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March - April 1998 The Editorial MF Behind the Scenes
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Sphere Five: Short-Term Missions Defined Short-Term Missions. These agencies are also of the non-derivative type—that is, they don’t necessarily depend on the previous or existing work of the Standard Missions. Everyone knows about Operation Mobilization and Youth With A Mission. Young people going on some short terms may never see a standard missionary or mission in operation even at a distance—-unless they are under one of the many (but smaller) short term programs of a standard agency. These represent the dotted line to the Standard Missions in the diagram on page 16. Most of the Standard Missions operate their own short term programs, in which young people do in fact work very closely with their existing work. These types of short terms are represented by the solid line connecting them to the Standard Missions. —RDW Short-Term Missions Represented George Verwer President, OM (Operation Mobilization) For us in OM, short-term missions has been so effective that we are no longer mainly a short-term agency. About one-third of our 2,700 adult workers are career workers, with a large percentage working among the more unreached peoples. As a movement, we have grown up with all the growing pains that this brings. We, however, believe our mini- and short-term missions are an equal part of God’s great strategy to reach the world with the Gospel. Forty years ago, three of us went to Mexico for just a few weeks and we have never been the same! Two of us have been in career missions ever since. We could give thousands of similar examples from across the world. We have seen that Short-Term Missions can work in harmony with longer-term missions, especially when there is a strong emphasis on prayer and basic spiritual life. We must have committed people who know the way of the Cross and the reality of the Holy Spirit. One of the dangers is that we get people on the field who are very immature and not that disciplined and committed. This, however, is even more scary when we find it among longer-term career workers. Another weakness of short-term missions is that when many really begin to be effective in the language, with a greater grasp of the culture, they have to return home. Many of those who want to return longer term are unable to get the backing of Acts 13 support. One of the most important positive factors is that short-term people can stimulate local people to take steps of faith and move into action. We now have about 600 workers in India, mainly Indians, and many of them are long-term, trained people. The whole movement there was birthed and initially sustained largely by short-term people. More than in many career mission situations, the nationals knew that the task of carrying the mission was mainly on them. Similar models can be seen across the world. When people are young and zealous, they easily make mistakes, but my experience these 40 years is that the really bigger and more costly mistakes (and sin like adultery) are often committed by the so-called longer-term experienced people. I believe trying to get each mission agency into a particular category is often an over-simplification when, in fact, a dynamic missions movement may have all these ways of working running simultaneously in parallel. It is interesting that for years the great attack on Short-Term Missions came from seminaries, yet research will show that during the same period those seminaries trained and sent out very few missionaries! On the contrary, an army of short-termers after their first time on the field returned highly motivated to study theology, missiology, communication, etc., and ended up in colleges and seminaries across the country. Quite a few of them are now leaders and teachers who have a much more balanced viewpoint of the many ways our God leads and guides. In my view, Short-Term Missions must never be separated from the tent-maker concept of missions because, especially in certain countries, this is the way short-term people go. The positives and negatives to this approach immediately move into play. Additionally, it is often hard to measure results when the target group is a low or non-responsive people. Such difficult frontline tasks will produce what some people call “casualties” as many return home after a few years, but God may have a different way of evaluating what has taken place. For sure, we all need a lot of grace and wisdom. Editorial Comment on Short-Term Missions: This category represents a massive increase in personnel going overseas—for both good and not-so-good reasons. Following the Second World War and the Korean War, the loss of confidence in the older generation laid young people open to kinds of involvement which did not commit them long-term. They distrusted standard ways of doing things. Adventure, due to increased affluence, was now defined in global geography. God raised up OM and YWAM as His agents to corral and conserve a whole generation, providing what young people needed, and using resources that would, for the most part, have been unavailable to the work of the Lord. I can say with George that if I had not gone on a three-week “micro term” to Chiapas, Mexico I probably never would have become a missionary. Had I not been so impressed by the work of the missionaries and the missionaries themselves I probably never would have considered it further. My own children have gone out on short terms all over the place, but they have not seen missionaries at work. They became missionaries despite their short-term experience. But, “50 years later” both OM and YWAM are astonishingly different organizations, which, as Verwer says, can hardly be classified except in their main activity. Both bulge with life and eagerness and are growing into many other kinds of mission activity. If they do it right they can avoid the criticism that they lead young people away from formal school goals, and both of them are working on ways to combine the short-term experience with their parents’ school expectations. Nowadays, it is important for Christian young people to grow up in the globe, not in just one country of the globe. For the most part their main direct contribution is not to missions but to the maturation process of thousands and thousands of young people. It is hard to know how we could have done without them. Like Intervarsity and Campus Crusade, their contribution to the quality of the new generation of Christian leaders is one of the most crucial contributions you can imagine.—RDW
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