MY HEART started to beat a little faster as I sat in the meeting listening to the presenter. I could feel beads of sweat forming on my brow and flashes of me updating my resume and cleaning out my desk at national offices crossed my mind. The topic of discussion: Why short team mission trips don't matter. Being the Youth in Mission Co-ordinator for the Presbyterian Church in Canada and a person whose livelihood is based around sending short-term mission teams, you can forgive my nervousness and desire to yell "heresy" at the presenter. Even though I had always had nagging suspicions in the back of my mind whether what I was doing was really having a lasting impact, I could always point to a few success stories to ease my conscience.
Now before I get too far let me assure you that I do believe in sending short term mission teams; and, in the end, so did the presenter. But the problem that remains for us to solve is how can this way of doing mission leave a lasting impact on the participants and the communities they visit?
I guess some people do go to the mountain-top, have a strong experience, then go back down the mountain and forget what the view was like at the top. This can be certainly true of a mission experience. While on the mountain we start to take a new shape only to find that we do not fit our old lives and very often settle back into our day to day routines, the experience, only a memory.
On the other side, what about the communities who hosted these wonderful people? Are they left only with a painted building and the promise of an email that may never come? The real question is how do we keep the fire that was lit going?
I prescribe three things, which are by no means revolutionary, to tend the fires of mission: Learn, Do, Go!
First, learning about another culture, its history, struggles and celebrations, gives us a basis to understand and the kindling to allow God to open our hearts. Second, working or "doing" together in a genuine partnership can be the spark that ignites the fires of compassion. That initial burst of flame grows higher as we share in a common ministry together. Last, and most important, we must go further. Any fire will die if it is not given something more substantial to feed on. As we return home we must respond to what we have seen and what God is calling us to. We need to be challenged to put our faith into action. I don't see a short-term mission experience as an end in itself but as a beginning of a rip-roaring inferno.
The following articles are written by youth and young adults and share how they put Learn, Do and Go into practice. I hope they will inspire us to take to heart the saying "as a flame exists by burning so the Church exists by mission."
