Are Short Term Missions Teams Worth It?
Recently I was musing about some of the things that would never have happened with individuals who have gone on our teams if I would have taken that advice.
There was the time when one of our teams found a displaced persons camp with about 15,000 thousand Dinka people in crisis because their USAID food deliveries had been held up for three months. The elderly and the babies were in danger of dying of starvation. Our team pooled the money we were saving to spend in London on our way home and bought a truck of load of food that held the camp over until relief shipments resumed. Our team possibly saved hundreds of lives.
Pam, my favorite nurse, who works in a hospital in Bellingham WA, has been on several of our teams. On one occasion she saved the life of an infant baby boy who would never have survived the week if she had not come along. On another team she saved a man by driving him 40 kilometers in the night to the hospital. On the way she stood over him in the bouncing land cruiser administering an IV that rehydrated him and saved his life. Tell those families that short term teams are of no value.
Karen our children’s pastor insists on going on every team that we take to Sudan. She has won thousands of Sudanese children to the Lord. Some of those she led to the lord when they were in primary school are now young leaders in our ministry.
Ryan a youth pastor that went on one of our recent teams was praying for the sick in a crusade meeting. A blind man approached the prayer team and asked them to pray. When they looked at him his eye was turned so far that you could only see a little corner of his pupil and his whole eye was clouded over. As they prayed, they watched the eye turn back to the center and the cloudy film left, the eye began tracking with the good eye and the man could see perfectly.
Stephen a senior pastor who had never been on a mission’s trip and couldn’t imagine what he would do on such an excursion; finally relented to my persuasion to come to Sudan with us. The same great prophetic gifts that he displayed at home came out in Sudan and he powerfully impacted many Sudanese. Sense that trip Steve has been to Africa several times and is now also doing crusades in India as well. His church has dramatically increased its commitment to world missions as a result of that first short term trip.
Then there is Mark the owner of a custom home building business who decided to go on a team to Sudan. Mark had been on a team to Peru years earlier when he was in his late teens but had never done anything more on any mission field. Once Mark returned from Sudan he just could not settle back into the routine. When he had been in Sudan he kept getting the strange sensation that this was really his home. Now back at home, home wasn’t home any more—a year later he had sold everything and was back in Sudan living full time as a missionary. He is now going on his fifth year in Southern Sudan. In the last two years God has broken out there with 35,000 people making decisions for Christ in village crusades and school assemblies, 12 churches have been planted, and hundreds of young men and women are emerging as kingdom leaders.
