Once again, I have picked the brain of Dr. Charles Fielding, a missions strategist and author of the book, PREACH AND HEAL:  A Biblical Model for Missions.  Edmond’s First Baptist is committed to doing partnership missions by establishing churches and supporting existing mission work through volunteer teams.  We need to continually evaluate what we do to make sure that we are properly motivated and trained to have the greatest positive impact.

Dr. Fielding writes that “the primary reason for the [mission] trips for many churches is to change the volunteers, resulting in increased giving for missions and perhaps leading some church members to become apostolic workers” (p. 119).  Fielding admits that the volunteers will be changed; but he says that changing church members’ lives is not the purpose for sending teams on mission trips.

“The reason for all [missionary] work, short- and long-term, is to make disciples and establish a healthy church in a previously unreached community.  Non-disciples are not able to help in this purpose and are likely to send the wrong message to nationals.  An authentic disciple is decidedly different from other humans, and an important purpose of short-term teams is to model that difference” (p. 119).

Dr. Fielding argues against sending immature or unsaved people who are not true disciples on mission trips.  When we do, he says, we increase the workload of our hosts (the actual missionaries on the field), and we run the risk of creating problems through immature behavior.  As a veteran of several international missions trips, I can vouch for the statement that immature and self-centered “Christians” can create problems for team leaders and career missionaries.

This demands that pastors and missions committees exercise great wisdom in sending teams of volunteers to missions sites.  The last thing we want to do is to drain the time and resources of the men and women who have given their lives to the field where we will serve.  Also, we need men and women who are skilled in prayer and who are already modeling the life of discipleship and self-sacrifice.   

Dr. Fielding list seven core values for short-term missions teams (p. 121):

1. They only bring authentic disciples.

2. They are known by their prayer.

3. They are not burdensome to their hosts.

4. They treat national disciples and [missions] workers as their leaders.

5. They are servants, surrendering any personal agenda.

6. They do something for the host missionaries that they cannot do for themselves.

7. They achieve objectives that move the missionary team closer to church planting.

Dr. Fielding notes that some career missionaries do not like volunteer teams.  “With poor planning, volunteer teams actually can be a hindrance to the work.  Volunteers may go home frustrated, feeling like missionaries don’t really do anything, and [missionaries] may have to spend hours in repentant prayer because of their thoughts about a volunteer” (p. 123).  By commitment to core values as listed above, however, volunteers can not only experience the excitement of hands-on missions involvement; they can also encourage the career missionaries and strengthen the work of planting churches and making disciples on the mission field.

Pastor Alan Day