Each October I attend an annual conference sponsored by the Fellowship of Short-Term Mission Leaders. We bring together leaders connected to this movement that has become known as short-term mission (STM) to learn, dream, and improve what has grown into a millions-of-people, billion-dollar-a-year enterprise.
We have people directing ministries, practitioners, senior and mission pastors, authors, team leaders, host receivers, and service providers. The only folks typically missing are youth pastors.
That’s right. The leaders responsible for sending a great percentage of our short-term people around the globe are not just underrepresented. They are not represented at all. There was not one youth pastor in attendance at this year’s conference.
Where are the youth leaders?
If you are like me, wonder why not one person responsible for leading and inspiring students felt it was worth their time to receive four days of training to be better international short-term missionaries.
So I started asking questions. At first, I didn’t get a lot of answers. Most people seemed to say that youth pastors are a busy group. Or the cost (about $1000.00 once you add travel, lodging, and meals) was too much. Some said that as a group, the people we charge with providing religious leadership for our students are just bad planners, or averse to commitment.
Then I asked my friend Don Johnson who serves with SEND International, a mission agency that sends short-term participants around the globe in support of their long term missionaries. He said his ministry was asking the same question. So they did some research using focus groups.
They brought in youth pastors from big and small churches, urban and suburban, rich and poor. They asked questions, trying to find out what their ministry could do to serve the youth pastors of America regarding short-term mission.
After a day of questions, conversations, and evaluation, Don, and his ministry got their results. The answers may surprise and upset you. Youth pastors:
- believe they are suffiently trained to do short-term mission.
- do not want to participate in specialized training
- believe that those who invest their lives in short-term mission have little to teach them
I don’t know about you, but I find this troubling. I spent the better part of my conference talking to other leaders trying to disprove these results. Surely, I thought, these leaders had come across youth pastors who were seeking out training and leadership in this crucial area of their ministry.
Nope. Those who regularly encounter youth pastors reported that they saw a need for cultural training, developing cross cultural ministry partnerships, or effective debriefing of their short-term mission experiences.
This means that the people sending more American Christians abroad than any other group believe they are adequately trained and in no need of additional insight from some of the top short-term ministry minds in the country. Is it any wonder people are questioning the effectiveness, and indeed, the very idea of short-term missions?
I decided I needed to get on the phone. I wanted to be fair to my ministry brethren, as I too started in professional ministry as a youth pastor. In fact my first short-term mission experience was as a young, untrained youth pastor.
I wish I could say that my hours on the telephone produced results different from Don’s. However most of the youth pastors with whom I talked affirmed the results SEND found through their focus groups. However there are some complicating factors which I feel are relevant to the discussion.
- Youth pastors are incredibly busy, and often juggle a seminary reading list, multiple jobs, and competing interests at their home church.
- Many times they not being mentored, either personally or professionally, resulting in an isolated me-against-the-world attitude and a lack of spiritual maturity.
- Youth ministry programs often lack the resources to fund a trip, and pay for the expense of training and development.
The way forward
So what are our options? Is there a way to remedy the situation?
I believe so. However, the initial effort will need to come from the STM community. First, let’s quit banging our heads against the wall. It is time for us to become part of the solution. Again. Years ago STM leaders like Darryl Nuss, Seth Barnes, Roger Peterson and others saw a lack of quality and consistency in the larger short-term ministry world. Together they worked, pushed, and prodded the players into developing the US Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Ministry to address this issue. Maybe the time has come for leaders in the STM community to play a pioneering role again. For instance, what would happen if a group of STM leaders approached YouthWorks or another youth ministry and asked how we could help? What would happen if we approached youth pastors and other emerging leaders, and then struggled together, much as those early STM leaders did, to confront this issue and seek out some mutually beneficial solutions?
This could easily be done at the National Youth Workers Convention, Catalyst, or at The Orange Conference. If we want to be part of the conservation with today’s youth leaders, we need to be where they are. While these gatherings have a few workshops addressing STM in general, something this important deserves a better hearing.
Why couldn’t the STM community offer to participate, host, and lead a short-term ministry track or series of pre-cons at these gatherings? As missionaries, we don’t expect others to come to us and hear about Jesus. We shouldn’t accept that model here. We need to seek out those who need training and go to them.
Training as part of the mission
Second, let’s really hear what our partners in ministry are saying. Are youth ministry leaders really saying they do not value training? Or are they saying they are stressed by other trip preparations, jittery parents, and overwhelming schedules?
I have become convinced that if the demands of training are too difficult for youth leaders, they quickly drop training for the sake of expedience. In my conversations with youth leaders, one idea kept coming up: make training part of the mission. And you know what? It makes sense. Under this model, teams would actually pencil in time for training once they arrive at their destination. Incorporating training into the mission lets the local church and the global church ministry each do what they do best. The youth pastor gets his or her team there and has them prepared to learn. They have the proper clothing, not too much stuff, passports, permission slips, and most importantly, willing hearts and spirits. Then the local short-term missionary steps in and begins to build context for the team.
Imagine taking a day or two at the front end of a mission experience to pray, explore the local culture, and place your ministry in context. This would really connect what you are doing locally “over there,” and the upcoming days of service and mission to the larger global mission movement. This way the team arrives, and immediately begins to see and experience the culture. Training is not abstract; it’s connected to people and a place.
Changing the mindset
However, including training in the mission is only one part of the solution. In order to address the real problem in youth missions, we must address an underlying mindset.
Asher Sarjent, Director of Operations at Delta Ministries says that we need to focus more on mission education in our local churches, making mission a real priority. Here is how this plays out. Leaders lacking in mission experience or education tend to see missions as part of keeping up with the Jones’ family. The youth group down the street is going on a mission trip, so we need to do one too. Instead of seeing mission as the natural outgrowth of a growing faith relationship with Jesus Christ, we have raised an entire generation with the idea that they need to go on a mission trip instead of being on mission 365 days a year.
Note the difference. We do not need people who want to go on a mission trip. We need people committed to living missionally, whether they are in Los Angeles, Mexico, or China. In Deep Justice in a Broken World, Kara Powell asks “whether we are willing to view those we serve as ‘partners’ instead of ‘projects’ the other 51 weeks of the year.”
When we just take mission trips, God’s call on our lives to be witnesses to his glory is reduced to one or two week experiences. This is the result of bad theology, and according to Oscar Muriu of Nairobi Chapel, “leads to bad mission practice.” It is something we need to change in the church before it is too late.
Why are we going?
Finally we need to look at our motivations for participating in God’s mission worldwide. The U.S. Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Mission challenge us to place our focus on those whom we are serving. It states that any mission that has as its primary goal the discipleship of the goer-guest has failed the partnership.
Here is the real test for youth missions, because many youth programs are all about using mission to primarily disciple students. Understand what is happening when this occurs. Since the mission is first about the goer and their own spiritual growth, the focus is naturally inward. There is no need for any real training about those whom you are serving, because their lives are not your primary concern.
Mission that is focused on the host receiver, however, requires quality training and thorough preparation. Effective and faithful mission will only be possible when participants are spiritually mature, outward-focused, and willing to work in partnership for God’s glory.
I believe that if America’s youth leaders began to see overseas mission as more than a means to disciple their students, we would quickly see a whole new openness to training.
Is the problem critical? Absolutely. When the group responsible for sending out a majority of our short-term missionaries is not seeking training for themselves or their students, we’ve got a crisis.
Is it unsolvable? I do not think so. There are many godly and creative people looking for solutions. If we bring together youth pastors, short-term mission professionals, and the local church, and prayerfully seek God’s will, I believe that anything can happen.