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Through the 1980s and 1990s, passion for short-term international missions projects steadily grew among college students. Since 1983, for example, Seattle Pacific University has trained more than 1,300 students for cross-cultural missions through its short-term SPRINT program.

Today's students, able to witness so much human suffering via television and the internet, also care passionately about social justice. They see Bono, Prince Harry, and Angelina Jolie on missions, of sorts, to Africa to help the poor, and want to do likewise.

"A growing awareness of justice issues is the mark of this generation," says Jim Tebbe, InterVarsity's director of missions and Urbana '06, which is scheduled for St. Louis in December. "For that reason, we are seeing more Christian graduates wanting to give some social service to people through missions organizations."

Many Christian organizations prepare students for global, short-term missions. The one I work for, InterVarsity, provides hands-on missionary experience through its Global Urban Treks program. On these Treks, college students and recent graduates live for a summer in the slum communities of Manila, Cairo, Lima, and other global cities, where they work with local churches and established national Christian ministries. After returning to the United States, participants debrief and consider God's calling on their lives.

Last year Erin Hall, an InterVarsity student, ministered in a garbage dump outside of Cairo. There she was gripped not only by a deep compassion for the poor, but by her own emotional reaction to what she experienced. "I can't understand how they live in such conditions with no electricity, no running water, and in piles and piles of endless garbage," Erin wrote in her journal. "To tell the truth, I'm depressed by the memory of their homes and streets, unsure of how to pray for them, and unsure of what God is telling me through them. … I'm glad that God is larger than my understanding."

Some students on short-term missions are ill prepared for the hardships of international ministry. After a few days without regular showers, American-style food, and comfortable beds, some students feel disoriented and want to go home.

David Livermore, executive director of the Global Learning Center at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, says, "Some young people go on these trips because they believe the experience will be an adventure. And some parents urge their children to go on these trips because they hope a foreign missions experience will somehow change their child's heart."

Some hearts do get changed. In an InterVarsity survey, only 28 percent of students participating in a Trek said that they have joined or will join a long-term ministry outside the United States; however, 51 percent said that they had increased their financial support for worldwide missions.

Despite the obvious limitations of short-term service and a lack of preparedness, this generation is making positive contributions to the missions movement. One new trend, growing out of young people's profound desire for community and a sense of belonging, involves working in teams rather than as traditional "missionary Lone Rangers." Teams, according to Tebbe, compensate for individual weaknesses and offer young people the flexibility of providing a long-term missions presence to a particular place even as short-term team members come and go.

Scott Bessenecker, InterVarsity's director of global projects, calls students who have a call to a lifestyle of simplicity "the new friars." Servant Partners, Word Made Flesh, and InnerCHANGE are a few of the growing number of organizations that prepare and send young people to live in poor urban neighborhoods.

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September 2006, Vol. 50, No. 9