Adventures in Life Ministry... short-term mission, long-term impact...

Our first team to serve with Pastor Raul

It was late at night when we arrived in front of the small church in Zapopan, just outside of Guadalajara in 1998.  Instead of the big welcome for the missionaries from America, the place was dark, locked up and looked deserted.

Soon someone came by and asked if we were the people people that were coming to serve their church for a week.  When we answered yes, they told us to follow them.

We carried our bags for about a mile across dirt roads destroyed by the summer storms of Guadalajara until we arrived at a house, were fed, and then told where to sleep.

The next morning we went to the church to await Pastor Raul and prepare for our Outreach Club with the kids of Colonia Paraisos del Colli.

The next year we returned to serve with Pastor Raul again.  To a much better welcome.  Because they knew and were beginning to trust us.

We returned again the next year and then almost annually after that.

We are still returning to that small church... in fact I am writing today from Raul's house, 14 years later.

I arrived yesterday from Oaxaca where a small group from that church in Zapopan came to help us with a camp we helped facilitate for kids from the Amatlanes and San Baltazar Guelavila.

Now that may not sound like such a big deal until you realize that the group that came to serve in Oaxaca with us became friends, learned to serve, and play music as part of our short-term mission work with their small church in Zapopan, just outside of Guadalajara.

And that happened not because we went there once, but because we invested in their church and their families and lives even though it was hard and our first experiences were pretty rough.

Adventures in Life Ministry has always believed that effective ministry comes through long-term committed relationships built on a foundation of Jesus Christ.

This last week, having those same kids serve with us as grown ups, was a gift from God.  It is not everyday that you get to see your Kingdom investment in people pay off.

But we did!  Because we believe that long term impact comes with long term involvement and partnership.

Effective short-term mission needs to happen over the long-term to make a real Kingdom difference in the communities we are serving.  One and done mission trips do little to really invest in people or contribute to long term solutions and are in fact at the root of much of the criticism of short-term mission.

If, as you seek out short-term mission opportunities, you look for partners who know and believe in long-term investment, perhaps one day you too will get a chance to see the eternal results of your short-term mission.

Ministry and the Sin of Envy...

Okay, I admit it.  I struggle with envy.

Adventures in Life envy.

No, I am not envious of my employer and mission, Adventures in Life.  I am envious of other missions.  You know the ones.  The bigger ones.  The ones that reach more people, do more things, touch more lives, get bigger donations and seem to have arrived.

I first noticed it one day years ago when we were part of a mission week at a local college in Southern California.  We had all of our brochures on a table along with a few pictures in Plexiglas frames purchased from Staples. 

What we did not have was one of those fancy backdrops common at a lot of conventions.  I think that year we had a foam core board backstopping us.  What we did not have was one of those fancy tablecloths that said Adventures in Life Ministry, complete with our logo.

We had no fancy web site, no IT department and no free gifts to give away.  We also had no stories of thousands of people coming to Jesus around the world through the work of our ministry.

What we did have was a genuine love for the people of Mexico and a hope that with Jesus we could make a difference in the small corners of the world where we believed God had called us.

But I was still envious, as I was reminded last week in Mexico.

Each year we cobble together a small team of medical people to visit the villages where I work in Oaxaca.  This year, one of the members of the team was from a large, okay, really large church in So Cal.  Last year she was part of a medical team that took over 70 people to treat people in another Latin American country.

I was nervous.   

I was nervous because I know there is no way we will ever have a ministry like that.  I was nervous because I feared that in comparison to that other ministry, we’d look small and insignificant alongside all the great things that they did.

As we headed out for our first day of ministry, those feelings of envy and inadequacy started to roil inside of me.

It is not unlike the feeling many pastors have when they look at their congregation of 125 people and wonder why they are unable to reach people like Central Christian Church does here in Las Vegas.

Each day we had about 30 people come through our clinics.  We treated colds, pain, the flu, and even did a few small surgical procedures.  Mostly, we provided people assurance that they were not in serious danger, and we prayed a lot.

Every single patient we saw received prayer, either from us, or from the pastor from our local partner church.  

At the end of the week, the woman from that large church came to me and shared.  She told me how much the week meant to her and how much she appreciated seeing how our ministry partners with locals and connects people to a pastor and a church.

My heart leapt with joy.

AIL Ministry will never be that huge ministry.  We will never have a team of 70 people serving with us.  We will never have the bucks needed to spend thousands of dollars on big conventions, and even if we had the money, we’d probably spend in Oaxaca anyways. 

Our ministry is small footprint stuff. Relationships.  Personal greenhouses.  Medical clinics where we pray for every patient and even make house calls if needed.

Ministry is hard stuff.  When you are a single pastor of a small church, or a lone missionary on the field, you live in a world of what if.  Envy is one of your biggest enemies.  It eats at you from the inside out.

Today, do those missionaries or pastors you know who work in small sometimes under-appreciated ministries a huge favor.

Send them an e-mail, a Facebook post, call them, or send them a text.

Let them know you are in their corner, that you appreciate them, and love and support their ministries.

You will cause their hearts to leap with joy and help strike a blow in the battle against the sin of envy!

After 21 Years, A Long View of Short-Term Mission

Time for a little reflection.

21 years ago this month I participated in my first short-term mission trip to Mexico. I went as the new youth pastor from a church in Santa Monica, CA.

My group at that time was a bunch of interesting guys. Most of them wore black, carried brief cases, had some type of weapon on them, and loved rap music. The violent, thuggish kind. Think Two Live Crew here, most famous for their album “Nasty As They Wanna Be.”

I can still remember coming home from that week and thanking God that I would never have to return to Mexico. Boy, did He have other plans.

Tonight I am sitting in a small cafe in Ensenada where I annually return as faithfully as the swallows return to Capistrano. Every spring, after a few months away, I long for this little slice of heaven on earth and a chance to renew friendships, serve, and be reminded of God’s sense of humor.

Who else but some supreme all powerful being could possibly have imagined a nerd of all nerds white guy, marrying a beautiful black woman, speaking Spanish, and serving in Mexico with a group of Asian students from UCLA?

And so, here I am. Ready to serve again.

This week I will be helping a pastor on his house before I head south in Mexico for Oaxaca. I have known this pastor’s wife since she was a little girl. She has literally grown up around our ministry, first helping in the kitchen, then as part of our ministry team serving in Guadalajara and Oaxaca. Her daughter calls me Abuelo Dr. House.

Tomorrow I will get a chance to see their new son. In the words her husband, my new grandson, Esteban.

There is a lot of talk in mission circles about whether or not short-term missions are effective. I think, like many long-term missions, that some are more effective than others.

But the key is relationship.

If your short-term mission is founded on a belief that before you begin sharing about Jesus, you must build a relationship on mutual respect, you’ll be fine. If your short-term mission is built on a foundational principle of an ongoing partnership for the Gospel, you’ll be fine. If your short-term mission is focused on serving and learning from those whom you are visiting, you’ll be fine.

When the Apostle Paul talked about longing to visit the church in Rome, he spoke of just this type of relationship.

But if your short-term mission is like so many from the US, and is focused on the spiritual development of the participants without a long-term view of ministry together, then you’ll be playing right into the hands of those who are critical of short-term mission service.

Next up, we'll look at how short-term mission really can have the long-term impact we all want to see.