I wanted to encourage you about the importance of short term missions with a couple of things because some people don’t like them. If
you have not read of the story of little Jason in the Philippines. He
was born with a cleft lip so bad that he wouldn’t be able to really
survive, Katy on my team found him and sent this huge blog about him and
his story for this baby and a doctor at home read it and contacted
another doctor in the Philippines he knew and six months later Jason had
a free surgery and was fixed. That was a God ordained moment I believe, and he used people like Katie from America to step out and people from America who had contacts and the finances to get it done. It was life changing. That’s just one story.
Short term
missions does have it’s limitations that you can’t be somewhere for a
long time, but I hope even my story of Esther and Chalice in Kenya helps
prove its importance. Maybe we’re not there for a long time but like
the two previous examples God used us to meet them and we were able to
change lives individually while we are changed. It makes it all worth
it. Even this month a lot construction work needed to be done for the
people we are with and they were able to have seven people come before
winter and get a lot of it done. And for me considering future missions
or even sending teams, it gives me a good perspective on the culture I
can really relate too and have contacts to send teams too in the
future. Like the World Race, we have met people and changed lives
because people back home have lived out the same vision in prayer and
support. And people we’ve came in touch with around the world have been
changed an individual at a time. Even a testimony in front of many
Africans can make a huge impact. Long term missions has it’s value of
“wide long term investment”, but even short team is worth it if you can
have one person know Jesus, out of human trafficking, save an orphan, go
back home and start something to reach them with the money that makes
it easier in America, or make you fall in love with a place to go back
there for a long time and be change.
But if you feel called to “missions” then do missions. Don’t use short
term missions as a reason to call yourself a “missionary” I say. You’re
a missionary wherever you are, in America or Tanzania. In Thailand I
heard a person from another missions organization we worked a week with say, I get to travel the world and top it off with sharing
Jesus. And then I thought, are you using Jesus to travel the world? Or
are you sharing Jesus and God calling you to this season right now?
Sometimes we think the “adventurous life” has to be something like going around the world, but if God called you to pray for the nations in a closet overnight it can be just as meaningful. If your desire is to see the world and using missions as a way to do it; then reconsider. It’s a motive and heart issue. But if you feel called long term then
sometimes people are afraid of that big “C” word: commitment. So we can
easily trade a long term generational investment somewhere with many
trips around the world to “serve God”. Do missions with a purpose where
you are.
So if you have the opportunity to go, it’s not a moral decision. It’s always good and we are called “to go” however that looks. So step through unless the Lord closes the door. We can do it when we step out in faith and it’s His will, we have the resources and money/logistics should NEVER be an issue when you have the Creator who owns it all on your side.
Our organization leader Seth Barnes wrote a good blog at sethbarnes.com
about this today about how it affects us personally who go:
only way, simply because we’ve never experienced any other ways. STMs
expose us to new ways of doing life and to those who, though different,
don’t seem so strange.
little worlds need a dramatic overhaul that can only come as the
pettiness of our concerns is juxtaposed with the needs of others.
to the heart of a hurting person and how to pray for them. Most of us
need more experience. When Jesus talks about “loving one another,” he’s
talking about ministering to the places where we hurt.
Do you need to shop as much as you do? It’s a problem in the west. To
reach our destinies, we need more simplicity, not stuff.
no longer hear ourselves think, much less God whisper our name? We
need to get off the merry-go-round of life and engage with God’s
priorities more often than we do.
of your comfort zone and resources, to a place where you’re forced to
depend on God in new ways. This dependence is the posture God is waiting
for in order to grow our faith.
your faith. If your world is feeling claustrophobic and your faith is
stagnating, chances are you need the kind of life-changing experience
that Jesus gave his disciples when he began activating them on the first
recorded STM experiences (read Luke 9 & 10). They came back with
stories about how this power that they’d seen in Jesus had become their
own and they were ecstatic. Maybe that’s what he wants for you too.
