In a recent series of articles on Desiring God, the question of how to make short-term mission trips valuable and effective for both church and missionary was addressed.
In one article, John Piper affirmed his church’s commitment to short-term trips:
I said in a previous question that everybody should want to do short-term missions. One of the reasons for that is that we’re a global church, and seeing the way the church functions outside of your own culture is enriching, broadening, strengthening, and deepening, and it gives you a bigger picture of God.
So one of the functions of short-term missions is all of those things: more of God, learning to trust him more, learning how he works in another culture, learning what missionary life is like, taking some risks yourself. All those things are good for us.
Secondly we want it to be good for missions. So part of the strategy is to make sure that missionaries want you to come before you go. That would be a part of it.
For ease of reading, I’ve compiled the series into one Word document.
Words of Grace 