A serious issue
Having flagged up a few things that should be avoided I want now to consider ‘the ugly’. This is the potential for short-term teams to hinder rather than help, to create damage and dependency rather than to serve God’s purpose and promote health. This a significant issue which needs to be taken seriously. It happens when teams simply ignore many of the issues already raised and pursue an approach that’s marked by cultural pride rather than humility, independence rather than relationship.
1. Pride and patronage
This happens when we assume that the elements of our own culture are more accurate representations of God’s Kingdom than what we find in the cultures we’re visiting. The result is that we adopt a posture of patronage and assume the role of spiritual benefactors rather than humble learners. 
Such an approach may be reminiscent of some of the uglier aspects of past colonialism and has no place in God’s mission, where humble servanthood is the model Jesus has set before us. Whenever we enter other cultures we need to remind ourselves that however adept we may be in our own worlds we all wear ‘Learner Plates’ when it comes to serving God’s purposes in other cultures.
2. Knee-jerk solutions
The result of entering into a situation with this assumed posture and with a limited time frame is that we can very quickly generate solutions. The western culture has a ‘fix it’ mentality. Assured of our superior knowledge we can be far too quick to identify perceived gaps within the cultures we’re visiting and create ten-point plans to alleviate poverty and advance God’s Kingdom among them.
Listen and Learn
If we’re prone to activism then we can find ourselves dreaming up plans and projects rather than engaging in the far more reflective and relational process of listening and learning. This danger is even more acute when we have access to funds and resources to throw at what we see as rather simple problems. If we’d just spend time listening and learning then we’d perhaps begin to realise that these problems are not simple and that hastily dreamed up pop-up ‘solutions’ don’t work.
3. Missional shortcuts
Short-term teams have a positive place in the economy of the Kingdom if approached in a healthy way. But if they replace longer term cross-cultural commitments then they will have hindered not helped the cause of the Great Commission. Jesus’ words in Matthew 28 are not a description of what we occasionally do during a 2-week trip to sub-Saharan Africa or a Gap Year in India. They describe the on-going, life-long task of taking the good news of Jesus to every people group, planting churches and promoting Kingdom living.
The progress of that task has always required long-term cross-cultural commitments that are both costly and creative. Our ability to criss-cross the globe in relatively short spaces of time does not change that and shouldn’t become a replacement for that. Short-term teams have many benefits and may be the seedbed for some of those longer-term commitments. But they must not be thought of as 21st century shortcuts to fulfilling the Great Commission. As more and more peoples become ‘reached’ those that remain ‘unreached’ are those who are culturally and geographically more difficult to reach. This increases the need for more long-term cross-cultural commitments, not lessen it. Short-term teams have some value, but they cannot and should not detract from the call for some to invest not just two weeks in the summer but their lives in the foreseeable future in the cause of the Great Commission.
What about the receiving church?
So far I have addressed ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ of short-term teams from the perspective of the sender. What about the receiving church? In the final part of this series my close friend, John, will give you his perspectives on this aspect.