Paul Borthwick holds a doctorate in Cross-Cultural Ministry from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and teaches missiology at Gordon College near his Boston home. He's the author of How to Be a World-Class Christian and 14 other books. Borthwick has coordinated over 100 missions trips all over the world. He also serves as a senior consultant with Development Associates International. Borthwick spoke with Round Trip Missions about the future of short-term missions and about how to best serve with our Christian brothers and sisters in the Global South.
How would you describe the present state of short-term missions?
When I think about short-term missions, I recall a comment someone made about the People's Republic of China: "Anything you say about China is true." Well, almost anything you say about short-term missions is true, too. On the positive side, is it producing new missionaries? Yes, there are cases of that. Is it giving people a greater vision, and taking people across cultures into places they would never have gone on their own? Yes, absolutely.
But on the negative side, are there places where it's doing cultural harm? Yes. Are there places where people are coming in with incredible cultural insensitivity and maybe undermining the long-term work that's being done? Yes. So short-term missions is all over the place. It's big, it's untamed, and the results, I would say, are kind of random at the moment.
What's the most common mistake that churches make in short-term missions?
Definitely a lack of long-term planning. If short-term missions guaranteed long-term results, then Mexico would be the most Christian nation on earth, and Tijuana would be the Holy Land. I heard a statistic recently that 30% of all teams from the United States go to Mexico. Now, I'm not saying there aren't needs in Mexico. But from a long-term, strategic point of view, that's not the place that needs the most new evangelical ministry.
I'll give you an example from my own church experience. Our long-term strategy was to invest in the 10/ 40 Window. Yet all of our short-term missions trips were going to the Caribbean and Central America. So we had these people coming back with a heart for Haiti, and we couldn't support them long-term because our strategy was for North Africa.
In other words, we were not thinking about the big picture. Many times, short-term thinking goes along with short-term missions. When you ask churches and missions agencies what their long-term kingdom goals are, you usually find them coming up short.
What's the best thing you have seen short-term teams accomplish?
Like Peter's encounter with Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, the most important thing is a change in the participant's view of another culture. In other words, it can expand people's picture of the Christian family.
I don't think we should tally up conversions, because that's sometimes a little bit sketchy. I don't think we should count the number of buildings painted for Jesus, or anything like that. I think the most significant thing is that it changes the lives of the participants and the hosts. Everybody can find out they have a bigger family than they thought they did.
If you could advise church leaders to do any one thing before a trip to prepare their teams for success, what would it be?
The most important thing is to get people involved in some kind of local cross-cultural ministry, so that they don't have to go 10,000 miles to find out they don't like folks from other cultures. I live in New England, and many teams go from our area to Haiti, totally overlooking the fact that Boston has the third-largest population of Haitians in North America. Why is it that we're so willing to serve in the Caribbean when we aren't willing to serve across town?
Churches should provide some sort of local cross-cultural service before a trip—you can call it a "simulation." People will see if they have what it takes for ministry to other people groups. When they go overseas, they'll be more culturally sensitive and possess the attitude of a servant.
What sort of short-term projects have the greatest potential to serve the long-term needs of indigenous ministries?
Any project that is designed to fit into a long-term, local plan is going to have a stronger impact. In other words, the indigenous ministry shouldn't just be creating a project so that you can come visit them: Let them tell you what they need most.
Our ministry had a partnership in Trinidad where the local leaders targeted a couple of villages for church planting. They used our teams to do a Vacation Bible School. That brought out the children, because as foreigners, we naturally pulled in a crowd. But the local Christians were the ones following up with those who came, and within two years, they had planted a church. So we were one part of a local initiative.
Of course, things don't always work out that neatly. Sometimes the missionaries don't have a clue about what's really needed, or the local people don't know how to speak up, and they'll just do whatever you ask them. It might take three or four years to figure things out. That's why I encourage churches to keep sending teams back to the same location, year in and year out. Even if you go for the wrong reasons the first time, the relationship you've built will minimize future problems.
What new global trends are likely to impact the way short-term missions is done in the future?
Probably the most significant trend would be technology, and it's both a positive and negative influence. Positively speaking, short-term teams today come back with more ability to stay in touch with the people they served alongside of. We don't write as many letters as we used to, but if you can use the internet to maintain contact, that's positive.
Unfortunately, technology can also have a negative impact. It's getting increasingly difficult for Westerners to be emotionally present where they're serving. Rather than becoming culturally immersed, they go out during the day and do ministry, but come back at night to check their Facebook pages and update their blogs. They don't become part of the local culture because technology is keeping them connected to home.
Technology is always a good news-bad news scenario, and I'm as guilty as the next person. I might be in the most remote area, but if there's web access, I'll be checking the Red Sox score.
Can you describe what the short-term missions movement might look like 10 or 20 years from now?
I think down the road, you're going to see "more places going to more places." Short-term missions is a distinctively middle class / upper class endeavor. Generally speaking, you don't think about traveling when you're living on food stamps. So as developing nations like India grow a larger middle class, people from every nation will go to every nation.
But that's as far as I can go in making predictions. I don't think any of us who were involved in the early stages of short-term missions, back in the 1970s, could have imagined a time when more than two million people would take a trip each year!
How do Christians in the Global South view the short-term missions movement? What are their hopes for the movement's future?
In preparation for a talk I was giving to short-term leaders, I emailed some of my non-western friends and asked, "If you were going to speak to this group, what would you say?" The number one answer was, "send us smaller teams for longer periods."
If you send a team of six to work with six people from the host country, you're much more likely to become "culturally embedded" than with a team of forty. Everyone will learn a lot more. And trips nowadays are getting so short. Back in the 1970s, "short-term missions" was anything under four years! Then it was anything under six months. Now it's almost no time at all.
We had a team from our church that went to Malawi for ten or twelve days. At least two of those days were spent on airplanes or in airports, and then there's jet lag. So how much time do you have to actually participate in the local culture? I would say not much!
Americans tend to see partnerships from a task perspective—we come together for a period of time to accomplish a goal. We're thinking, "We have to get something done for Jesus." But Africans (for example) see things from a family perspective. We come together, we make a commitment to each other, and we're family forever. When North Americans come in with a "dive-bombing" perspective of doing our work and going home, the locals just have to grin and bear it.
Not everyone can take a trip overseas. How can short-term teams bring some of the benefits of a missions trip—like an increased awareness of the developing world's needs—back to their home congregations?
Teams need to think about that before they even go overseas. They should be asking themselves, "How are we going to bring this back to our congregation?" Teams ought to give their reports in digestible chunks, not in a deluge of data that people can't really process.
Whatever you do, give the participants time to debrief before they report. For example, after coming back from working among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, teams reentering western culture can be agitated and a little angry. They may tend to scold the church instead of inviting them to learn. So short-termers need time by themselves before they talk about it publicly. They can frame it in this context: "We want to introduce you to family that you didn't know you had." That way, it's more invitational than confrontational, and it can have a greater impact on the church long-term.
George Halitzka is a freelance writer based in Louisville. Visit him online at writingbygeorge.com.
