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?

 

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.

 

25 Twitter Tips for College Students

About a month ago I wrote a post Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 5–How Twitter Can Catalyze Your Ministry.

I was really only focusing on one way college students (ministry) can use Twitter.

How about 25 ways?

Howard Rheingold had a link on his Twitter about the article 25 Twitter Tips for College Students.

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 7–Flickr, YouTube and Other Forms of Sharing and Streaming

This is actually the form of social media and online sharing that I am the least familiar with. I have only had a Flickr account for about 6 months, and I just upgraded to Flickr Pro. How many videos have I uploaded to YouTube? Only a couple. So this is new territory, but a territory nonetheless that I think ministries need to explore more often.

Let me start with a couple of reasons for why you should use these tools:

1. People like watching videos and looking at photos. Period. In my opinion, they are often more likely to do this then read a post or follow a debate on a forum page.
2. I think ministries need to start creating more of their own content. Why? One, because how many churches use stock photos of people on their websites that don’t even attend church. I usually hear, “Hey, I’ve never seen them at our church.” Or my favorite, “Our church is not that ethnically diverse.” That’s usually the typical Bible study photo that has a representative of every tribe, tongue and nation represented, and is nowhere close to the actual makeup of the church. Two, video and photos give great insight into people’s lives.
3. Shooting, editing, creating and uploading video and photo content has never been easier.
4. These tools are so easy to use that anyone in the community can create content and participate. You don’t have to leave it in the hands of professionals or video/photo department people. This does two things. One, allows for community participation. Two, reflects more the reality of a community, than stuff being created by one department. And when communities participate, the content doesn’t have the constant professional look to it, but looks more reality which is nice. Not that professional is bad at all…but raw footage from the community is great also.

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 6–Using Social Network Platforms as Your Central Hub

Social Networks have been one of the greatest things to happen to college ministry. There are many reasons why I have found them to be so helpful, but let’s begin with a video primer, because I know some of you, though familiar with social networks, may wonder their exact purpose or how they function. For that I turn to the awesome video series Social Networking in Plain English by Common Craft

I believe that it’s important to have your college ministry in a social network, and that that network should act as your central hub. There are several reasons for that as I want to discuss further with you.

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 5–How Twitter Can Catalyze Your Ministry

Despite some of the bad press recently regarding Twitter, I still must say that I absolutely love it. Sure there are days when things take way too long to load, or they don’t load at all. But despite all that, Twitter is still the first site that I log onto when I get on the internet in the morning. What other site is going to instantly bring me up to date with what everyone in my network (friends, family, co-workers, etc) is doing?

For a great step by step primer on Twitter, check out Matt Singley’s post.

Check out Twitter in Plain English series below:

Those are some great resources on Twitter. And in fact, lots of people are writing about Twitter so it’s not hard to find online some effective ways to use it. So what I want to focus on in this post is just a few ways how you can effectively use Twitter in your ministry…or as I say above, how it can catalyze your ministry.

Three Reasons to Use Twitter in Your Ministry

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 4–Using Facebook Effectively

When it comes to Facebook I’m definitely an evangelist, but it wasn’t always that way. I was one of those pastors who was somewhat fearful of online social technology. I was an early adopter in some ways, but when it came to working with college students I was definitely a late adopter to MySpace (my students had been on for more than a year), and I was also a late adopter to Facebook (my students had been on it for over a year as well).

By the time I got the nerve up to put us on MySpace, my students had already left it and were living online on Facebook. I still remember the Wednesday night in the Spring of 2006 when one of my student leaders got up to make an announcement at the end of the night. He announced how he had created our Quest Bel Air Global Facebook page, and I was thinking to myself, “What does that all mean?”, while I could hear the cheers from the audience as if saying, “Finally!”

Ever since then I have been a big fan and it has revolutionized communication in our ministry. And yet, there is more we could be doing with it, I just haven’t had the time and figured out the best ways yet.

So I have some thoughts, but I would also like to hear from you, and see if we can find out some even more effective ways.

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 3-Why You Should Be Blogging

Of all the topics I’m going to address in this series, this seems to be the no-brainer to me. I started blogging about 4 years ago at the encouragement of one of my students at the time, Jared Kleier. He set up a blog for me on our college website and away we went, though it wasn’t quite that easy. I remember writing and deleting one post after another because I had never experienced writing something for immediate consumption by the public.

All it took was some encouragement from others, and a few links from other bloggers, and then the blogging bug just seemed to take over.

Lots of people have various reasons for why those in ministry should blog. Mark Roberts has 18 Thesis’ for why pastors should blog. You can view his Powerpoint Presentation, Pastors as Blogger, at GodblogCon 2007.

Mark is just one good resource.

There are a lot of reasons why I think those involved in college ministry should blog, so let me give you just 11 (yeah 11) that come to mind and that I have found helpful reasons for blogging:

1. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate: A blog is simply in many ways about communication. When you blog, you communicate to others on a variety of topics.
   
2. Reiterate the Mission: When you blog, you can continually communicate, and therefore, one of the important pieces of communication is to continually reiterate and blog about the mission of the ministry. It’s a good way to remind students and keep everyone accountable, focused, and on task.
   
3. Encouragement: A blog is a great way to encourage those in your ministry, whether it be other staff, leaders or the congregants. Devotionals, posts of encouragement, thank yous, and recognizing others are just some forms.

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 2–The Purpose of Your Website

I think it’s important for college ministries to be forumlating a plan, and developing some ideas about how they can strategically use the internet to best serve their ministry.

There are a lot of topics that I could cover, and maybe 9 posts is too much, so I will try and keep them shorter than my last post.

Last week I posted Part 1–Simplicity, Flexibility, Cost and Speed. Bottom line: You need to have a design and plan that is simple (easy to navigate/aesthetically clean from a design point of view. You also should keep the costs low which is easy to do with all the free and inexpensive tools out there. And speed should be taken into consideration, mainly from the perspective of how fast can you integrate new technology to meet the needs and wants of your ministry. Way too many ministries plunge lots of cost and time into a site, that they no longer can adapt to changes, but are stuck with it for years to come.

Today I want to post about The Purpose of Your Website.

What is the purpose of your website?

This is an important question to begin with. What do you want it to do? What do you want people to come to the site and see and use? What should they walk away with? Sometimes ministries just build websites because they feel like they should have one, but never stop to consider its purpose.

Is it for college students to retrieve information? Is it for them to sign up for Bible studies? Is it for them to be able to visit forums and dialogue?

With these questions in mind we also need to keep in mind that with all the tools out there (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.) a website shouldn’t have to do everything, unless it can do it better than those services (which I doubt it can do).

So here are a few pointers that I have found helpful:

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 1–Simplicity, Flexibility, Cost and Speed

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.

Starting Out

There are a lot of good books out there on the new media, web 2.0, building web platforms, etc., but no book has challenged my thinking, and convinced me to turn in certain directions as did the “manifesto” Getting Real by the guys at 37 Signals, when it comes to the issues of simplicity, flexibility, cost and speed. I consider it a must read in this area.

Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.

Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).

Getting Real is staying small and being agile.

Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.

Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.

Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don’t.

When a college ministry decides to have an online presence there are a few things to keep in mind. Some of these things are:

• student participation
• the fast changing culture of college/university life
• finicky tastes/styles
• revolving body of students and leaders
• budget
• access/control
• etc. (these are just a few)