How To Know If Your STM Trip Is Too Risky

Recently, a short-term mission team from New Zealand was in a car accident in Kenya and three team members died. It was nothing short of a tragedy. From an earthly perspective, I can’t imagine why people who sacrificed to serve God would die what seems a senseless death. While most trips go off without a hitch, tragedies can happen whether a team is in a safe place or a dangerous one. As leaders in short-term missions, what do we do with risk and danger?

This brings up an interesting dilemma. If God has called us to something, should the risk even matter? The argument can be made that the very fact that one would consider risk shows that he or she should not participate in a trip. However, we are also the overseers of precious lives that trust our leadership. We would not be good stewards of our team if we took them into risky situations unnecessarily. So how do we go about managing risk and taking care of our people? Here are some ideas to consider as you plan and even make policies.   

First, you have to decide as an organization or church how much risk you are willing to take on. At DELTA, we classify ministry locations into mild, medium, high, and critical. Some groups might find they don’t feel comfortable with anything more than a medium while others might be ok with a high or a critical field location. What is important is that you have considered this and made a decision on what is acceptable before you are faced with the specifics of a particular team.

Once you know your risk threshold, develop a system for gathering information. Consider a service like Frontier Medex that sends daily updates of current events so you are informed of new incidents. The US State Department as well as other international state departments can have some good information too. Make sure you also include local sources of information like local news outlets, missionary partners, or others who have first-hand knowledge.

Second, develop a way of quantifying the risk. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard objections to mission trips over safety, but the person can’t vocalize what makes the trip dangerous. The best way to handle generic objections is to have information. I use a Risk Assessment Tool that allows three people to name the 3 or 4 biggest dangers and evaluate both the likelihood it would happen and the severity of the impact if it happened. For example, getting kidnapped might be low on the likelihood but high on severity. Contracting an intestinal bug might be high on the likelihood but low on severity of impact. Once the risks are defined, you can make a plan to mitigate them.

Third, have a crisis and contingency plan. Don’t wait for something bad to happen to figure out how you would react. A good crisis and contingency plan includes an emergency response team. It should also spell out the duties of the emergency team members, procedures on notifying families, who will monitor the ongoing situation, who will be a “spokesperson,” how you will document your action steps, and so on. It should also include policies on who decides when evacuation is mandatory and who pays for mandatory and optional evacuation.

Fourth, be prepared. Make sure you purchase travel medical and evacuation insurance. It can cost, literally, less than a couple of dollars per day. Other ways to be prepared are to ask your host about what plans they have for emergencies, give your team leader an In Case of Emergency form that has emergency contact numbers for people in the host country and at home, include forms for logging injuries and collecting the information required by the insurance company. You may also want to have the name of a crisis consulting agency handy so you know who to call in an emergency.

Does this seem overwhelming? Start with the first step before worrying about the other 3 or contact DELTA Ministries to purchase their Crisis and Contingency Plan or to receive coaching on developing your own.

Questions for the author? Need coaching or consulting? You can contact Tory at 520-404-0841 or toryr@deltaministries.com.

4 Things Every Team Leader Should Do After a Short-term Mission Trip

July is here and you are probably back from your annual short-term mission trip. Or maybe the youth group at your church just returned home. In any case, whether this is your first or 15th trip, you might be wondering what is next. The group got along so well, and vowed to get together, but you just don’t know how to keep everyone connected. Or maybe you have already been home for a couple of months and still haven’t seen everyone.

Here are three things to do:

1. Get them signed up for The Next Mile E-zine. This is an e-zine automatically delivered through email and is free. You only need a name and en email address to sign up. The e-zine discusses issues associated to returning home and helps the participant process their experience as well seek God’s next steps for them. This should not replace follow-through by the church or team leader, but is meant to enhance it. Click here to sign up.

2. Mission Trip Triage—You probably feel paralyzed by the fact that you are responsible for so many people. The problem is that we often try to treat everyone the same even though no one is the same. We use the idea of triage to help team leaders determine what and how much is appropriate to invest in each participant. Upon returning, help your team members figure out what level they are and then plan appropriate next steps for living a more Christ-like life. Check back next week to find out what the levels are and how to follow through with each level.

3. Encourage your team members to continue praying and reading their Bible. We often spend more time than usual praying and reading our Bibles in anticipation of our mission trip or during our mission—and most people like it! Push them not to let that practice end when they come home.

4. Plan three follow-through team meetings. I know everyone lives a busy life so don’t overdo it. The meeting could be for lunch, after church, or dessert one evening. Look for an article in two weeks with details about these three team meetings.

Following through with your team members is a big job, and an important one! It can be easy to let it go because the trip is over, but God’s work in your team members’ lives is not. For more on following through with your team members, I recommend The Next Mile curriculum.

Questions for the author? You can contact Tory at 520-404-0841 or toryr@delaministries.com.

Four Areas To Train For Life Change

How do you prepare your team for a short-term mission trip? What elements need to be part of preparing a team?

Most teams do a great job of preparing people for the details of traveling, and even ministry projects, but neglect to instill in their participants the qualities needed to be a Christ-like missionary.

Long-term missionaries often spend many years preparing to serve in a new culture. This is appropriate considering they will be spending many years, if not their whole life as a missionary. But I would argue proper preparation and training is even more important for short-term missionaries because they don't have the luxury of time to develop relationships that will cover their mistakes. So, how can we prepare teams to be culturally appropriate servants in another country?

At DELTA Ministries, we recommend all teams begin meeting monthly, and then start meeting weekly the last six weeks before a trip.

Our goal for these weekly meetings are: To get to know each other; disburse important information (such as packing lists, what to expect, etc.); equipping for the ministry (prepare crafts, learn skits, prepare your testimony, etc.); support discovery and fundraising; and language and culture learning.

Lots of churches do a great job of getting teams ready in these areas, but how do we prepare people to be missionaries? Over the last 30 years, DELTA Ministries has developed a training weekend that does an excellent job of building missionary qualities into participants. Our training spans a weekend, from Friday night through Saturday

afternoon, and focuses on:

1. Christian conduct -- Setting expectations for behavior. We have three official rules for our mission trips. Anyone who has been through the training can tell them to you in their sleep. That is because they are more than rules -- they are a way of life.
2. Christ-like character -- Cross-cultural situations are difficult. How do you know what to do? How do you keep a positive testimony in a cross-cultural setting? We’ve found that, even more important than doing the right thing, is having the right heart.
3. Team building/conflict resolution -- Teaching teams what it takes to work together and support each other. The way we love and treat each other will communicate a lot to those who are watching us.
4. Crossing cultures -- Preparing participants to enter a new culture as a learner and a servant; how to build relationships; and how to share the gospel in a relevant and culturally sensitive way.

The key is this: no one learns well when they are talked at. Get creative and design a training weekend that mimics a mission trip in a few elements. Use activities to teach and not just lecture. Finally, be sure you are requiring the team to put to practice what they are learning.

We call this training for life change for a reason: When training is done right, individuals see that these are not just important skills for a short-term mission trip. We are all called to be missionaries in our own community. It’s always exciting to see a light come on when team members realize the same principles that are good for a short-term mission trip are good for the mission at home too!

Questions about training for the author? Would you like Tory to come and train your STM team? Contact him at toryr@deltaministries.com or 520-404-0841.

Leading Intentionally

In an earlier post, I suggested that the role of short-term mission trips could be to both spread the gospel and see participants grow in spiritual maturity. There is nothing opposite or exclusive about the two ideas. The key as a leader, though, is to remember that your job is to lead towards both ends. Let’s look at how we can intentionally address both of these roles.

How do we equip our teams to make the biggest possible impact on the mission field?  Clearly, our first job is to determine the ministry activity in partnership with the field worker. You will probably have a little dance that goes something like this:

You: “How can our mission team help you and your ministry?”

Field worker: “Well, what are you good at? What do you want to do?”

You: “We don’t totally have a team together yet, we are exploring. But we want

to do whatever you guys need.”

Field worker: “Well, why don’t we see who signs up and we can see what you

guys want to do.”

And that circle could go on and on and on…Depending on the field worker, you may need to ask some investigative questions about what they are working on and their vision. Then simply brainstorm some ideas of how your team could integrate into what is already happening.

Once the ministry activity is set, don’t jump straight into preparing for it. Remember to learn about the culture first. A couple of years ago, I worked with a group that was going to Ecuador and was going to help teach seminars at a family conference. The subjects were provided by the Ecuadorian pastor, but they had to take real care to make sure they taught from an Ecuadorian viewpoint and not an American angle. For example, one couple taught on financial stewardship. For Americans, stewardship means using our excess in the right ways. But for the typical Ecuadorian coming to their seminar, the issue was not about wasting the excess but about using the little the best way possible. Their preparation took a lot of work and research, but it was a real blessing on the field! Another way of doing this is to both ensure your team knows how to share the gospel (don’t take it for granted!) and that they can share it in a culturally relevant way. This may mean learning to share the gospel in terms of honor and shame rather than guilt and righteousness.

Another key to bridging a culture gap so that the gospel can be shared effectively is through language learning. You would be surprised how often I hear people protest learning a new language by saying things like, “What can I learn that could actually help? I’m just not good at languages! They’ll understand that I’m an American and only speak English. But I’ll always have an interpreter.” I’m not saying you have to learn the gospel in another language. But I am saying that sharing the gospel is going to require more than just putting propositional truths out there for the person to accept. Let’s be honest, what reason does someone in Cambodia have to believe you, a foreigner?! Learning a few simple phrases and common greetings will go a long ways towards opening ears to hear the gospel.

Don’t get so caught up in preparations that you forget to pray. John 15:5 tells us that we can do nothing apart from Jesus. No matter how hard we prepare, no matter how good our presentation is, if Jesus isn’t at the center it will not be fruitful. I’d rather have my team spend 5 minutes praying and 10 preparing than 15 minutes preparing and no time praying.

Finally, encourage everyone to learn to tell their testimony. Very few things are as powerful as our own story. Not everyone can preach, but anyone can tell their story. We encourage people to answer three questions: 1) What was I like before I met Jesus? 2) How did I become a follower of Jesus and what does it mean to be one? 3) What is God doing in your life now? Be sure that your team practices giving their testimony before the trip. We want to make them culturally relevant by doing a few simple things like 1) removing slang, 2) using ages instead of grade levels, and 3) removing “Christianese” like “asked Jesus into my heart.” But that takes practice. Another way of making your testimony relevant is to tailor it towards the needs of others. This could mean emphasizing the assurance of salvation through Jesus, for example. On one trip, I had a stay-at-home mom ask me about what she should share with the women. I advised her to talk about the significance she finds in God’s calling. Her life isn’t just laundry, cooking, cleaning, and taking kids places, but a calling from God in which she finds deep significance and even connection to the Almighty God who created her.

These are just a few ways to lead a team towards an effective and dynamic field ministry. I pray that they help you. Next week I will post on leading intentionally towards the discipleship of your team. As always, please post your comments or email your thoughts and questions to me at toryr@deltaministries.com.