specific terminology, however, reduces confusion. For example, when health care workers conduct “medical mission” they identify what they plan to do.

At some point STMs ceased to restrict themselves to English-speaking areas. They began going to areas where they could not speak the language. In such cases students often learn a few songs in the local language. Others use local translators when there are no bilingual people in their group. Some efforts assume the dual roles of compassionate service and evangelism, or medical work and evangelism. Yet, in cases where the visiting workers do not know the language they are largely “advertisers” or interest creators while local men do the preaching. In some cases “medical missions” are undertaken where the purpose is to help hurting people in various ways while attaching their works to the local church to enhance its image or identity. In other cases students have gone on “mission trips” to do little more than “play with the children” or to be “good examples.” Thus, among the current plethora of short-term “missions” one may find efforts that range from serious evangelism to helpful medical service to little more than manual work that local people could do at a fraction of the cost of sending in foreigners. One university allowed upperclassmen to lead spring break campaigns. In one case, the students went to Haiti to “help” at an orphanage, but when they arrived the orphanage did not know they were coming and had nothing for them to do. Thus, the spread of STMs has been very diverse.

Even without appropriate evaluation, it is clear that some short-term efforts have been successful in achieving their goals while others have failed. As a general rule it seems very difficulty to plant a viable new church by short-term efforts alone.20 Yet, Dr. Tommy South and members of the Glen Allen church in Virginia succeeded in planting a church in the Ukraine through a series of short-term efforts. Dr. South insisted that they followed Paul’s model in working among the Thessalonians. Their work groups, usually very small, had the advantage of making repeated visits over several years that enabled ongoing teaching and more meaningful relationships with local people.21

On the other hand, a retired military career man led a large number of workers to a city in the former Soviet Union. They talked about the large number of contacts they made, but a longer-term worker in that city followed the man and his group to the airport in a fruitless effort to obtain the list of contacts. The point seemed to be to go on a mission trip more than to help the local church.

A long-term missionary in a Moscow congregation informed me in 1993 that short-term groups from the USA would announce to him that they were coming at a specific time. They had their own agenda and never asked what had been done before or what was needed. After several of those experiences a local Russian member asked the long-term worker, “When are we going to study something besides Acts? We have been through it four times!” That insensitivity to local needs and circumstances is also illustrated well by an incident reported by Michael Anthony. He led a group whose goal was to dig an irrigation ditch, although they had not consulted with local people. They worked hard, Anthony reported, but when they arrived back home they realized all they had done was to dig a ditch. When Anthony returned the next year he found that the ditch had been filled in!22

When STM personnel have gone out with insufficient missiological insights and personal preparation, all sorts of failures and damages have occurred, and often the workers have never realized it. Ethnocentrism, cultural arrogance, displays of wealth, insensitivity to local culture, sub-standard motives, and a number of other blunders have made many short-term efforts more harmful than helpful in the long run. Even compassionate medical workers have had to be careful about the kind of treatments they give lest they infringe on local physicians’ income. These types of incidents lead to the next consideration: evaluating the effectiveness of STMs.

Assessment/Evaluation in Historical Perspective

Many short-term efforts have been at least partially successful in reaching their stated goals. Others have not. But any history of STMs by members of the Churches of Christ must notice a marked lack of realistic evaluations and assessments of their work. Where assessments have been made they evidently have not been written up except perhaps in unpublished papers. Some group leaders have assessed their work and sought to tweak it for greater effectiveness; few seem to have raised the larger questions about the achievement of desired aims and the balance between expenditures, efforts, and definable results. Of the STMs this study considers, several seemed to have only a hazy idea about their objectives since they were never stated. A local preacher in a Western European country told me, “We have hosted these campaigns year after year. Once finished, our local people are worn out and the church has not increased at all over the years.” The STMs were evidently doing more good for the visiting students than for the local church.

Part of the difficulty of assessment is that there is a tendency to evaluate too few components of the STMs to make much difference. Peterson sees short-term missions as having eight dimensions: the time spent in the effort, the nature of the activity, the size of the group, on-field location, participant demographics (age, abilities, and qualifications), sending institutions, ministry philosophy, and leadership/training.23 Realistic evaluations would take into consideration all of these components.

The Evangelical STEM organization evaluated its own work and produced the Leader’s Guide and a study document, Can Short-Term Missions Really Produce Long-Term Career Missionaries?.24 To the basic question raised in the document they give a qualified affirmative answer, providing such STMs follow their recommendations about careful preparation prior to leaving, strategically guided activities on the field, and meaningful debriefing processes after arriving home. Interestingly, they insist that the last step may be the most critical for long term benefits to the workers. Massaro makes the same point: “One of the most important dimensions of any short-term mission is careful reflection at the end of the experience.”25 Among the plethora of books on STMs several are experience-oriented, indicating that the authors have learned something from their efforts that they want to pass on. Many writers readily admit that they have seen their share of irresponsible, ill-planned, and poorly managed projects. Friesen reports that among the Evangelicals “concerns have been raised about the ethnocentrism, relational shallowness, self-serving impact, and overall cost of short-term missions.”26 A vital aspect of evaluation would necessarily involve feedback from the host church. The same is true for STMs generated by Churches of Christ.

Among Churches of Christ there seems to have been a notable lack of published evaluations. Usually when students return from summer or spring break campaigns they disperse to their homes or return to their classes without serious debriefing and often without reporting to donors or sending churches. Among the most responsible efforts along this line is the procedure followed by the “Let’s Start Talking” group in Fort Worth, TX.27 They have a clear set of goals or objectives, prepare workers carefully for what they are to do, put in place a good framework for activities while they are on the field, and require workers, once they return, to do three things or groups of things. Craig Altrock, staff member at LST, reports:

1. LST sends to our missionary hosts an instant feedback form after every project to get their immediate feedback on improving future projects.  So, for example, if Natal, Brazil hosts 5 LST teams through the year then they will submit 5 instant feedback forms.
2. LST sends to our missionary hosts an annual evaluation in which they can tell us what went wrong/right, and how to make things better.
3. LST sends more than one annual evaluation to workers so that they can offer critique/praise on the projects as appropriate.28

That is a very responsible way of going about evaluation and assessment, although this writer has not seen the details of each instrument. Effectiveness is not the only interest in evaluation. At least some leaders and participants in STMs display no awareness of the harm they can do by irresponsible short-term missions.29 It is doubtful that LST does any harm since they make careful preparations and assessments, cooperate with hosts, and sharply define the work to be done.

A common justification for short-term work is that it contributes to the pool of long-term workers. Some studies indicate that it does,30 while research by others indicates either no long-term effects or only minimal ones.31 Obviously the form of the STMs and the manner in which they were conducted would have much to do with outcomes. Painting an orphanage or building a water tower, while good works, would not give the workers even a hint of what is involved in long-term evangelizing with accompanying church planting and development. Sunset International Bible Institute’s two-year AIM program provides more realistic exposure to long-term evangelistic work. All in all, it has not been proven to be a general rule that STMs produce more long-term workers in Churches of Christ or other churches. While many long-term missionaries have previously gone on STM trips, especially after the 1970s, it is not known to what extent those trips produced rather then simply accompanied decisions to become long-term workers. The huge number of people who made multiple short-term trips but never became long-term missionaries heightens the question. Indeed, one reason for the escalating number of short-term workers may have been simply their desire to do something to evangelize even though they had no plans to be long-term missionaries. In retrospect, the ratio of long-term workers to short-term workers seems so miniscule that persistently striving to produce full-time missionaries by STMs would be a colossal case of poor stewardship of funds. It is true that short-term efforts have produced some lasting interest in global evangelization.32 It does seem clear, however, that as the number of short-term workers increased, for both Churches of Christ and Evangelicals, there has been a decrease in the number of long-term workers. Cause and effect have not been established. Other factors may account for the decrease in the number of long-term workers.33

Conclusion

This has been a limited account of STMs associated with Churches of Christ. A full history of fifty years of STMs would require a standard volume. While the chief purpose of this article has not been to evaluate but to reconstruct a partial history of STMs as conducted by members of North American Churches of Christ, and to take a look at efforts to evaluate them, it is appropriate to sum up and make a few suggestions out of this history.

Overall, the results of short-term work are mixed, depending on their objectives, size, how they are conceived, preparations of workers, execution, and evaluation. But what would the past tend to indicate for the future?

First, it is likely that several short-term efforts are effective in what they undertake and are worth supporting. This would be especially true of medical work and higher levels of teaching by qualified teachers. Just this week (Dec 2011) I received an e-mail appeal for workers to go to a recently opened Asian country “to teach some of the 4,000+ Bible correspondence course students in one on one, face to face, English Bible studies” several hours per day for five days a week. Those students want to be taught further from Scripture. The appeal was for a few months, not a few days. That would likely be a good short-term effort, evangelistic in nature and tied to local churches.

Second, with the broad array of activities designated as “mission trips,” from the amateurish to the responsible, and a corresponding elastic use of the term “mission,” churches and individuals deserve to know precisely what a particular “mission trip” is designed to accomplish.34 If ten students want to raise $3,000 each to go to India only to paint an orphanage, it is hard to justify calling it a conventional “mission trip.” When everything becomes “mission,” then preaching the gospel tends to diminish or disappear.35 Careful delineations need to be made between evangelistic efforts and compassionate services. Both are important but they yield different results.

Third, those who organize and conduct short-term efforts owe it to themselves, the workers, and the host culture or church to engage in vigorous periodic and responsible assessment of their efforts. Historically, there has been a notable lack of such evaluation and assessment.

Fourth, it seems to be the case that both Evangelicals and some workers from Churches of Christ have learned by experience what the STEM organization has argued for many years, namely that effective short-term work consists of thorough and appropriate training before going on the trip, creating precise frameworks and goals for work on the field, and careful and responsible debriefing upon returning home. Potential supporters have a right to know whether these three dimensions are in place.

Fifth, although in recent years there is evidence that organizers of short-term work have learned from those who have written books and articles on the subject, an appalling number or organizers seem to form their own plans without recourse to the pool of knowledge available on short-term efforts. It seems foolish to ignore valuable information learned through trial-and-error or by research.

If short-term efforts are regarded as work for God, as service for Jesus Christ, then Christian stewardship of money, time, and people’s lives argues that these efforts need to be done well in the future.

C. Philip Slate is a missions consultant for Churches of Christ worldwide and Missions Coordinator at the North Boulevard church in Murfreesboro, TN. He holds a DMiss from Fuller Theological Seminary and has authored and co-authored numerous popular and scholarly works. Dr. Slate was a missionary in Great Britain for over a decade. He has also served as the dean of Harding School of Theology and subsequently as chair of the department of missions at Abilene Christian University. He can be contacted at cpsmissions@juno.com.

Bibliography

Altrock, Craig. The Shaping of God’s People: One Story of How God is Shaping the North American Church Through Short-Term Missions. Fort Worth: printed by author, 2006.

Anthony, Michael. The Short-Term Missions Boom. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.

Brewer, Charles R., ed. “B. D. Morehead.” In Missionary Pictorial. Nashville: World Vision, 1966.

Corbett, Steven, and Brian F. Fikkert. When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself. Chicago: Moody Publishing, 2009.

Dayton, Edward, ed. Missions Handbook. 10th ed. Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1973.

Elkins, Philip W. Church-Sponsored Missions: An Evaluation. Austin: Firm Foundation, 1977.

Friesen, Randy. “Short-Term Missions.” In Encyclopedia of Missions and Missionaries, edited by Jonathan J. Bonk, 409. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Landon, Michael. “A Descriptive Analysis and Categorization of Foreign Campaigns.” MA Thesis, Harding Graduate School of Religion, 1982.

Long, Meredith. “The Increasing Role of Short-Term Service in Today’s Mission.” In Mission Handbook: North American Protestant Ministries Overseas, edited by Edward R. Dayton, 10th ed. Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1973.

Makuku, I., and V. Calver. “Short-Term Mission.” In Dictionary of Mission Theology, edited by John Corrie, 360-62. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2007.

Massaro, Dennis. “Short-Term Missions.” In Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, edited by A. Scott Moreau, 875-76. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.

Maust, John. “Summer Vocation.” Latin American Evangelist 48, no. 1 (January-March, 1991): 8.

McDonough, Daniel P., and Roger P. Peterson. Can Short Term Mission Really Create Long-Term Career Missionaries? Results of STEM’s Second Major Scientific Study on the Long-Term Effect of Short-Term Mission. Minneapolis: STEMMinistries, 1999.

Palomino, Migual A. “If Everything is Mission, Nothing is Mission: Reflections on Short-Term Missions.” Journal of Latin American Theology 2, no. 2 (2007): 249-59.

Peterson, Roger, ed. Team Leader’s Notebook. 2nd ed. Minneapolis, MN: STEM Press, 1992.

Peterson, Roger P., and Timothy D. Peterson. Is Short-Term Mission Really Worth the Time and Money?: Advancing God’s Kingdom Through Short-Term Missions. 2nd ed. Minneapolis, MN: STEM Press, 1991.

Reapsome, Jim. “The Peril of Drive Thru Mission Work.” World Pulse 28, no.12 (June 1993): 12.

Slate, C. Philip. “What is a Missions Trip?” Gospel Advocate 151, no. 6 (June 2009): 31-33.

________. Field Notes, 1969-1970. Unpublished document in possession of the author.

________. Lest We Forget: Mini-Biographies of Missionaries of a Bygone Generation. Winona, MS: J. C. Choate Publications, 2010.

Thornton, Phillip, and Jeremy Thornton. “Why They Don’t Go: Surveying the Next Generation of Mission Workers.” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 44, no. 2 (April 2008): 204-10.

Ver Beek, Kurt Alan. “The Impact of Short-Term Missions: A Case Study of House Construction in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch.” Missiology 34, no. 4 (October 2006): 477-95.

Weber, Linda J., and Dotsey Welliver, eds. Missions Handbook: U. S. and Canadian Protestant Missionaries Overseas. 2007-2009. 20th ed. Monrovia, CA: MARC Publications, 2007.

Many congregations have been involved in short-term missions for decades, yet they have not taken advantage of the wisdom and experience of others who have thought deeply about short-term missions practices. By heeding industry best practices, congregations can take important strides toward more faithful and fruitful short-term mission work. This article employs the experiences of one short-term missions organization, Let’s Start Talking, as a lens for examining some established best practices known as Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Mission.

Several years ago, I was asked to defend short-term missions (STM) at a conference of missions professors. I must say that I was surprised by the antipathy of some participants. Yet, even though I disagree with their negative conclusions, I do understand that Christians have made many mistakes in the name of STM.

Attempting to help churches and ministries avoid the worst mistakes, over four hundred missions leaders came together in 2001 and began a two-year process of establishing standards for short-term missions. Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Mission (SOE), a non-profit organization, grew out of their efforts.

SOE advocates seven standards of excellence for any STM project.1 I am going to borrow their outline and expand on it. I will offer a practical explanation of each standard, with examples of their implementation from my experiences.

Standard #1: God-Centeredness

Every person planning a mission trip—whether as organizer, host, or participant—should be clear about the purpose of the trip. Is it totally for the glory of God? Is each activity planned in such a way as to express godliness? Are the methods used biblical as well as appropriate for Christians in the hosting culture? And will the expectations or desired results advance the kingdom of God?

These questions appear at first to have such obvious answers that the reader may wonder whether to continue; nevertheless, asking some additional questions may suggest where some STM groups could get off track.

• What do the workers see as the highlight of the trip: closing night of the mission or the two days on the beach before coming home? Which of these is emphasized in the promotion and recruiting?
• How much time is planned for team devotionals, prayer time, or spiritual conversations?
• Is the mission group sent off and received on site with prayer by those sending and receiving?
• Is the biblical basis for the team’s activities thoroughly taught, rehearsed, and explained? Do they buy into the spiritual nature of the mission trip?
• What are the real goals of the mission trip? Are they Spirit-driven or self-determined?

All Let’s Start Talking (LST) mission projects are described as “Sharing Jesus, sharing ourselves!” With this phrase, LST has tried to capture its purpose and method. People want to travel, to experience new things, even to grow spiritually themselves, but LST believes that all of these other desires should be subjugated to the primary objective of sharing Jesus. To encourage this spiritual dimension, LST plans prayer time as the first activity of every day so that it does not get lost in the business of the day. LST does, of course, plan free time for the teams, but workers are supposed to use it so they are refreshed, not exhausted, when they return to their mission activities.

In addition, the primary method of faith-sharing for LST teams is centered in God’s very Word. LST teams read the gospel’s own words and use their own experiences with God to illustrate the truth of the Word. The biblical basis for this approach is John 20:30–31: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples. . . . But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”2

Whatever else an STM might shortchange, it must not neglect God-centeredness, or the whole mission is in danger—not in danger of taking place, but in danger of being misplaced!

Standard #2: Empowering Partnerships

After God-centeredness, SOE’s next standard is empowering partnerships—and for good reason. Out of inexcusable ignorance, American Christians have often viewed themselves as the only source of mission strategy, the only spring of mission compassion, and, regrettably, the only well of resources that God can use for taking the gospel to the world. Lord, forgive us of our arrogance!

This flavor of hubris shows itself concretely in STMs in the following ways:

• A church is looking for a good STM for its youth group, so they call their missionary and announce that they will bring 40 kids for 10 days in July—and they know the missionary will be grateful!
• A church sees a small but vibrant mission church in a developing country and decides to send down a band of construction workers to build them a building.
• A church sends a note to their missionary contact stating they are prepared to come with puppets and all to do a two-week Vacation Bible School, if the locals will put them up in their homes.
• The local evangelist agrees to provide food and housing for the STM workers if the workers will provide the funds. The workers will provide the funds but need receipts. The national minister is highly offended, but the American workers find the evangelist’s actions very suspicious.

Some readers may not even recognize a problem in the above scenarios, but the idea of an “empowering partnership” is absent from each one. In its place, a one-sided, power-based, culturally insensitive, and paternalistic attitude exudes from the American Christian side of the equation—mostly because such STM participants do not really believe that they are in a partnership. Many seem to prefer a charitable relationship over an empowering partnership.

LST made some of these mistakes early in its ministry but has tried to learn from them. Below are some concrete actions that LST takes to avoid these mistakes:

• LST only sends teams when prospective hosts have sent a formal invitation. Many mission sites feel compelled, virtually coerced, to receive mission teams for any number of reasons. If a host cannot say no because the sending church supports them, or because the STM participants are Western, or because of any reason whatsoever, then there is no real invitation.
• LST respects each missionary and/or national evangelis as a true host. Participants are thankful for their invitation, grateful that hosts want to work with them, and eager to serve them. The hosts are the initiators, just as if they were inviting guests into their home.
• Both sides mutually agree upon the important details of every STM project before making any final commitments. From the dates of arrival to the times of every event to the cost of using the telephone, LST tries to clarify details prior to arrival so that participants do not even accidentally trample feelings of the local church. This is tricky cross-culturally and takes great effort, but it is essential.
• The real needs of the host are foremost. If it is not good to host American groups during US school holidays—which is rainy season and/or winter in other countries—then do not expect a host to want an STM team to come during that season. If the burden of hosting twenty people is too great, then either cut the group sufficiently or do not send anyone. If the hosting church needs funds rather than two weeks of preaching, which would be the better gift? And if the sending church does not know what the needs are, it should ask.
• LST meets with potential hosts, gets to know them, and does not accept invitations until there is mutual trust. Of course, STM teams trust themselves, but what about the indigenous leaders of the local church? Do STM participants trust them to tell the truth? To handle team money and supplies for the project? To determine the best time to receive a group? Is the STM team flexible about its own plans but feels the hosts are irresponsible when they change things? Do hosts even have the power to change anything? Such questions are very telling for an STM.

The word “partnership” in this context is what the New Testament also calls “one another.” STM participants should re-read those “one another” passages, apply them to their relationships with potential STM hosts, and then reflect upon whether or not they are acting as empowering partners.

Standard #3: Mutual Design

An STM team several years ago was building a church building in a majority world country.  After working for about a week, digging the footing, pouring the concrete for the foundation, and building up the wall about 2-3 feet, someone realized they had not put any doors on the building!

So the Americans spent the rest of that mission trip tearing down a major portion of the wall they had just built and rebuilding the wall, this time with gaps for doors. Another group went to the same area a year or two later, and the church had torn the whole building down because it never met either their needs or their standards.  There is a message in this story for those who would plan STM projects: just having manpower and money will not get you to the goal. Mutual design is also imperative.

Mutual design does not guarantee a positive outcome, but it certainly increases the prospects and gives reason to hope for one.  Mutual design refers to a partnership between American Christians and hosting nationals with (to borrow from the French!) liberty, equality, and fraternity on both sides.

Here are some reasonable questions for both parties to ask in preparation for any STM trip:

• What are the common goals of both guests and hosts? Is the primary goal to please the host or to please the American guests? Is there a way to plan the mission so both sides feel like their expectations will have been met?  Before an LST project ever occurs, an LST representative sits down with the hosting leader(s) and tries to describe in the local context what might occur when an LST team arrives. The representative talks about how LST spends money, how teams are typically housed, what each day looks like, what the teams typically do on Sundays—the conversation aims to cover every part of the project. Then the hosts explain how they believe an LST team could work best in their context. Where there are differences, LST makes a great effort to work them out—or both parties agree that perhaps some other form of mission would be better for their context.
• What preparation and follow-up will the hosts/guests provide? What are the expectations of the hosts/guests both before and after the mission project? LST expects the host church to advertise prior to the team’s arrival, for instance, but leaves how they advertise to the expertise of the local Christians. If both partners find this acceptable, planning proceeds!  LST expects local Christians to make plans for follow-up. Local Christians expect LST teams to leave all contact information necessary for follow-up.
• Who pays for what? Unfortunately, fairly simple questions like this create much of the havoc on STM trips. LST promises to pay for all food, local transportation, laundry, and the social events that are part of a typical LST project. Hosts are responsible for housing and advertising.  Some hosts have no housing options they can afford, in which case LST asks them to work out mutually acceptable housing arrangements before the team arrives. Often their solution is a nice American-style hotel—which teams most often decline because they cannot afford that either. So the dialogue continues until either there is a mutually acceptable solution or there is no solution. Even if there is no solution in the end, both parties know they have made a good effort to find a mutually acceptable solution but have failed—usually with a promise to try again next year.

Mutual design emphasizes the ability of both the American guests and the national hosts to implement what they have accepted as their responsibility.  When there has been full liberty to both negotiate and to decline, when there has been equality assumed by both partners, and when brotherly love (fraternity) is the framework of every conversation and interaction, then nothing short of a revolution will be the result–a revolution that both the church and God will delight in!

Standard #4: Comprehensive Administration

Whether it is a church organizing its own STM or an individual Christian wanting to join an STM project, one needs to be concerned about the comprehensive administration of the STM. SOE uses this broad term to include the following:

• Integrity of the organizers
• Competency of the organizers, especially in the area of risk management
• Capability of the organizers to support and deliver

Consider these three virtues more closely.

4a: Integrity

The LST staff has had a fairly lengthy discussion about which countries to advertise as LST sites. It is tempting to use “attractive” countries in organizational promotion, even if teams seldom go to them. Likewise, the staff has debated at length a video clip that showed an LST worker reading with small children. Little children are huge emotional magnets for recruiting workers—but only seldom do our workers read with young children, so it is not typical of the LST experience. Such discussions, for example, are meant to ensure integrity.

• Is there honesty in promotion of the STM? Check the motivations to which promotion appeals. Check the description of activities as compared to what the work will primarily be. Is the host culture as needy, as irreligious, as unhealthy, or as safe as advertising suggests? The world of modern advertising has skewed our sense of honesty—not to the point of lying, but to the point of spinning the truth. Speaking the truth in love will honor God!
• Is there transparency in all areas of finance? Who determined the costs for the STM and how? Who will collect and disperse the funds, and is there an accounting process that includes accountability to someone external to the project? Do all participants have access to financial information?
• For example, LST has three people who do nothing but work with the finances and accounting for the monies the organization receives and dispenses. There are strict protocols in LST’s office about who can open an envelope with money in it, for instance, and that same person cannot record and deposit that money. Each LST team does simple accounting with the money that they use in their LST project.
• LST also has a yearly review by an outside accounting firm, which spends days in our office, going through receipts, deposits, even the accounting books of the individual LST teams that went overseas. Their audit is something that LST will provide to anyone who requests it. In addition, LST files a Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service that discloses all important financial information—and much more. The Form 990 is public information, accessible to everyone. It is like publishing one’s personal income tax filing on the internet.
• Are the reports of the STM results honest and accurate? Sometimes results are vague because organizers have no measurable goals. Other times, organizers skew results to justify the expense and effort. That is dishonest. Most often, no one really tracks or measures results. Failing to measure and assess also lacks integrity. How can STM organizations or participants honestly imply, much less report, that their effort and expense was fruitful without such accountability?

Nothing alienates people from Christian missions faster than the hint of dishonesty! STM organizers must ensure integrity at every level. Participants should make sure the organizers are transparent to a fault.

4b: Appropriate Risk Management

As the author writes, Guatemala is preparing for a volcanic eruption and a tropical storm. Belize is flooding, as is El Salvador. Tajikstan has an outbreak of polio, and there are still travel warnings out for Thailand and Sri Lanka. In addition, a major earthquake has struck the Philippines. Only this last item is listed in the CNN headlines, however. Whoever is organizing an STM should be aware of relevant natural, political, and cultural risks and have a plan for dealing with them.

Natural risks – Christians should not be fearful! Being informed and measuring the risks, however, are not acts of fear. It is unfortunate to be stranded in Cambodia because of a typhoon, but it is foolish not to know that July and August are peak months for typhoons in Cambodia and to have a plan in the event that one occurs. It is foolish not to know that malaria is also dangerous in Asia and the Americas rather than just Africa. Many travel sites, but especially the government-sponsored Center for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov) and the US State Department (www.state.gov) have important information for evaluating natural risks.

Political risks – Christians should not be fearful! Being informed and measuring the risks, however, are not acts of fear. LST has had workers in Moscow during a political coup, in Yugoslavia when civil war broke out, and most recently, in Thailand during the political unrest and violent demonstrations. Political unrest can occur almost anywhere and predicting how extreme or violent that unrest might become is difficult. How does one make good decisions about STMs in foreign areas where there is almost always some level of political unrest?

• Rely on more than just the US media to stay informed. LST is a member of OSAC, the Overseas Security Advisory Council (www.osac.gov), an arm of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security in the US State Department which publishes daily information on all trouble spots around the world. OSAC gleans and distributes pertinent information from foreign newspapers around the world.
• During the most recent trouble in Thailand, LST actually evacuated two teams early because the violence had spread unpredictably. By following local news sources on Twitter (www.twitter.com), LST was aware of surprising developments at least 12 hours before hearing it on US news.
• Believe the local Christians! Local Christians tend to be more cautious and more concerned for the potential safety of their guests than the guests themselves. If they say to come ahead because it is safe, then their judgment may be a compelling consideration.

Cultural risks – Christians should not be fearful! Being informed and measuring the risks, however, are not acts of fear. Singapore laws forbid chewing gum. A STM team should know this. STM workers to China should avoid discussing the three T’s (Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen) with Chinese locals. Pickpockets work every subway in the world, so workers need to carry their wallets in a different place perhaps. An official passport is the only way to positively identify oneself in a foreign country. These are just a few examples of information that STM workers need to know. Information diminishes risk.

Someone involved in organizing STMs should be responsible for researching cultural risks at the host site, and then all participants should not only be informed but trained to avoid risky situations and risky behaviors. Risk prevention begins long before an STM begins.

4c: Risk Management Plan

LST once had a team in Madagascar. A local gang looking for a ransom kidnapped the evangelist’s daughter in front of the church building where the college team was working. After just a couple of hours, the girl managed to escape unharmed. The family reported the name of the gang leader to the police who arrested and jailed him immediately. The gang leader bribed his way out of jail, however, and vowed to kill the missionary and his family. The LST team was staying in the home of this family.

What should a church or organization do now?

Here are the two most important questions to consider:

• Is the church prepared to deal with this situation? Does the church have the necessary personnel, funds, and a plan to take care of its people?
• How quickly can the church or organization implement its plan?

In this case, LST immediately moved the team into a high security hotel and then flew the team out of the country within twenty-four hours. In addition, LST staff met them in France, let them talk through their experience and their fears, then arranged for them to finish the last three weeks of their mission trip with a church in southern France. When they returned home, not only was the team emotionally and physically healthy, but they also could not stop talking about how God worked it all out for good!

Make sure that the church or organization has both an Emergency Management Plan and the personnel and funds to implement it twenty-four hours a day while a team is on the field. Here is a short list of the type of emergencies that one should be prepared to handle:

• Travel emergencies – lost documents, canceled flights, unexpected fees, passenger error (goes to wrong airport, checks in too late, etc.)
• Medical emergencies – accidents, illness on site, flare up of preexisting conditions, sudden death
• Political emergencies – political violence, curfews, closed airports, police harassment (one LST team suddenly was required to get special visas), political extortion (demanding bribes)
• Natural emergencies – typhoon, flooding, earthquake
• Team emergencies – unexpected death or emergency at home, emotional/spiritual breakdown, unexplainable hostility (often culture shock), immoral behavior, disregard of authority, misuse of people or funds

Emergencies don’t happen often. Still, in thirty years of sending STM teams, LST has dealt with everything mentioned above at least once. One cannot remove all threats or prevent all emergencies—even with the best preparation and training—but it is possible to be intelligently prepared for conceivable risks.

Standard #5: Appropriate Training

A missions minister whose church wanted to begin requiring training for all of its STM participants was looking for a training model. He knew that LST teams had a reputation for being well-trained, so he consulted with the author. The missions minister literally went pale when he heard that the college students who go with LST receive approximately 45 hours of training in preparation for 3-6 week mission trips and that church members going for two weeks receive 20 hours! His church now requires one Sunday afternoon of training for their short-term workers—which is more than most churches provide or require.

The problem is not that STM leaders do not believe in training; it is that nobody wants to spend the time and energy that it takes to do it. Appropriate training is essential, however, for an excellent STM trip. Here are some of the characteristics of appropriate training:

• Appropriate training prepares the workers for their spiritual work as well as their physical work. While getting materials together, practicing songs, going over assignments, or role-playing conversations is appropriate and essential, many volunteers are spiritually ill-prepared for the challenges of mission work. Many have never verbalized their own faith, so they have difficulty responding to questions like “Why do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?” Many Christians do not know where to start with the person who does not believe the Bible is the Word of God. When challenged, unprepared Christians may begin to doubt their own faith or to move toward an “all-roads-lead-to-heaven” faith. Mission trips are spiritual pressure-cookers and tend to bring spiritual weaknesses to the surface. Spiritual as well as physical preparation is essential.
• Appropriate training includes how to work together with others! Just as “personality issues” (a euphemism for any number of our own selfish desires) are a major source of trouble between Christians at home, putting 5-6 people together 24/7 for 2-3 weeks in close quarters under less than ideal circumstances can quickly cause the façades of Christian charity to fall.
• Appropriate training includes cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity. Who is telling the volunteers about appropriate dress? Who is preparing the team for the toilet facilities? Who is preparing the group for worship in a foreign language without translation? Who is training the workers how to “look and learn”—that is, watching and imitating the local Christians in situations that are unexpected or unfamiliar.
• Appropriate training happens before, during, and after the STM trip. Most training needs to be done before the team leaves, but while on the field, situations and questions arise that catch all short-term workers off guard. Who helps them sort through their questions and feelings? And who helps them know how to return home? LST conducts EndMeetings with all of its workers. EndMeetings help workers frame their experiences, know how to report about their mission, as well as how to deal with reverse culture shock.
• Appropriate training is done by qualified trainers. Heed one small warning here about the person who is the cultural expert because they have been in a particular country for a week a couple of years ago! If qualified trainers are not on hand, it is worth the trouble to find some and bring them in.

The lack of appropriate, high quality training is why churches quit sending and people quit going. Invest time and energy into appropriate training and God will receive more glory and honor! The added value to good training is that what one learns for the mission field is still valid after returning home.

Standard #6: Thorough Follow-up

An excellent STM will always include thorough follow-up with both the host and the members of the mission team. Following up an STM is asking probing questions designed to reveal both strengths and weaknesses in the project.

Follow-up with the Mission Site

Whether in written form or in person, the STM organizers must create the opportunity to ask the mission site all of the hard questions. If no one asks the hard questions, then assessors will only get the answers that they want to hear—which will not reflect the truth! Without the truth, how will one know if the STM has been helpful, if it has served the kingdom well, or if it has brought glory to God?

Here are some of the questions every STM project should always ask as follow-up to a mission project:

• Did the visiting group provide all the information necessary in order to prepare well for their arrival? Did they provide it in time to prepare well? What should they have provided prior to their coming that was not available this time?
• Was the visiting group a good size?
• Did they seem prepared for the work they came to do?
• Did they adjust culturally?
• Did they seem to get along with each other well?
• Were their leaders/sponsors cooperative?
• Did the mission project meet the host’s goals for it?
• Was the local church’s involvement satisfactory?
• What would the hosts do differently with a future group?
• How will the hosts follow up this mission project? Is there anything the group should have done that would make follow-up more effective?

The media ran a story recently about a plumbing company that always followed up its house calls with the request for a simple evaluation by the customer, “How would you rate our service on a scale of 1-10?” What made this plumbing company special was that although they almost always got an excellent evaluation, they were not satisfied with a 9.5 average. They always asked, “What could we have done that would have earned us a 10?” That is the attitude that all involved in the leadership of an STM should have.

Follow-up with the STM Worker

As with the mission host, participants cannot learn how to do their mission better if they do not explore questions that surface any weaknesses or problem areas. Before they return home, participants should evaluate their experiences in the following areas:

• Training. Did the training prepare you well for the tasks you were given? Was there something missing in the training that would have helped? How effective was your team trainer?
• Physical Arrangements. Beginning with the travel to site, then the housing, the food arrangements, the daily schedule, even the free time, was there anything that could have been better and made for a better mission trip?
• Team Dynamics. How was the team dynamic? Were you able to make good decisions together? Were you able to handle conflict when it occurred? Did you get the help you needed when you asked?
• The Mission Itself. Were you able to do the work you prepared to do? What surprised you about the work? Is there anything you wish you could have done better?
• Personal Response. Are you glad you went? What was difficult? What was wonderful? Would you like to do another short-term mission? Would you encourage others to do one?

After asking for this kind of an evaluation, organizers sometimes believe themselves to be finished with follow-up. In fact, one more critical activity remains: preparing the participants for going home. While short-term mission trips typically do not allow workers to acculturate as a long-term mission would, the spiritual and emotional impact on the worker can be significant. Those who organize STMs are not finished until they have helped workers deal constructively with these new feelings and experiences.

At LST EndMeetings, staff members spend time with returning workers in these ways:

• Helping workers frame their experiences. Frames contain the elements of a picture as well as keep extraneous items out of the picture. Workers have already begun deciding what they will include and exclude in their memories and feelings about their mission trip. LST encourages them to include everything that gives God glory and exclude the rest.
• Celebrating workers’ experiences and helping them talk about them. Putting words to their feelings and experiences not only helps each worker understand what they did better, but it encourages and inspires others. Real community is built around shared experiences, so a celebratory—as opposed to an inquisitorial—environment in which to first “report” about a mission trip cements both the individual and the communal experience.
• Affirming the faithfulness of workers. Especially in an evangelistic mission trip, workers often do not get to see the fruit of their work. A Ukrainian man was unmoved by the story of Jesus the first time he heard it in 1991. Fifteen years later, the LST worker who first shared with him returned to Ukraine to discover that this same man was now a Christian and had published three books defending faith in God to the scientific community in Ukraine. After hearing such stories, returning workers better believe that God can do the same miracle of faith with the seeds they have faithfully planted.
• Preparing workers for reverse culture shock. Because the links of common experiences between people at home and the workers are broken for a period of time, some workers are shocked to feel like outsiders upon their return home. They also do not understand why people are only superficially interested in their mission project. Helping them understand the dynamics of unshared experiences ensures a better homecoming for each worker.
• Teaching workers how to report well. Since the first question they will hear upon arrival at their hometown airport is “how was your trip?” LST teaches workers to have a 20-second answer ready. Participants also learn what to include (people stories, work stories) and what to exclude (free-time pictures, problems) from their private and public reports. LST encourages them to seek opportunities to report in order to motivate others to go and/or to give!
• Encouraging the workers to continue the mission. The mountain-top experience that most short-term workers have does not have to be a one-time experience. God has given them special gifts to use in missions; that is why they have been able to accomplish this mission successfully, from the initial commitment to the fundraising to the training to the travel to the work itself. But special gifts bring special responsibilities, so what will they do with these gifts now?

Finishing well requires as much effort as starting well. That’s why an excellent STM will finish well with great follow-up.

Standard #7: Qualified Leadership

The last of the Seven Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Mission is qualified leadership. Qualified leadership is a basic presupposition for each of the other standards. Will the mission be God-centered if there is no leadership? Will true partnerships between those who go and those who receive be established without leadership? Can there be thoughtful purpose and design, appropriate training, and thorough follow-up without leadership?

The ubiquitous nature of leadership is why everyone writes about leadership. But gifts in such great demand run greater risk of being neglected, imitated, or abused. Here are some examples in the context of STM:

• Zeal trumps ability in many STM programs. Passion and good intentions are not the same as leadership, but they are common substitutes when qualified leadership is lacking. One might fairly suspect that the Christian group arrested and held for so long in Haiti for trying to leave the country with a busload of orphans was only guilty of substituting passion and good intentions for quality leadership.
• People pretend to be leaders who are not! Again, not all of these people are aware of their lack of leadership gifts, but may in fact believe themselves to be leaders. One absolute test of leadership ability is whether people follow, and, if so, why. Jesus, the greatest leader, said about good shepherd-leaders, “His sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10:4). Sheep do not follow a stranger’s (imitator’s) voice. So it is with those who imitate leaders.
• Abuse of power in any form is the polar opposite of qualified leadership. One can recognize either early warnings or potential abuse when:
• The leader starts by reading the rules for the mission trip.
• The leader starts by describing his/her role on the mission trip.
• The leader threatens someone with summary dismissal from the team if they do not ________________[fill in the blank with any of his/her rules].
• The leader either does not request input from others or dismisses input when volunteered.
• The leader is not accountable to someone else.
• The leader has sole control of all of the organizational elements of the mission trip—money, schedule, resources, planning.
• The leader knows things but is unwilling to share the information with the mission group “until they need to know.”
• The leader uses the “because I said so” line.

Leadership issues lie at the heart of many of the worst STM experiences. Potential workers would do well to investigate thoroughly the leadership of any STM which they might be considering.

Summary and Conclusion

Using SOE’s Seven Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Mission, the author has attempted to explain and illustrate the problems that these standards address as well as what they can look like in practice. The way LST attempts to meet these standards of excellence certainly is not the only approach to short-term missions, but the LST commitment to the highest standards can and should be emulated.

Churches and ministries who want to organize STM are bound to address all of these standards lest their work prove to be made of straw and not gold. Our awesome God deserves no less than gold.

*An earlier version of this article was posted in May 2010 by the author as a series of blog posts. You may find Dr. Woodward’s blog with many other posts about short-term missions at http://markwoodward.org.

Mark Woodward, Professor Emeritus of Oklahoma Christian University and Executive Director of Let’s Start Talking Ministry, holds a PhD in Humanities. Dr. Woodward has a broad range of experience in ministry, having served as Campus Minister at the University of Mississippi (1969-71), missionary in Germany (1971-79), professor of English and German at Oklahoma Christian University (1979-2003), and, with his wife Sherrylee, the founder of Let’s Start Talking (1980). In addition, he has served local congregations as preacher, elder, and teacher. He and his wife currently reside in Fort Worth, Texas. He can be contacted at mark.woodward@lst.org.

Nehemiah is the story of a Hebrew man who lived as an exile in Persia following the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. He served in the honored position of cupbearer for King Artaxerxes. Being a man that even the King trusted, Nehemiah gained great power and influence. In spite of all this, he would soon choose to leave his lavish lifestyle, having received word that the temple of God in Jerusalem lacked a wall to protect it. Nehemiah’s love for the temple and for God’s chosen people brought him to his knees as he wept, fasted, and prayed seeking direction from God. In many ways, the story of Nehemiah is a perfect example of how student ministers should be thinking when considering short-term missions for their students.

Nehemiah heard the outcry of a broken people. He assessed the situation and developed a plan. While rebuilding the wall, he asked questions concerning the condition of the people—he processed, reflected, and acted accordingly. He could have simply brought a crew, constructed a wall, and left, but this shallow approach would not have resolved some of the deeper issues the city of Jerusalem was facing. Because he prepared, listened, and processed, Nehemiah was able to bring long-term healing. This is called deep justice. It’s what happens in short-term missions (STM) when student ministers prepare students ahead of time, process and reflect with them during the STM trip experience, and translate that experience to life after the trip. All three stages (prepare, process, and translate) must occur if students are going to be transformed and develop a lifestyle of service that goes beyond extrinsic motivators.

Kara Powell and Brad Griffin detail this crucial three-stage process in their book Deep Justice Journeys (a must-have resource for student ministers preparing for STM).1 The authors refer to it as “The Before/During/After Model.”2 Unfortunately, as Powell and Griffin point out, many student ministries never get beyond the “M&Ms” of STM trips: Money and Medical Releases.

Let’s be honest. Normally we’re too rushed to thoughtfully help students engage in interpretation and application before, during, and after their STM trips. Our “preparation” before the STM experience usually consists of fund raising and medical releases. Our “process” during the trip boils down to a few minutes of prayer requests before our team tumbles into bed, exhausted. And our “debrief” after we get home is little more than organizing the slide show and the testimonies to share in “big church.”3

The cost of such oversight (or laziness) is shallow service. Lives are minimally transformed and the effects of the trip are short lived, and in some instances, harmful.

Kennedy Odede, a boy from the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, gives a unique perspective as an individual whose community has experienced the effects of shallow service first hand. In his article for the New York Times, Odede addresses the issue of Slumdog Tourism (a voyeuristic industry that exploits poverty). From his experience we get a glimpse of how a host site might perceive an STM group that has not been careful to prepare, process, and translate with their students:

Slum tourism turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from. People think they’ve really “seen” something—and then go back to their lives and leave me, my family and my community right where we were before. . . . There is no dialogue established, no conversation begun. Slum tourism is a one-way street: They get photos; we lose a piece of our dignity.4

You may be tempted to say, “but yeah, that’s a money driven tourist industry that has nothing to do with the church or STM.” While it may be true that there are differences, the results are the same. So let’s look at a similar scenario within a student ministry context. Eric Iverson works for YouthWorks, an organization that plans STM trips for youth groups. At one point in his life, however, as he points out in a presentation titled “Being There: Short-Term Mission and Human Need,” Eric hated missions. Listen to Eric’s experience with STM having grown up in the inner city:

I hated short-term missions!

As a young, inner-city African-American male from a single parent home, with a working knowledge of the welfare system, I saw short-term missionaries doing more damage in my community with their “drive-by’s” than the gun-toting gang-bangers ever inflicted with their own versions of this practice. I think it was the sense of powerlessness I felt as I saw again another group of white kids (that’s how I saw them at the time…) burst from their new vans every summer to “save” me, and others who looked like me, again that year.5

I don’t know about you, but that’s a tough pill for me to swallow. I confess as a student minister who has been doing this for a little over 11 years that I have been guilty of this. I think it’s time that we start reevaluating how we approach STM. We need to ask tough questions like, “will this trip simply be another event, or will there be long-term results both for those we join in service and for our students?” It’s a hard but necessary truth: the days of STM as an episodic trip must come to end.

As student ministers we must regain our focus, our passion, and our mission. Providing trips for students merely to see and/or experience poverty is not only a waste of time, it is degrading to those in whom Christ dwells—those whom we are seeking to “save” (narcissistic, arrogant tone intended). STM should never be about what we can do to save them. In fact, there should be no “us.” There should be no “them.” And so, our renewed focus must come from our view at the foot of the cross as we join what God is already doing. Our passion must come from a heart that is broken by the same injustices that break God’s heart. It is a passion that is further driven by a desire to rejoice when God rejoices: those moments when he sees young and old, rich and poor, black and white fighting side by side for justice. Our responsibility is to resist the urge to program shallow service opportunities into our ministries and expect students to grow. Our mission is to develop, within our students, service as a lifestyle, but the question is how?

It’s time to get practical. We have already introduced the before/during/after model, but what does this look like in a student ministry context? Keep in mind I will be speaking from the ministry context with which I am familiar. On a given summer we will have 7–8 STM trips planned for students on 3 campuses (typically one trip per grade 6–12). On each trip we will take 45–120 students and adults (if you are starting to hyperventilate, welcome to my world). Planning this many trips for this many people each summer is a huge undertaking! My first area of focus is on the before stage of the deep justice model for STM. Our first responsibility (I obviously do not do this alone; I am part of an amazing team) is to ensure that all three campuses (as well as 7 ministers plus support staff) are on the same page as far as administrative planning is concerned. Due to the involved nature of this task, I developed what we call the “24:7 Mission Trip Planning Checklist.”6 It looks like this.

24:7 Mission Trip Planning Checklist

Nine Months to One Year Out

• Meet and Pray with Special Servants (our term for deacons) regarding possible mission sites
• Make initial communication with site leaders and select a site
• Remain in communication with Special Servants (SS)

Seven Months Out

• Coordinate dates of trip with 24:7 staff at December all day meeting
• Determine dates for mission training
• Determine dates for trip specific organizational and planning meetings
• Create trip information document to be added to spring/summer packet
• Continue to coordinate with mission site and communicate with SS
• Determine budget needs for trip
• Solidify housing needs

Six Months Out

• Support Staff creates spring/summer packet
• Conduct spring/summer meeting for all 24:7 parents, volunteers, and students
• Hand out spring/summer packets
• Sign-ups for all trips open

Five Months Out

• Coordinate transportation needs with admin.
• Recruit volunteers utilizing SS

Three to Four Months Out

• Take survey trip to mission site
• Coordinate with restaurant and entertainment venues
• Write training thematic
• Coordinate with volunteer specialists (trip nurse, cook, etc.)
• Submit contracts to Executive Minister

One Month Out

• Missions training
• Print maps and driving directions of trip to and from destination, of all work sites, restaurants, and entertainment destinations
• Create schedule
• Create what-to-bring and trip-expectations sheet
• Send letter to trip participants
• Submit cash request to Finance
• Report trip information and departure times to Shepherds
• Coordinate supply needs with 24:7 staff (especially tools, first aid kit, and coolers)
• Write devotionals for evening processing

One to Two Weeks Out

• Gather supplies necessary for trip
• Conduct organizational meeting with parents and participants
• Assign loading/departure roles to volunteers
• Create folders for trip sponsors (schedule, maps, work groups, helpful numbers, devotionals, etc.)
• Verify reservations with restaurants and entertainment
• Call elder assigned to pray for your trip
• Gather radios for vans

Day Before Trip

• Hook up trailers
• Number vans
• Ensure vans are full of gas
• Obtain cash from Finance
• Obtain all trip forms

Day of Trip

• Have volunteers arrive early and report to assigned roles
• Students arrive and check in and then filter to meeting area
• Go over trip expectations and have elder pray
• HAVE A GREAT TRIP!

Trip Return

• Return trailers, unload, and clean coolers

Obviously, if you decide that a checklist like this would be useful, you would want to adapt it to meet your specific context. There are some items within the list itself, however, that I believe are non-negotiable when it comes to the before stage and preparing students and adults for any STM trip. The first and most critical is that there must be caring adults involved throughout the process (especially during training). Why is this so important? The latest research has shown that “40 to 50 percent of kids who are connected to a youth group when they graduate high school will fail to stick with their faith in college.”7 That is an astounding number. Intergenerational STM trips are part of the solution, not only to having a faith that sticks, but also in deepening the impact of the trip itself. The key distinction between the two ratios is that 10:1 is mandated by the state regarding the number of chaperons needed for a given trip, and 5:1 is focused on intentional relationship building. We ask our adult leaders to deeply invest in the lives of our students for the seven years they are in student ministry plus one year after they graduate.8

There are several other key components to the before of mission prep. For instance, we try to associate our student ministry STM trips with the greater vision of The Hills Church where I serve. In other words, we give ourselves a better shot at going deeper by serving with people with whom we already have established relationships.9 In addition, we allow the mission site and/or missionary on the ground to give us the details of the trip rather than vice-versa. We ask questions like, “When would you like for us to come and what would you like for us to do?” We always take a survey trip so we can better convey to our students and adults why we are going, what they can expect, and what is expected of them. This information then becomes part of our mission training, which is a vital piece of the preparation puzzle.

In my experiences as a student in youth ministry, “training” was simply busy work given to students to help determine whether or not they were “serious” about going. I find this to be silly and a waste of valuable time. The last thing students need is more to do. Their pre-trip training has to be meaningful. They (along with the adults) need to be prepared spiritually, socially, culturally, and emotionally for the trip itself, which brings me back to Nehemiah. This year, our missions training curriculum was taken directly out of the Book of Nehemiah. The series consisted of three sessions written to prepare each mission team for their given trip. I have included a copy of the thematic I wrote. Notice how the themes from Nehemiah track with many of the principles behind the three stages necessary for moving beyond the episodic trip toward mission becoming a lifestyle.

Nehemiah’s Vision

Series Theme

“The tenderness of Lincoln. The fire of Patton. The savvy of Churchill. All found in the same man. Nehemiah.” – Max Lucado

Nehemiah is one of the great heroes of the Old Testament. Through God’s power, he saw a need and with the help of others he responded to the situation. As the Body of Christ we too have a responsibility to assess the many needs of those around us. Whether he is calling you to go on a mission trip, sending you to your neighbors, asking you to walk down the halls of your schools as aliens and strangers, to be a light in Southlake, or plant a church on the Westside, God is calling us all to live a life of mission. In order to do that, we must first listen to his voice. he will reveal his plan as we begin to serve in the places where he is already working. When we join God’s mission, there will be difficulties along the way. Nehemiah faced opposition. However, because he stood firm and was willing to ask tough questions, he discovered that God’s people were being oppressed. Still, Nehemiah focused on God’s vision and led the charge to fight injustice and rebuild the wall. In short, Nehemiah’s story, like our story, is one of hope, restoration, and faith. In this series students will be challenged to assess the areas in their lives God has called them to serve, develop a plan that enables them to join God’s work, and to listen and respond to the many stories of those to whom God has called us to serve.

SESSION 1 – Assess the Situation

Key Text – Nehemiah 1; 2:11-15

Session Theme

Assessing the situation is a critical step in moving beyond shallow service toward deep justice. Having returned from a survey trip to New York, I gained valuable insight about the people, the culture, and the city. While this is the first time we will have worked with the Everyday church, it is an important first step in developing a deeper relationship with them and the people they serve.

Nehemiah did the same thing before rebuilding the wall. He questioned people from the city about its condition and sought the Lord’s guidance before responding to their need. In this lesson we will attempt to get a better understanding of the situation God is calling us to. You should make attempts to share stories with your students about the people you are serving and the culture they live in. Finally, spend time in prayer confessing your own faults (1:6-7). Pray also for the people you will be serving with and for the success of your trip (1:11).

SESSION 2 – Develop a Plan

Key Text – Nehemiah 2:1-9 (seeking favor from leadership); 2:17-20 (recruiting workers); 3 (responsibilities divided); 4:7-22 (confronting opposition)

Session Theme

Nehemiah had a clear vision for how he would undertake the monumental task of rebuilding Jerusalem’s wall. He was a master at utilizing people and gathering the necessary tools for the job. He even had a plan for when things went wrong and opposition arose. You too will need a plan. During this class you will develop a mission/vision statement for your specific trip. Encourage students to be mindful of what you talked about last week in assessing the situation. Also, discuss any setbacks you may experience along the way. How will your group work through those situations? Having a clear vision and direction will give you the focus you need to overcome any obstacle.

SESSION 3 – Hear the Outcry

Key Text – Nehemiah 5

Session Theme

While busy rebuilding the wall, Nehemiah starts to receive reports from the poor in Jerusalem. He listens to their outcry and hears how they are being oppressed having to sell their land and even their own children into slavery simply to have food to eat. Unjust laws and abusers of power are the cause of this great injustice. Nehemiah responds by making personal sacrifices and deep level changes that help the people for years to come.

We too can respond to injustice if we are willing to ask good questions and listen to the stories of the people God has placed before us. In chapter 5 we see that Nehemiah had a relationship with the people (they saw him as a leader who worked among them), he had compassion for their condition, and he addressed the issues that directly affected their situation. In this lesson we will discuss ways we can begin to develop deeper relationships with the people we serve alongside, begin to understand their condition by hearing their story, and begin challenging the students to look for deeper issues that cause injustice. For example, explore case studies such as with homelessness. Which is better, to bus people to Lancaster and hand out sandwiches in assembly-line fashion and disappear until next time, or, to sit down with the homeless, share a meal and conversation together, and discover more about yourself and the person you had lunch with? In the latter scenario one is able to listen to their story, develop a relationship, and possibly come to understand why the person is homeless in the first place. At the very least, you will have gained a friend. For the 6th grader in Como this may look like a student developing a relationship with one of the kids from the center and hearing about the high drop out rate for kids in their neighborhood. The hope is that the 6th grader may begin to ask why this is the case. In Port Arthur, students may begin to wonder why so many years after the hurricane people still have not received the help they need. Only by hearing and identifying the outcry of people God places in our path can we begin to identify questions that will eventually lead to deeper resolution to core issues.

————————

Using Nehemiah provided the perfect backdrop for preparing our mission teams and provided a framework for initiating long-term change. We continued to utilize Nehemiah’s story during all of our trips, which, coincidentally, is the second stage of getting beyond shallow service. In this second phase it is the student minister’s goal to lead students through an ongoing process of experience and reflection.10 Often, we become overly focused on getting the job done and fail to recognize all that God is doing among us. We must learn to slow down and master the art of capturing the moment.

This process should begin as soon as you gather each morning. I typically have one of my students give a morning thought, which is followed by prayer and instructions for the day. As the day unfolds, students are encouraged to watch and listen to process their experiences with those around them. In student ministry we call these “teachable moments” where every experience becomes a learning/growing/loving opportunity. In other words, the goal is not, in and of itself, to get to the end or complete a project. The goal is to love people and become aware of how God is loving people. Mother Teresa embodied this principle. Kathryn Spink writes this about her when referencing her work in the home for the dying:

To Mother Teresa and those who worked with her, restoration to health was not the all-important factor. What was equally important was enabling those who died to do so “beautifully”. For her there was no incongruity in the adverb. “A beautiful death”, she maintained, “is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted.”11

When we rush through a trip, or each day for that matter, we miss moments to love. We miss moments to grow spiritually, socially, psychologically, and intellectually. Besides, it is shared experience and reflection that will drive the evening devotional.

Ending each day with a devotional is important. Having witnessed and experienced such amazing acts of God, we end in celebration. We give “shout outs” (words of encouragement) to other team members, sing, and share stories. Yes, by this time we are all exhausted, but bringing everyone together and processing what they saw, felt, heard, and experienced is one of the most critical aspects in making this more than a short-term experience. After all, our mission is to develop service as a lifestyle; and for this to happen, we must begin the translation process.

How do we do this? The answer (at least in part) is that we ask good questions (e.g., Where is God calling you to serve within your context—school, church, neighborhood, or somewhere else? How are you different now from when you began this STM journey? Can you think of scenarios or conditions at home that may be similar to those you experienced on this trip?). Ultimately, however, the most important tool we use in the after trip translation process is our small group ministry and the adults who lead them. Our groups meet three times a month and on the third Sunday they serve. I like this for a couple of reasons. One, because I question the effectiveness of large group service projects, and two, because our groups connect with service opportunities within their context. By connect, I mean our groups are given a list of organizations that our church has established relationship with through our neighborhood connections ministry and they choose one with which to partner.12 In other words, we ask our small groups to serve with one organization, once a month, for four years! As a result, relationships are developed and it is the students, not I, asking questions. They begin to ask deep-justice kinds of questions, like why are so many of the kids we are serving with dropping out of school? Where are their parents when they get home from school? Why is there such a high divorce rate among this community? Can you imagine, teenagers asking these questions? That’s exactly what happened with Alex.

When I first met Alex, he was a fringe kid who hated church, and for good reason. His dad had just kicked him out of the house for getting in an argument with his stepmother. It was the summer before his senior year, and with nowhere to go, Alex’s future looked bleak.

But God had other plans. Finding out about his situation, Jennifer (a student at our church) simply responded in the way she had seen her parents do for years: she reached out. It wasn’t long before Alex was living with the Wilson family.

The last thing Alex expected to find at the church services the Wilson family required him to attend was teenagers and adults who cared, but that’s exactly what was waiting for him. He quickly latched on to our worship minister, and their shared love for music began breaking down the walls he had put in place for protection. I approached Alex about attending a high school small group series, which he joined. He also participated in our annual senior transition class.

His lack of desire and effort in school quickly gave way to a desire to graduate and a determination to get into college. With the help of other families and adult mentors, Alex graduated from high school and was accepted to a local university. Alex was adamant that he did not want to commit to being a follower of Christ until he was ready to give up everything. Out of nowhere one Wednesday night, he approached me and said, “Let’s do this—let’s dance!” He made it very clear that this dance was an eternal decision to follow Christ.

This summer we took Alex on a mission trip to New York. While there, we worked with a new church plant sponsored by our church. Through this trip God continued to work transformation in Alex’s life. Following our return, Alex decided to move to New York City and join what this church is doing there. He is now heavily engaged in ministry and is scheduled to start college next spring. Alex managed to make his experience in New York more than about the trip itself. For Alex, service became a part of who he is.

Do I sound like a proud student minister? You bet! But it is not anything that I have done; it is a testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit transforming lives. Do I think short-term missions are a valuable tool in student ministry? Of course! Yet, it is time for student ministers to get out of the business of shallow service. My belief is that transformation doesn’t take place one week out of the year, but that it occurs before, during, and after that one or two week trip. It may not be rocket science, but hey, neither was building a wall around a city in 445 BC.

Jason Herman is the High School Student Minister/Coordinator for 24:7 Student Ministries at The Hills Church of Christ in North Richland Hills, Texas. In his role, Jason strives to incorporate an intergenerational model of ministry in which caring adults pour into the lives of students. He attended Lubbock Christian University where he received a BA in Youth and Family Ministry as well as a MS in Bible and Ministry. He can be contacted at Jason Herman jason.herman@thehills.org.

Bibliography

Clark, Chap. Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers. Youth, Family, and Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.

Clark, Chap, and Kara Powell. Deep Justice in a Broken World: Helping Your Kids Serve Others and Right the Wrongs Around Them. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007.

Iverson, Eric. “One Cross at a Time: The Mission Agency’s Role in Building the Missional Church.” Lecture presented at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Conference on Short-Term Missions, Deerfield, IL, July 30-August 1, 2009. http://www.henrycenter.org/media/?id=219&type=video.

Odede, Kennedy. “Slumdog Tourism.” New York Times. August 9, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10odede.html.

Powell, Kara E., and Brad M. Griffin. Deep Justice Journeys Leader’s Guide: 50 Activities to Move from Mission Trips to Missional Living. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.

Powell, Kara E., Brad M. Griffin, and Cheryl A. Crawford. Sticky Faith: Youth Worker Edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011.

Powell, Kara E., Terry Linhart, Dave Livermore, and Brad Griffin. “If We Send Them They Will Grow…Maybe.” The Journal of Student Ministries. http://davidlivermore.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/If-we-send-them.pdf.

Spink, Kathryn. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. – Chinese Proverb

This proverb suggests that the solution to this man’s hunger problem is found in teaching him a skill that will provide for his lifetime of need; in particular, hunger. Giving him a fish to eat will only satisfy his hunger temporarily. He needs a fish because he doesn’t know how to catch one. I don’t know who would, or could, disagree with this wisdom. Viewing this situation in a long-term perspective, it appears as if the giver really isn’t helping by simply giving what is needed at that moment. Teaching, therefore is a better solution than giving.

This view and perspective is currently being posed to Christian-based relief agencies like the one I work for: Christian Relief Fund. We are being told that the work we are doing, and the help we are providing, are not really ideal long-term solutions for the people we are feeding, protecting, and serving. Other non-profit organizations focus their efforts and resources towards programs that provide job training, teach a skill, or focus on education to help the needy improve their situation. Some suggest that groups like CRF may not be providing real assistance through charitable giving, and our resources could be better put towards solutions and programs that teach people to fish, in a figurative sense, of course. Here’s the strange part: some of the sharpest critics of our work are also the same ones asking us to assist them with short-term disaster relief or sponsorship of the orphans coming to their programs.

Let me stop the argument by first saying, “The Christian Relief Fund agrees!” We may not like the passive-aggressive style of the message, but we acknowledge that under the right conditions, we need to focus on solutions that give people in need real long-term solutions to poverty, hunger, homelessness, and lack of education. BUT (and this is a big but), how can you choose not to meet the immediate needs to keep people from dying from thirst or hunger? How do you teach a starving adult, let alone a starving child, how to fish when death is so close? They may not make it through, or even to, lesson one: “How to make a fishing net.” While starvation, thirst, and death are powerful motivators for survival, they may not make the best motivators for learning a new skill.

Baxter Loe founded the “John Abraham Christian Relief Fund” (the former name of the CRF) in 1971. He originally named the organization after John Abraham to remind him of how imminent death is to people in great need. Baxter, an Amarillo preacher and businessman, went on a short-term mission trip to India. He met John Abraham, a preacher and missionary in the village Baxter visited. The area was experiencing a tremendous famine, and John asked Baxter for help to feed his family. Baxter promised to send money upon his return to Texas. After returning to the US, Baxter got caught up in his own busyness and forgot to send money back to John. Much later, he received a telegram from India with these four haunting words: “John Abraham is dead.” He had starved to death anticipating help would soon be arriving from the US. Baxter began having nightmares of John Abraham’s death. He was hounded by the thought of seeing John hopefully waiting for the gift that never came. After many troubled nights, Baxter decided that God was calling him to support the orphaned children of John Abraham. He didn’t stop with those children. Christian Relief Fund has programs in 30 countries, focusing on the most vulnerable of the world—children without advocates. Our mission is based on Luke 2:52, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Our belief is that the best we can do is to care for those that are the most vulnerable, and that care involves meeting not just physical needs, but spiritual, educational, and social needs as well.

I doubt John Abraham needed to learn how to “fish.” I am sure he had the skills necessary to provide for his family. John needed a fish or two to see him through a difficult time. The situation there was so dire that many people could not make an adequate living. Extending our use of the Chinese proverb, there was no possibility of “fishing,” or catching any “fish.” This happens, whether through an act of nature or in a man-made situation. There are many hot spots of human suffering in our world today. These areas are so impoverished from drought or ravaged by warfare that “fishing lessons” would be useless and a waste of resources. The greatest needs are immediate relief aid: clean drinking water, food, firewood, health care, safety, and compassion. The modern day tragedy that is the Horn of Africa comes immediately to mind. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are starving to death. Teaching them a skill is pretty far down the list of needs. Keeping them alive and giving them hope for the future is on top. I think the best biblical example is found in 2 Cor 8:1-4. There is a great famine in Israel causing large-scale starvation, and the new churches in Macedonia have taken up a generous contribution to send to the churches in Jerusalem. It is giving aid with no strings attached and no conditions required.

I am not sure that the Chinese proverb asks the reader to judge which action is right. It does not say that feeding a man for a day is wrong. It compares two ideologies that can, and should, coexist. The idea of “yin and yang” must be applied here. There are situations that call for compassion and short-term relief aid, just as there are situations that require a more sustainable form of assistance. Christian Relief Fund believes there should be a balance. Our care of orphans is focused on the long-term needs of children. Giving them an education teaches skills they will need to succeed in society. Teaching them about Jesus Christ helps to concretely identify the real priorities in life. We are also applying microfinance in whole communities to help them better provide for their own needs. It’s not an “either/or” situation; it’s both because the needs of the poor in our world stack up higher than the resources charitable aid groups have at their disposal.

Larry Wu is the Director of Field Operations for Christian Relief Fund (http://christianrelieffund.org). He previously served three years on the CRF board of directors. Larry spent the first twenty-eight years of his career in the Food and Beverage industry. Contact Larry at lwu@christianrelieffund.org.

What should distinguish a Christian university from any other institution of higher learning? Does it merely provide a Christian setting for secular vocational training, or should it be something entirely different from a secular institution? Scripture gives us the answer: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7). Colossians 2:3 informs us that all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. Is this hyperbole? Not if one considers the Christ hymn of Colossians 1:15-20. Christ is the center of God’s activity to bring into being and then redeem his creation. Christ is over all, in all, and holds everything together (continuing presence). Genesis projects the theme of creation as that which brings glory to God. All was created according to the will of God and it so functioned in the beginning. It was very good. Humankind was created to continue the creative work of God: tending, developing, and filling God’s garden. When sin is introduced into the story in Genesis 3, the consequences are devastating—both to human life and work as well as creation itself. It is the truth of God, the wisdom of God, the word of God becoming flesh that brings back the possibility of creation functioning according to the will of God—another way of describing the inbreaking of God’s kingdom with the coming of Jesus.

So, yes, we may say that all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ. Without him at the center of our worldview, all knowledge is skewed in some way. Knowledge, in and of itself, cannot be of true and full value outside of God’s creative and redemptive activity. Those of us who are believers pursue further knowledge for the sole purpose of making ourselves more fully available to the purposes of the Holy Spirit in all facets of our lives. As Jesus came to demonstrate a life of godly power and direction, he came proclaiming the gospel, healing the sick, reprimanding those who lived falsely under God’s name, giving sight to the blind, casting out demons, and modeling a life of complete service for the good of “the other.” To follow him, we must deny ourselves and daily pick up our cross. This was not only his teaching, it was the essence of his life. He trusted God to lead him to help others through the gifts he was given for that very purpose.

It is this fundamental teaching that ought to make a Christian school at any level remarkably different than any other institution of learning. Every discipline should be taught as the potential expression of God’s continuing creative activity. Unfortunately, all vocations and disciplines (including ministry, perhaps especially ministry) have been badly twisted by idolatry. Christian schools should be training their students to be God’s redemptive response and creative activity in the world, healing its brokenness through the actions and words of the believer. The kingdom, or life under the direction of Jesus Christ, is proclaimed and demonstrated through every “word and deed” (Col 3:17).

It is clear that if Christian schools are to be involved in such extensive and radical life training, the classroom will not suffice. “Life labs” in their various forms are essential. Lipscomb University requires each of its students to have at least two SALT (serving and learning together) experiences as requirements of graduation in any discipline. This involves some form of ministry to others, either domestic or foreign. There are different tiers that are required, meaning one of the credits must come from an entire course which involves ministry activity or a short term mission trip that meets the experiential and study requirements of our SALT program. The idea is clear: no student can claim a “complete” education experience in the absence of applied, intentional ministry.

Lipscomb continues to expand its involvement in STMs. Well over 40 trips are planned every year with more than 500 students participating. The numbers continue to grow as the missional call grows more deeply into the curriculum of each of our schools. The vision is to give each of our students an opportunity to hear the call of God to a life of service for the sake of the world to the glory of God. STMs are a critical part of this experience. The leaders of most groups are volunteer faculty and staff. The majority of these mission efforts are geared towards a particular vocation—medical clinics in various developing nations; working with youth in the UK, Australia, and many other places; teaching opportunities in India, China, the Bronx, and other inner cities; athletic camps for the underprivileged, and countless other missional activities. Their overarching purpose is to introduce or encourage a deeper participation in God’s call of giving of one’s life for the benefit of others. We boldly inform and model that only the life that is lost for the sake of the gospel of Christ (good news of the redeeming of God’s creation through Jesus Christ) will provide true meaning and purpose.

What we hoped would occur in the lives of the participating students has exceeded our goals. While recorded results at this point are mostly anecdotal, we are beginning a quantitative and qualitative statistical study including longitudinal samplings that will provide us with more reliable information. Many of our graduates (some with degrees other than Bible or missions) have continued in their lives of ministry as a result of their STM participation. Others have developed or are developing new programs for identifying needs in the world and recruiting professionals in their field of study to meet those needs (such as engineering, medicine, or teaching). It is particularly encouraging that a growing number of our graduates are choosing to live in mission fields using their vocations—not to support their ministry but as an expression of their kingdom proclamation. STMs are vital to this process.

I understand the negative reaction of some to STMs. They are expensive and sometimes of little value. My wife and I, while doing mission work in Italy, have been on the receiving end of student groups that were less than helpful. One group actually set us back in our community because of the poor attitudes of the students and their lack of desire to work. We, at Lipscomb, have had our share of negative stories and painful experiences. But such issues can and should be directly addressed. Obligatory training for both leaders and students is crucial. Such preparatory experiences should be intentional and creative. Debriefing after a mission experience is critical. We are attempting to do more follow up with our students, helping them embed missional learning experiences into the “DNA” of their lives. STMs as an end in themselves have little value. But as a means to developing in our students a missional understanding of life they are irreplaceable. The sending out of the seventy in Luke 10 was not a one-time kingdom event. We are a sent people – sent out to where Jesus would go with a message of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God.

The question of funding is another issue raised in this debate. I understand the concern of many that the money for STMs could be used in more “profitable” ways in long-term missions. I would argue that such reasoning is not valid. Very little of our STM funding comes from churches or sources that would otherwise be used for missions. This is not a zero sum game. The list of those contributing to our students is amazing and heart-warming. It consists of cousins, friends, grandparents, the participating students, their fellow students, their places of employment—the list goes on and on. I would suggest this is another benefit of STMs; it is an opportunity for individuals and organizations who would in no other way be involved in kingdom work to participate. Some have continued to contribute to our efforts even after their friend or family member graduated.

I am presently preparing a small group of students and another faculty leader to join me in a week’s work in Dundee, Scotland. I have been there multiple times, both with groups and without. The church is small, but growing and doing some marvelous works. We will have the opportunity to walk into six different high schools in that area and, with the help of the young people of that church, tell the story of Jesus in relevant and meaningful ways. We “older folks” have specific teaching and training opportunities with various groups, some of whom have never heard the gospel. It is a week of intense and meaningful activity. It will be followed up with our students maintaining new relationships via Skype and e-mail. The church will be strengthened, we will be encouraged, and I will have the opportunity to mentor in ways I would never have in the classroom.

The negativity sometimes associated with STMs is not due to their inherent ineffectiveness. In my view, it is a lack of clarity of purpose, or of planning for meaningful activity, or of preparation by those who participate or receive the group. Do STMs ultimately prove valuable in the expansion of the kingdom? After over 20 years of experience, I can say with confidence, yes. Lives have been changed for good on both the sending and receiving sides. Can we do this work more effectively? Absolutely – as stewards of God’s blessings, we must constantly evaluate and improve our work. At Lipscomb, we continually evaluate the results of our mission efforts. Some have been shelved due to ineffectiveness. But new groups spring up every year, many initiated by students, and most continue to expand and improve. The gospel is proclaimed and experienced in vibrant ways, God is glorified, the kingdom borders continue to grow. May God continue to give us wisdom to be faithful stewards of all we have been given. May the call of God’s mission to redeem creation be the purpose of our lives.

Earl Lavender is executive director of the Institute for Christian Spirituality and director of missional studies at Lipscomb University. Born to missionary parents in Italy, he returned there with his wife Rebecca for six years, planting a church in north eastern Italy. They have also been involved in domestic church planting. Earl has worked in mission efforts throughout Europe, as well as Australia, India, Russia, Brazil, Ghana, and China. Earl completed his undergraduate and masters work at David Lipscomb College and received a PhD in Historical Theology from Saint Louis University in 1991. He has written multiple books and published articles as well as contributing encyclopedia entries in several published volumes concerning patristics or ancient history. He can be contacted at earl.lavender@lipscomb.edu.

Edgar J. Elliston.
Introduction to Missiological Research Design.
Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2011. 229 pp. $15.99.

Donald McGavran claimed that the need for research was one of the ten major emphases of the Church Growth Movement that he fathered. He claimed that research was important to “ascertain the factors which affect reconciling men to God in the Church of Jesus Christ.”1 Since missiology is worked out in the context of human interaction, there is great need to mine thoroughly the behavioral and social sciences for missional purposes. While every academic discipline brings its own unique focus and intention to the research method, Edgar Elliston’s book is one of the very few linking missiology and research design. His book capably answers the question, “How should we missiologists go about doing our research?”

Edgar Elliston was a missionary in Africa for many years. Later as professor at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission, he designed and taught courses in missiological research. He also supervised doctoral candidates in designing the research that would lead to the writing of their dissertations. He brings his years of practice and his lecture materials together in Introduction to Missiological Research Design, a book which could aptly be subtitled, “A Step by Step Guide.” The graduate student in missiology looking forward to a research project, thesis, or dissertation is in luck.

The volume revolves around the five interacting issues in research design: defining the central issue to be researched; evaluating previous research; designing an appropriate research methodology to address the central issue; reporting the findings; and finally, sharing the conclusions and recommendations. Chapters in Part One are devoted to each of these five issues.

Elliston is aware of research limitations in cross-cultural research. He writes, “When one crosses a cultural boundary, one can expect that the worldview will differ and the respondent’s assumptions will differ. . . . A questionnaire or interview guide that is valid and reliable in one culture cannot be expected to be reliable in a second culture” (65). (Would that those who practice specific evangelism methods, regardless of the location, shared this awareness.)

Chapter Seven, “Ethics and Missiological Research,” is one every missionary should read—and then read again. Table Ten lists the principle ethical concerns at every step in the research process (106-7). Then there is this powerful bit of advice: “Christian researchers should give special attention to their research not only to protect the ‘widow, the orphan, and the alien,’ but to work toward their salvation, empowerment, and nurture” (104).

As missiology is interdisciplinary, Part II of the book rightly includes chapters by missiologists who speak to research design from their backgrounds in theology (Charles Van Engen); education (Edgar Elliston); communication (Viggo Søgaard); history (Pablo Deiros); and social science (Daniel Shaw). Van Engen makes the same point as did Elliston about cross cultural dynamics: “The unrepeatability of theologizing in context is a major difference between most social-scientific methodologies and the methodologies of biblical mission theology . . . [because] each theologian is unique in his or her time, context, and worldview.” This realization does not lead to the relativism of truth but to a “multiplicity of understandings and interpretations of the same truth” (114).

The book concludes with nine helpful appendices, some of which are checklists. Particular attention should be paid to Appendix I, “Common Research Errors” (181-97). Other helpful aids are a glossary and an index.

My only complaint with the book is that it could have used more examples and illustrations. It would have helped to see samples of actual problem statements, research questions, thesis statements, and hypotheses (23-25). So, too, the book would benefit from more illustrations or case studies of the points being covered. Specific examples, like the one about the Turkana research (35), were few and far between.

Whether one is engaging in research to determine where to serve as a missionary, to decide upon a specific mission strategy, to study a specific missiological topic, or to design a dissertation proposal, Elliston’s book is one that needs space on the bookshelf.

Doug Priest

Executive Director

CMF International

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Craig and Jeri Ford.
Short Term Missions Handbook: A Guide for First Time Short Termers and a Reference for the Rest.
Self-published, 2010. Kindle edition. $9.99.

Craig and Jeri Ford bring the essentials for short-term missions to the one preparing to go. They draw from five years of missionary experience in Papua New Guinea, where they have hosted short-term missions and gained some host-culture perspective. The Fords have followed as well as coordinated short-term missions plans. Reflective wisdom of other missions-experienced contributors—short-term, former, and career missionaries—makes its way into this STMH as well.

STMH promises to guide readers in introspective cultural and spiritual adjustment and financial planning for their yet-to-come short-term mission trip. STMH includes smart information on culture shock appropriately succinct for a short-term audience. The content of STMH is concise and intelligent. It is a mere 42 pages.

STMH touches on several emotional worries the pre-field short-termer might be internalizing and moves him or her to a broader and deeper vision of mission. It addresses criticisms by friends and family as well as personal feelings of safety, fear, and calling, moving the missionary to have a deeper theological reason for even a short-term mission and to see it in the context of God’s broader mission. Of particular interest in STMH is the succinct and intelligent explanation that “the Bible doesn’t have a missionary call: it is a missionary call.” These introspective pieces are all connected to checking motives and processing self-perception.

In many ways, STMH has what you’d expect: guidance for a short-term missionary in discovering his or her call and insights to prepare one’s attitudes toward money, whether in regard to raising money or in addressing poverty concerns in the field. STMH tends to meet these expectations with no less depth but a little greater conciseness than one would expect.

I found several strengths in STMH. One is the inclusion of practical action items. There is, for example, a motive-check directive. Another strength of STMH is the underlying spiritual depth related to very practical advice. Although there are concise and broadly applied steps given for, for example, fundraising, there is always a thoughtful introduction connecting the process to God’s nature and character as well as the personal character of the missionary. The Fords present spiritual groundings all along the preparation process that are consistently easy to understand. Finally, a great strength of STMH is the way it leads the preparing missionary in processing class and poverty issues (especially pp. 22–25).

STMH also includes a 10-day Journal, Devotional, and Prayer Guide. Each page includes a themed devotional thought, a prayer lead-in, and space to journal. Some of the themes include, “God’s Already There,” “A Dose of Humility,” “The Lord Is in His Holy Temple,” and “Costly Discipleship.” Each devotional thought presents between one and three relevant reflection questions like, for example, “How have the events of the last day shed new light on this passage?” There is a prayer focus for each day, which includes three one-sentence lead-ins. For example, day two’s focus:

Thank you for showing me . . .

I was reminded of your goodness . . .

In heaven I’m most excited about . . .

As I read through STMH, it occurred to me that some readers might be startled by the frank language occasionally employed to reorient the missionary. The tone can be challenging, which I hope will empower the missionary and redirect the tourist.

Yellow and blue make green. That is how I heard a former medical missionary once describe the significant changes that can take place internally with anyone who experiences missions. I believe the authors of STMH are in tune with the rich matrix of cultural adjustment and spiritual fervor in God’s mission. STMH, in my terms, covers the yellow (the pre-field fear/excitement), the blue (the post-field seriousness/lamentation), and the green (the potentially greater immersion into God’s kingdom), all universally experienced hues in any mission.

More tedious short-term missions books exist, but I would recommend STMH and the accompanying Journal, Devotional, and Prayer Guide for any individual or group preparing for a short-term mission because it is basic enough for anyone with at least a high-school education yet imbued with a mature spirit.

Jason Whaley

Missionary

Wollongong, Australia

Daniel A. Rodriguez.
A Future for the Latino Church: Models for Multilingual, Multigenerational Hispanic Congregations.
Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011. 200 pp. $19.00.

Daniel Rodriguez is one of millions of Latinos in the USA living “in the hyphen”—belonging to two different people groups. Rodriguez is of Mexican descent, but is from the USA. He grew up speaking very little Spanish, acquiring it later while preparing for missionary service in Puebla, Mexico. At times feeling “despised” by both cultures, Rodriguez discovered he was not alone. He found numerous biblical parallels of this hyphenated existence, from Moses to Paul. And these biblical heroes used their dual identity for the glory of God. Rodriguez is resolved to do the same.

A Future for the Latino Church begins with huge numbers. Latino growth in America is obvious, but Rodriguez’s statistics shed light on the massive scale of that growth. Latinos are now America’s largest minority group. From 9.6 million in 1970 to 51 million in 2010, the numbers are breathtaking. From 2000 to 2010, the Hispanic population grew by 15 million, according to the US census. Led by Mexican-Americans, who account for two-thirds of the Latino total, the growth rate is steady. By 2050, based on current trends, the Latino population will be around 30 percent of the USA. How did this happen? It was a liberal immigration policy in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, however, the increase is through fertility rates since borders are tighter.

Rodriguez’s central concern is how to minister to this growing demographic. Building on the work of Manuel Ortiz—a doyen in the field of Latino ministry in the US—Rodriguez argues it is time for the church to rethink Latino ministry altogether. The traditional approaches are antiquated. They use Spanish while most Latino children speak English. They focus on the vertical rather than the horizontal—that is, they strive for heaven without looking after social needs. They also tend to build unnecessary barriers between Latinos and the dominant culture. For example, some Latino ministers emphasize the diabolical nature of the English-speaking world: “El diablo habla inglés” (The devil speaks English). This shaming process, not uncommon in Latino churches, perpetuates an “isolationist” mentality.

At the heart of the book is the question of language. While Latinos appear to treasure Spanish, the fact is they eventually speak English. Few Latinos even speak Spanish by the third generation. However, Latinos tend not to become English in culture. They live a “Spanglish” existence: they speak English but retain a Latin “flavor” in their way of life. Rodriguez offers a corrective here, however. Focusing on language completely misses his point. “I didn’t call you to preach the gospel in English or Spanish. I called you to preach the gospel” (66). Repeatedly, Rodriguez argues that Spanish pastors need to abandon their parochial tendencies and realize the central message of the gospel is at stake: “all of us are one in Christ Jesus.” Steeped in biblical imagery, Rodriguez’s strongest argument is that the church was never intended to be linked to an ethnic identity, to a language, or to a particular culture or nation. Christ died for all and demands our allegiance. Ministries that deny these central truths will not only dwindle in a globalizing world, they will fall short of the gospel’s intent.

The contributions to knowledge in this volume are many, but I will focus on two that I found particularly helpful. First, Rodriguez points out an odd combination: Latinos are almost entirely (over 90%) Christian in heritage, but they are by far the most impoverished people in the United States. They have the lowest education levels, the highest rates of unemployment, the lowest income (for men and women), and are the most likely to live in poverty. He compels churches to make social uplift a priority because these people need relief: health care, food, education, school supplies, housing, employment, and protection from exploitation. Ministries to Latinos must be holistic if they are to follow Jesus’ example. They must bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to captives, recover sight for the blind, and free the oppressed. A lopsided Christianity, Rodriguez argues, breeds perennial problems. “Many of today’s oppressed Latinos will become tomorrow’s oppressors” (116).

A second major contribution to acknowledge is chapter five, easily worth the price of the book. “The Local Church as Organic Seminary” shocked and challenged me. In essence, he argues that since Latinos cannot afford higher education, they turn to their pastors for training. Many Latinos dropped out of school or have criminal records. Many of them don’t even have GPAs or SAT scores. Additionally, why would an aspiring pastor go to seminary to learn about sophisticated European theologians when he would have to leave the trenches of ministry for six years? It would be a waste of time that could be better spent in service to his or her community. Rodriguez provides many examples of pastors who are effectively reaching people, reforming them, healing them, and building a future generation of leaders. They short-circuit the American education system in creative ways. A few institutions have clued in to this situation and now work alongside pastors, such as Gordon Conwell Seminary and Moody Bible Institute. But by and large, Latino pastors raise future leaders themselves. This was a wakeup call for me. It caused me to imagine how I might work with pastors in Los Angeles—my neck of the woods—to bring ministerial training out of the ivory tower and into the barrio. I don’t think a conscientious Christian academic can ignore the implications brought forth in this chapter.

Throughout the book Rodriguez provides exciting examples of pastors who are stepping up to make a difference. From Los Angeles to San Antonio, from Chicago to Miami, the future of the Latino church looks bright with these shining lights. Rodriguez’s insider views are helpful since he knows most of these pastors personally.

The church will be blessed by this thoughtful book, written by a committed Christian scholar.

Dyron Daughrity

Associate Professor of Religion

Pepperdine University

Malibu, California, USA