college ministry

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Pastors and Technology: We Need to Re-Imagine Our Roles

Some of the commenters from my post yesterday got me thinking about some things that I just briefly want to comment on.

I ended my post with two thoughts:

Two things I think pastors, church leaders need to start wrestling with if they haven’t already:

1) Shift from geographical based ministry to online community/networking based. This does not mean people still won’t gather, but how, where and when they gather will change.

2) Technology is allowing the people/congregants to self-organize, collaborate and participate without having to go through traditional means and hierarchies of the church. I think this will change the role of the pastor drastically from the top-down leader, to more of a facilitator. I think that means we will see less and less traditional roles of pastors, and maybe even less full-time positions, etc.

Here is what I’m thinking. And I’m thinking these things not on any official research I have done, but more on conversations I am having, trends I am seeing, what I am reading, etc.

One of the issues about #2 is that people are concerned about a “consumer” mentality in the Church…more than we already have now. Also, what will be the role of the pastor.

Couple of thoughts. And they are simply thoughts, not completely worked out, but stuff I am hypothesizing and thinking on.

I think the “modularity” of Church that Andrew Jones talked about won’t drive more church consumerism, but will actually reduce it.

Why? Because churches used to be the resource for all information (phone numbers, emails, addresses, theology, Christian education, prayer chains, etc.) and churches controlled the market on the ability to gather and organize. Think Sunday worship, Wed. night Bible studies, etc, etc. People traditionally have relied on the Church as the resource to gather people and dispense information.

Because of this, people would drive miles and miles to attend the church that could attract, gather and dispense the information for them. Often this process has pulled people out of community…driving miles and miles to attend a church that is not rooted in their community where they live, etc.

I think that now people can easily organize, collaborate and dispense information themselves, they will no longer need to rely on the Church as needing to fulfill that role. I think there will be a desire for people to organize and gather in their own communities of locality, rather than feeling the need to drive to churches who used to have to do that for them. I am not saying there will not be church or people won’t go to them. They will, but I think church will look different than it traditionally does now.

In Short: Technology=Ability to Organize and Collaborate=Congregants Taking the Responsibility Into Their Own Hands.

What about the pastor? I think there will always be the need for a pastor, but what is a pastor is my question? Have we possibly gotten away from the Biblical role of the pastor?

In the NT we see the correlation between the shepherd and pastor. I have been told before by some pastors that we are to be ranchers…not shepherds. That has a whole other connotation in my mind.

One commenter said that it’s actually not the pastors who do the shepherding anymore, but the small group leaders, etc. I agree with him. It’s hard to find a pastor who shepherds.

I believe that with the ability to gather, organize and collaborate that technology affords us, it frees up the pastor to do the work of actually shepherding, rather than being the CEO, rancher, etc. I used the word facilitator in yesterday’s post, and what I mean by that is that the Church is beginning to have the ability to organize on their own, which frees the pastor up to facilitate the movement and truly shepherd the people.

In Short: Technology=Ability to Organize and Collaborate=Congregants Taking the Responsibility Into Their Own Hands=Pastor Can Truly Be a Shepherd.

Of course my own theology and praxis is shining through there, some of which you may agree with, and some which you may not agree with.

But for any of this to take place (which I think is a great thing for the Church), churches, pastors and ministry leaders are going to have to let go of the “power” they have traditionally held, and instead be a church and people that walk humbly amongst the people they are there to serve. Even questioning their roles as pastors in the Church.

In closing, I’m aware that some traditions/denominations already seem to embody this theology and praxis. I wonder if Wess Daniels can shed some light on these thoughts in light of the Quaker tradition that he is a part of.

If you are wondering what to read on some of these issues, here are a few suggestions. There are a lot more, but here are some that I have found helpful and challenging. Please add to this list and let me know what you are reading that has been helpful in thinking about the issues of technology in redefining the role of pastors and the Church, especially as it relates to gathering, organizing, collaborating, etc.

Check Them Out

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

Facebook for Pastors: How To Build Relationships And Connect With People Using The Most Popular Social Network On The Internet by Chris Forbes

The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging and Podcasting for Christ, edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

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Technology and the Future of the Church

There are a lot of amazing things happening in the world of ministry and technology. So much so that it’s hard to keep up with all of it. Some churches are on the leading edge of innovation, while others are still trying to get a website put together. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, below are four links that might interest you from this past week.

First:
Author, blogger, video guru and Church 2.0 leader Greg Atkinson has a great post which basically introduces the Digerati Team from LifeChurch.tv, SPOTLIGHT: LifeChurch.tv’s Digerati Team. Many of you don’t know that there exists such a team on a church staff. But I think that trend is changing, and as you read the article you will definitely see their fingerprints all over the world of ministry and tech.

Greg says:

You might be wondering: “What in the world does “digerati” mean?” To get to the bottom of something, I go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia reads:”The digerati are the elite of the computer industry and online communities.” From what I know of my friends Terry Storch and Tony Steward (and the rest of the Digerati Team) this fits them very well.

Maybe you don’t recognize the team, but you may recognize their work. Here is what the Digerati team has been up to and is responsible for:

* YouVersion (Web, Mobile, and iPhone)
* OPEN
* ChurchMetrics
* Internet Campus
* LifeGroups
* LifeShare
* OnePrayer

Second:
If you can make it to Pasadena, CA this Friday, then you need to so that you can attend Church Tech Camp. It’s the first in what I think will be a growing group of church leaders who are on the innovative edge of integrating technology and ministry, especially as it relates to social media, web 2.0 tools. If you can’t make it, then watch the live stream of the get together. Not only is the technology and its use in ministry innovative, but the organization of the camp itself is on the leading edge. Check it out and you will see.

Third:
Check out Andrew Jones’ Powerpoint presentation from his talk at GodblogCon, The Missional Church in the Internet Age. You can listen to Andrew’s podcast as well at Podcasts of Godblogcon 2008, as well as all the others from there.

Fourth:
Godbloggers Prepare to Invade ‘Sin City’

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Identity–>Boundaries–>Self Care

I’ve had a lot on my mind recently, and during that time I’ve been pretty convicted about several issues that I see interrelated.

It originally arose because of my dismay at the real lack of boundaries in ministry and what affect that has on those caught up in that boundary-less zone.

Boundaries can mean many things and cross many areas of our lives from the physical, the emotional, the psychological and the spiritual. In the area of psychology the lack of boundaries can often lead to a lack of differentiation between people, or the total opposite, enmeshment.

And what I have discovered in some of my teaching and training is that boundaries are connected to many things.

For example:

  • I see boundaries connected to our identity. How we see ourselves, or how we believe God sees us affect what kind of boundaries we set in our lives.


  • Our boundaries determine how we are then caring for ourselves.


  • And when we don’t care for ourselves, well, we often lack boundaries, and something is wrong at the root of our identity.


So you see, these things are interrelated and it’s important that we think and discuss them.

Over the next couple of weeks I want to explore these themes, and would also like your input and help.

  1. I want to discuss these things (identity, boundaries, self care) in the context of ministry. I am finding that those of us involved in ministry are often the worst at setting healthy boundaries, caring for ourselves, and often more confused about who we are.


  2. I want to discuss these things (identity, boundaries, self care) in the context of technology. Mainly social media. I think that those of us who are online a lot often don’t set proper boundaries, not caring for ourselves and those around us, and ultimately our identity is confused as we live in a state of flux between our online lives and those we live in person with our friends and families.



What do you think? Does this make sense? Am I way off target here, or do you see these things as issues as well?

What kind of boundaries do you see violated in ministry? What kind of boundaries do you see violated in regards to technology/social media?

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Who to Hire on Staff of a Church in a New Media World?

In light of much, much discussion about social media and ministry, and in light of many writing on online church community, I was wondering what you think of the post below, taken from Collide Magazine’s blog.

I Wouldn’t Hire You

If in some bizarro parallel universe I was an executive pastor (or whoever does the hiring at churches these days) and I was interviewing candidates for a ministry position that involved working with people between the ages of 12 and 30, I’d ask you about your vision and strategy for the ministry (youth ministry, college ministry, young adults ministry, whatever). I’d listen with great interest as you talked about discipleship, community, service, outreach, etc. I’d even ask you good questions about how you see those things fitting together and how you’d develop each of those initiatives. Then, when it was all said and done, and I’d heard your vision and strategy, I don’t think I’d hire you if you failed to mention your plan for leveraging social media. At the very least, I’d keep interviewing candidates in hopes of finding someone with similar passion and qualifications who was also social media-literate.

The ways in which 12-30 year-olds communicate and connect has radically changed in the last few years, and frankly, as someone who wants to minister vocationally to that demographic, I’d expect you to understand that. On top of that, there are too many free or inexpensive tools out there—ROOV, Twitter, Facebook Groups & Pages, MyChurch, Flickr, Vimeo, Ning, and on and on—for me to be enthusiastic about a job applicant who is unaware of them and their potential for ministry application.

If I’m choosing between several equally-qualified candidates, I wouldn’t hire you unless without a competent plan for leveraging social media in ministry to emerging generations.

What do you think? Am I overrating the importance of social media-literacy among would-be church staffers? If you are a would-be church staffer, have you thought through your social media strategy?

I was thinking about this issue and realized that there has always been criteria for employment in ministry. Those requirements vary depending upon church, denomination, ministry, etc., etc.

For example, when I was hired as a college pastor they were looking for someone with a Master of Divinity which I was just about to complete. Having that degree told the church hiring me that I was sufficient in areas such as Greek, Hebrew, Church History, Systematic Theology, etc.

But over the years I realized that things that weren’t required of me, nor my degree were necessary. Money management. Administrative skills. Counseling skills. Web 2.0 skills.

The questions for us are, “What is required for us to do ministry in certain contexts?” “What is required in the context of today’s ministry climate?”

Today, I think a certain proficiency in social media/web 2.0 tools is required for ministry, especially as we head into this new century. Now we can debate which skills are required for which ministries, and do all ministries require a certain minimal skill set.

But all things being equal (as Scott noted in his post), I would hire the person who had more social media/web 2.0 skill set, or who at least was willing to experiment and learn in that area. That may seem like a no brainer with all things being equal, but maybe it isn’t.

There are certain intangibles in ministry, and certain gifts that we all have that can’t easily be taught. Preaching, teaching, writing, management, conflict skills, etc. But,

Can social media/web 2.0 skills be taught?

And do you hire based on the possession of those skills or not?

As we become a people that live more of our lives online, I think the expectation will be there in ministry for pastors and leaders to be able to navigate themselves in that world. Just as pastors are to understand the context of the text and the culture of those sitting in the pew, they will be required to have as a language skill set that of social media/web 2.0. It will be like taking Greek and Hebrew, though I have a feeling Greek and Hebrew will be less and less taught due to the availability of online tools.


What skills set are looking for today if you were to hire for your ministry? And is social media/web 2.0 skills one of them?

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My 9 Posts for Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry (and ministry in general)

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry

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Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 9–Opening Up Your Ministry’s API

Opening Up Your API

An application programming interface (API) is a set of functions, procedures or classes that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs.[1]

* Language-dependent APIs are available only in a particular programming language. They utilize the syntax and elements of the programming language to make the API convenient to use in this particular context.

* Language-independent APIs are written in a way that means they can be called from several programming languages. This is a desired feature for a service-style API which is not bound to a particular process or system and is available as a remote procedure call. Source: API on Wikipedia

Yeah I know….probably too techy for most of us. I barely understand it. And if I don’t know what I’m talking about, please correct me. This is a learning process for me as well as I’m trying to stretch my mind on this topic.

But what I do understand is that many successful online applications open up their API’s for outside development. You Tube and Twitter are just two examples. If you are wondering on whether or not a company does this, you can usually find it at the bottom of the page. Another company such as Facebook has a place for developers who want to build an app on the Facebook platform.

Successful companies allow and encourage outside collaboration on their product and platform?

Yes. Why?

Because collaboration and voices from within a company or organization, or those voices outside of a company or organization can bring much innovation and ideas that those at the top of the company or organization’s hierarchy are often blind to or don’t have the skill themselves to achieve.

Hence, the reason why you have tons of Twitter applications that many people are using, and that Twitter didn’t develop themselves but that are highly successful. Twitterfeed, Tweetdeck, and on and on it goes.

Great example of how one company harnesses the creativity, energy, passion and innovation of thousands of other people.

What If Our Churches Did More of This

The parallel that I draw from this example in technology is that churches need to not “run”, “create”, or “plan” everything from the central office, but rather, need to harness the innovation and creativity from the dozens, to hundreds, to thousands of people they have attending their church.

Most churches function via committee, and most of the power is centralized at the executive staff level that only a handful of people have the “privilege” of sitting on. And I use the word privilege here lightly, because you know what I mean if you ever attend these meetings…they are sometimes more life taking than giving and innovation is usually not created here. There are exceptions I know.

Rather, I believe innovation is created, harnessed at the lower levels of a hierarchy, or where power is decentralized. There are many good books on this topic, but a few of my favorite are:

  1. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
  2. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
  3. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything



Fear of Losing Our Jobs

I think that there is a great fear in ministry to decentralize power and unleash the potential and creativity of the people we minister to and serve with. I get it. Because if we truly let go of power than maybe we soon realize that our job is no longer needed when tons of people are doing it for free…and possibly better. I was fearful of moving my former ministry The Quest (at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles) over to Facebook as the main way of communicating. Fear of losing control of content, of losing power and control of being the central hub of ideas along with our student leadership team.

But ultimately I think that the most Biblical thing we can do is give our power away in our church (Jesus obviously embodies this, the Sermon on the Mount), as I believe that’s what Paul was striving for in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12 in his teaching on the body.

If there are many members and only one body, then why is power so centralized in the Church? And the power I’m talking about is not usually centralized where it’s supposed to be…in the person of Jesus Christ as its head. Rather, we have centralized power to only a handful of people…usually men, and usually ordained, and usually among people who have been in a church setting alone for too long that innovation doesn’t really happen where it is needed.

Steps to Open Up Your Ministry’s API

There are a lot of things that need to be done in this area, but let me just suggest 5 steps (but keep in mind that each one involves a lot of other things…but that’s for another post).

  1. Decentralize Power: Haaa. If it were that easy. It’s not. But that would be nice. So let’s start with step 2.


  2. Evaluate Your Organization: (interview staff, observe, talk to “outsider”, etc.) find out where the “bottleneck” is occurring and where communication is lacking.


  3. Develop an Online Strategy: that utilizes tools for doing this effectively. It’s not good enough to use Facebook, Wiki’s, Twitter, etc., but there needs to be a strategy for using these tools and how these tools will help decentralize power and allow for more voices and innovation.


  4. Allow for Other Voices: Ministries need to invite other people to the table. Just not the people at the top, or those with the money and power. Let a wide spectrum of people within the church give voice, suggest and create.


  5. Collaborate: When you have set up the tools, developed a strategy, allowed for other voices, then we must begin to collaborate as a team. Only when we work together will we truly be in a place to move in a new direction, or try new things, or create “effective” ministries.


Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry

DISCLAIMERS: 1)There are better technical people out there concerning the web. 2) Do as I suggest, not as I do. I’m trying to keep up myself, and our college website reflects almost nothing of what I talk about. That’s how fast things change. 3) There are a lot of college ministries out there, and there are a lot of online tools to use, but it doesn’t seem like many are thinking through how to best utilize the new media and Web 2.0 (and yikes, Web 3.0) in their groups. 4) Knowing that things change overnight in technology, I hope to somehow impart to you some of the things I have been learning and wrestling with in these areas. You don’t need to be an expert in this area, just know enough to think critically about the issue. 5) If you have feedback, suggestions, criticisms, please comment. This is by no means all encompassing.

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Thinking Out Loud: Making Disciples in an Age of Information Extraction

Caution: Thinking out loud as the title says, so a bit of a choppy post. But I’m curious of your thoughts.

It is often true that we look back at how we did something as being the only way something can be done. For example, if I took all these classes (Greek, Hebrew, exegetics, etc.) in seminary, then every student should take them to get that Master of Divinity. Or if ordination required A, B, and C, then I have to do A, B, and C as well. But often, we don’t re-evaluate how things are changing, and what things need to change along with them.

I’ve been thinking about this issue for several reasons, but primarily because I think the Church, and most often ministry gets caught in a pattern of doing things the way they have always been done, and fails to be innovative in its thinking. Don’t get me wrong though, many Churches are innovative in ways that need to be innovative, and not just for the sake of it.

So my thinking out loud concerns the amount of information now available to us online, and will continue to become available online. How will that change how we do things?

Last month Wired Magazine ran an incredible series of articles called The Petabyte Age: Because More Isn’t Just More–More Is Different. In this series one of the articles was The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete, and it begins with this:

Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition. They are the children of the Petabyte Age.

The Petabyte Age is different because more is different. Kilobytes were stored on floppy disks. Megabytes were stored on hard disks. Terabytes were stored in disk arrays. Petabytes are stored in the cloud. As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies.

At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality. It forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later. For instance, Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics. It didn’t pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising — it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right.

And thanks to Guy Kawasaki I came across this article World’s Oldest Bible Goes Online. This is just another classic example of what was not available to us before will now be online. Think how information like this will change seminary education, pastoring, Church life, etc. as it becomes more available online.

Ever been sitting there, late at night, thinking, “Gee, I’d like to find a good Bible quote, but how do I know if it’s been accurately translated?” Well, you’re in luck! Portions of the Codex Sinaiticus, dating from 350 and thought to have been written by early Egyptian Christians, will be available on the internet courtesy of the Russian National Library, British Library and St. Catherine’s monastery in its entirety by July of next year. The oldest complete version of the New Testament, the original text may baffle those unfamiliar with ancient Greek, but translations in English and German will also be made available. “A manuscript is going onto the net which is like nothing else online to date…It’s also an enrichment of the virtual world — and a bit of a change from YouTube,” commented the director of the Leipzig University Library.

So what does all this available information mean to us as pastors and leaders in the 21st Century?

A few months ago I wrote a post called The Changing Seminary–The Changing Pastor where Scott McClellan of Collide Magazine
 interviews Craig Detweiler in the article Culture and Seminary. Here is a brief exchange:

Detweiler: No, that’s the right question. Seminaries were created in an era where ministers were prepared to have the most information. The ministers were supposed to be the most educated and the most informed about the Scriptures.

COLLIDE: The most literate maybe?

Detweiler: The most literate. And none of that has necessarily changed, but we’re now dealing with an age of too much information. And so, the job is to help people sort through all of the inputs to find out what matters amongst the avalanche of information. It’s about pointing people to reliable sources, pointing people to credible interpretations, inviting people into ongoing dialogue with their friends, neighbors, and coworkers around the pop cultural expressions. So, it’s moving the seminary education from pastor as most informed to pastor as most insightful because people no longer have an information problem. It’s not about lack of information. It’s about lack of discernment. Information is available to all. Wisdom and discernment remain rarer than ever.

Observation: As more and more information becomes available online we will need more and more discerning Christian leaders who can sift through all the information and apply/teach/preach it appropriately. But it seems to me that the Bible is not just information, or should not be reduced to that. I remember my Greek professor telling me that it’s not enough to simply know the meaning of a Greek word (caution to everyone who looks up the meaning online and assumes that’s how it is used in the NT), but one must understand the context of the word in that letter, how the author uses, it, etc, etc.

Question: So how do we cultivate discerning Christian leaders to not simply extract information, but grow disciples in such an age?

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POST: Re-Structuring and Moving Collective Muse

We define the four-step POST process for creating strategies–people, objectives, strategy, and technology–and reveal why starting with the technologies is a mistake.

That is the advice I wish I would have read 6 months ago as I was thinking about creating the college ministry network Collective Muse.

I came across it in the must read book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

In it they have developed the acronym POST which stands for the following:

P=People
O=Objectives
S=Strategy
T=Technology

When creating strategies for social media this is the process they recommend. Most of us think about the technology first, rather than thinking about the people who may use it. At least I do that. Hopefully not any more though.

But to create a community one was must think about the people first, and what objectives and strategies will help you accomplish your goal. Will your people create content, or do they prefer to respond? Do they respond, or do they just like to read? Lots of things to think about. I just thought about technology because I love college ministry and wanted to gather college leaders from around the country…not taking into consideration if it was/is the right tool for them, and whether or not there is something already available for them.

With that in mind I also realized through reading this book that fostering online community takes time, of which I don’t have tons of with two jobs, a family and lots of interests.

So I have decided to move Collective Muse to a Christian site that is built around gathering people around their passions…ROOV. What is ROOV? ROOV is:

Roov.com is an online community that connects like-minded individuals around shared experiences and passions within their church and cities.

You can now find Collective Muse on ROOV by going to ROOV and searching for Collective Muse, or clicking on this link when you are logged in.

I hope by moving Collective Muse to ROOV several things can be accomplished:

  1. I don’t have to be responsible for maintaining a whole network (coding, providing content, fixing bugs, etc.)


  2. The network doesn’t revolve around me, but is decentralized on an already existing site. I will still have to work part of this out though as I created Collective Muse on ROOV. But for now, I suggest people just add Collective Muse as a friend and we begin to gather around our passions related to college ministry.


  3. You will find lots of people interested in college ministry who never would have joined Collective Muse, and you will find other things you are passionate about.


  4. We are joining a new and exciting network (ROOV) which is devoted to gathering Christians around their passions, and moving them towards action. So it’s a good base to start with.


  5. By being a part of ROOV, hopefully it will be more than a group that people simply join because they are interested, but that our interests and passions drive us towards actions, and opportunities to gather.


Last, I know that there are many groups that you can join, and that by doing so takes time that you sometimes don’t have. So I apologize for moving Collective Muse off a Ning, a site which you spent time joining, but I appreciate your interest, and I know that in the long run that making this move is much smarter than staying on a site that is not very active.

Sometimes we so much want to create something new, but often there are already tools and sites that exist. And so sometimes it’s better to join those that are already doing a great work. ROOV is doing a great work and has a lot of potential. So those of us who love college ministry I hope we can gather around Collective Muse on ROOV as well as others who are passionate about this topic.

And hopefully, the more I do this, the better I get at it, and the less mistakes I make.

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Short Term Missions: Coupling Education and Service

This last March I led a team of 7 of us to Mexico City where we served with two of our partners Amextra and Partners in Hope. This was the second time that I took a team on this trip, and in all of my experiences in mission trips this has stood out as the most impactful for those who went. You can read about my previous post on this type of trip at A Different Kind of Mission Trip.

Here’s a blurb about these two partners that work together:

Partners in Hope

We facilitate transformation through an intense immersion experience in Mexico, called the PiH Seminar. The PiH Seminar includes 5-10 days of living in Mexico City, one of the largest cities in the world, a city, where chaos, poverty and injustice abound. Through the Seminar, participants experience first-hand the lives of people, the work of Christ- centered organizations who serve among the poor, and the hope that God brings through transformation.

Amextra

The Mexican Association for Rural and Urban Transformation, has offered continuous service to marginalized communities in Mexico throughout the last 21 years. We have been present in 11 of 32 states, in 300 different communities. We have accompanied more than 75,000 people in holistic transformation processes, with the support of more than 800 promoters.

There are a couple of unique things that have made this trip different than other ones:

  1. We live in a Quaker hostel in Mexico City.
  2. The trip is designed around seminars.
  3. The trip is part service, part education.
  4. The students are exposed to a variety of views (theological, political, economical, etc.)

I have been on no other mission trip that has been so disorienting in such an amazing way for students. They come back to their homes with a completely different outlook on the world, God, etc.

This is just an example of how trips can be different. We based this trip heavily on education, coupled with service. The goal is that the educational piece will really give great depth to the service, therefore causing a deeper transformation of their thought and practice.

What are the key components of a great, transformational mission trip? Give an example of what you have done?

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Short Term Missions: Are They a Waste of Money and Non-Effective?

Andrew Jones had a post the other day on “Are Short Term Missions a Waste of Money?.” Andrew has 10 very good responses, which stem from the article in the Washington Post called “Churches Retool Mission Trips.”

Here are some thought provoking and interesting statements from the article:

Critics scornfully call such trips “religious tourism” undertaken by “vacationaries.” Some blunders include a wall built on the children’s soccer field at an orphanage in Brazil that had to be torn down after the visitors left. In Mexico, a church was painted six times during one summer by six different groups. In Ecuador, a church was built but never used because the community said it was not needed.

The curriculum, for example, warns missionaries to think about their attire in conservative countries and what kind of message they’re sending when they bring expensive cameras and other electronics to poverty-stricken villages.

Despite the concerns with trips abroad, their popularity is soaring. Some groups go as far away as China, Thailand and Russia. From a few hundred in the 1960s, the trips have proliferated in recent years. A Princeton University study found that 1.6 million people took short-term mission trips — an average of eight days — in 2005. Estimates of the money spent on these trips is upward of $2.4 billion a year. Vacation destinations are especially popular: Recent research has found that the Bahamas receives one short-term missionary for every 15 residents.

I’ve been on and led about 12-14 short-term missions trips over the last 10 years or so and I have always been an advocate of them. They have always been very transformative experiences for me and the team that I’m with, but I think the article raises some great points, which I and others have been thinking about for a long time.

Are short-term missions good stewardship?

Are they beneficial to the hosting communities?

Are short-term trips more Christian tourism than anything?



What do you think:

Have you been on a short-term mission trip?

Where did you go?

What did you do?

Was it effective?

Was it good stewardship?

In the next day or so I want to talk about one alternative to the “go to a foreign country to build a house” approach to missions. But if you are curious about this topic you can go to Christianity Today where they ran a series “Are Short-Term Missions Good Stewardship?”

You can also follow the post and comments over at my blog.