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TechnoratiMission trips running just a few weeks overseas have been questioned for their effectiveness in impacting the indigenous people for long term. This week, one missions agency plans to meet the challenge to help raise the bar on short-term missions.
Short-Term Evangelical Missions (STEM) International is gathering around 150 people together for its fifth annual conference in Minneapolis, which began Thursday. Participants are coming from 26 churches, eight colleges and some 16 agencies from across the nation for three days of training in every aspect of short-term missions.
Training covers the "pre-field, on-field and post-field" phases to aid short-termers be more effective and do no harm when doing their respective mission works, according to Dana Bromley, vice president of communications for STEM.
"They commit to do short-term missions better," she said.
Bromley agrees with both Christian leaders who say short mission trips may be ineffective as well as those who find it a good catalyst for missions on a long-term basis.
Earlier this year, youth organization workers and professors pointed to the hundreds of thousands of students who serve on short-term mission trips but do not commit to long-term ones nor make a significant impact in the foreign areas. Sherwood Lingenfelter, provost of Fuller Theological Seminary called attention to the need to partner with what God is already doing rather than introduce something new during a forum hosted by the National Network of Youth Ministries.
Similarly, STEM does not come up with their "own agenda," as Bromley noted, when doing mission works. Instead, the agency works with native pastors with whom they have already established years of relations.
"We present ourselves as servants," she commented.
STEM sends more than 500 people every year on one- to three-week mission trips. The missions organization has been training and sending people of all ages around the world and publishing resources for the past 20 years.
