What does your church aim for in its short-term mission trips? Maybe you try to find one or two projects you can accomplish with a small team and focused effort. Maybe you shoot for evangelism—meeting as many unbelievers as possible in a short period and in a unique place. Or maybe you spend the whole time looking for an experience—a personal encounter, a story, or a picture—to stir up the rest of the church back home.
One kind of trip I think most churches should prioritize may not accomplish any of those goals. It’s something your missionaries may not ask for. It may not even get people back home excited. In fact, it could mean spending resources and time on a trip where you can’t bring many others along—if any at all.
Less exciting, less interesting, and less people. I can imagine you’re anxious to learn what kind of amazing mission trip I’m selling here. In short, I’m suggesting churches should consider taking mission trips where the sole purpose is to encourage missionaries.
Exhausting Trips
Faithful missionaries work hard in hard places. At least one reason you should want to go on a trip, I presume, is to encourage them. Who among us would ever say, “No thanks, I’m not interested in encouraging missionaries”? Yet the reality is, when you bring a group from your church, this aim most often falls to the side. Missionaries can be the collateral damage of such mission trips.
Faithful missionaries work hard in hard places. At least one reason you should want to go on a trip, I presume, is to encourage them.
I live in a city that has its fair share of short-term trips. Let me tell you what your missionaries may not be willing to: even the best mission trips are exhausting.
When you bring a group of people who don’t speak the local language, don’t know anyone other than one or two families, and may have never taken public transportation before, it requires a certain level of preparation and hand-holding from your missionaries. And many of your missionaries feel the weight of being good hosts more than you may realize.
That’s not to say those trips with grand goals are bad. But there’s a cost to them. It’s rarely a cost you pay but one your missionaries will as they take time away from their regular responsibilities, their families, and their own ministry opportunities. Please don’t neglect such trips! But remember that, like most good things in life, they come with a cost.
I know missionaries who’ve worn themselves out hosting one U.S. church group after another. I know missionaries who’ve finished hosting a group from their home church and yet were so busy facilitating they never had time for undistracted conversation with anyone from the group.
Care and Counsel
In light of this, isn’t it worthwhile to consider taking short-term trips with the exclusive goal of encouraging the missionaries you support? One church supporting our ministry makes it a priority that one or two elders will visit once a year (global pandemic notwithstanding). They don’t stay for too long. Usually they just share a meal with our family and then stay after the kids go to sleep. Then we have time for intentional, focused conversation about how our souls are doing. The goal communicated by this is simply to have uninterrupted time with us.
These are conversations where we’ve received counsel about ongoing trials. We’ve been encouraged to persevere when we don’t feel like we have much left. We’ve heard practical advice about things like buying a house or preparing a will—important issues that affect the long-term trajectory of our family and issues complicated by living outside our home country.
To get this kind of counsel from the elders of a church that has known us for a long time, from those who love us and know some of the realities of life both here and back there, has been invaluable. Where we live, there aren’t many avenues to get this kind of godly input. Sure, we have Zoom and FaceTime. But there’s something different when you have someone you know in your living room, sitting, listening, laughing, asking questions, giving a report about his church, crying, rebuking, and praying with you.
You Can Do This
These kinds of mission trips are especially valuable when elders from supporting churches make time to visit. But it doesn’t have to be elders. One of our supporting churches has a member who’s a long-time friend of several of the expat women in our congregation. She’s a particularly encouraging sister. And her church has facilitated her coming to visit these long-term workers repeatedly, simply to strengthen and support them.
Isn’t it worthwhile to consider taking short-term trips with the express and only goal of encouraging the missionaries you support?
These kinds of visits aren’t flashy. But they’re mission trips that just about any church can do. Sure, they aren’t going to give you hands-on ministry opportunities in a different culture. But that doesn’t make them any less valuable. Instead, you can be like Onesiphorus when he visited Rome and immediately searched out Paul, who had been feeling abandoned by everyone until Onesiphorus came and refreshed his spirit (2 Tim. 1:16–17). Similar trips by Epaphroditus and Epaphras encouraged Paul in some of his darkest days, showing him the love of their congregations back home (Phil. 2:25; Col. 1:7–8).
When the author of Hebrews exhorted his audience not to forsake gathering together, the purpose was to “stir up one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24). Physically being with other believers leads to encouragement that’s necessary for us to persevere to the final day. Given your missionaries can’t regularly gather with your church, why not choose to send some of your most encouraging members to spur them on? It could be just what your missionaries need in order to endure.
The Gospel Coalition