Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 5) confirmed their recognition of God’s will for them. A significant benefit for American students is that it attacks the insularity with which most American teens develop; they are separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans, and they really believe that Paris Hilton and the Super Bowl are significant news stories. They can learn otherwise very quickly if given the opportunity. The student will benefit from this exposure whether or not the Lord eventually calls him to foreign mission work. Pretty much everyone can benefit from team-oriented activity. Sports provide most young people their primary experience with teamwork, but mission work provides a team experience that is different in many ways from what they will learn on the athletic field. Most obviously, the work they will be engaged in is overtly and primarily spiritual; they will be helping one another not to swing a bat or kick a ball but to tell the story of Christ and to disciple younger believers. They learn to make sacrifices, to encourage one another, and to share failures and successes as they go about the business of taking the message to the ends of the earth. That is precisely preparation for life in the church. Often overlooked is the benefit to teachers of gathering foreign mission experience. It rejuvenates the jaded teacher, and it places into his toolbox a set of experiences that will both shape his teaching techniques and enrich his teaching content for the rest of his life. Pitfalls Any work that can be done well can also be done badly. Mission trips are no different. And the price of failure is high—waste of financial resources given in good faith by God’s people, which could have been used instead on something worthwhile, not to mention the spiritual damage that can be done both to team members and to potential ministry recipients if the job is done badly. A great danger, obviously, is that the trip becomes simply pious tourism; the members are interested primarily in experiencing something new, in gathering experiences for their own selfish purposes. There is nothing wrong with tourism, I suppose, but there is also no reason why the church should pay for it. Teams need to understand that they are there to work, and they need to be held accountable both by supervisors on site and by the sending churches back home. Another danger with short-term work is that it gives the impression that you More common, however, are teams assembled for the purpose of working on a specific project. The team might include anywhere from 6 to 25 people who travel to a specific mission site for a week or several weeks to accomplish a specific task. The most common tasks are construction and child evangelism since these are always needed and allegedly require the fewest technical skills. (More on that in a moment.) The subject of short-term missions raises a number of questions, both philosophical and logistical. What are the benefits of short-term work? What are the dangers? Who should go? Who should not? And what should be the primary goals of anyone directing such an effort? Benefits The benefits are great. A brief experience gives the student an opportunity to experience mission work up close and reasonably realistically, at relatively low cost. It certainly makes sense for the student to find out that foreign missions is not his calling before he has gone through the effort and expense of candidate school, deputation, and language school. On the other hand, a large number of career missionaries testify that it was a mission trip that either initiated or continued on page 6 Teacher to Teacher | May 2008 page 5
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page Intro) Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 1) Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 2) Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 3) Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 4) Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 5) Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 6) Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 7) Teacher to Teacher - May 2008 - (Page 8)
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