Author: Nigel Ring

Concluding this short series David Lockyer puts some questions to John Pradhan as leader of a church that has received many short-term teams.     What has been the benefit to you and your family personally of receiving short-term teams?     Every time a team visits from UK we feel personally very blessed. At times we can feel quite isolated and the visit of a team brings much encouragement to us. We become freshly motivated to continue the work of reaching out and building the church here in Nepal. We find God uses these times to provide us with spiritual guidance and there is a further strengthening of the relationships we have with our friends overseas. We have an opportunity to share both our joys and struggles when they are…

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…

Having suggested some of the very real positive benefits of short-term teams I’d like to flag up a few cautionary issues under the heading of ‘The Bad’. 1. Inadequate orientation Many of the benefits of short-term teams result from members engaging in the right way. This comes from their own personal spiritual maturity where humility, flexibility and a capacity to trust God and live with some inconveniences are all vital. Sometimes the younger, outwardly zealous members of the team struggle more than the spiritually mature, if more physically frail, senior team members. Orientation is vital when it comes to helping team members approach the experience in the right way. This should involve some education on cultural issues and guidelines on how to avoid dropping cultural cluster bombs. Orientation helps encourage…

We continue to look at some of the good aspects of short-term mission teams 3. Expect the unexpected In the lead up to our own team visits there is a plan and a schedule. But we encourage team members to be prepared for the unexpected. Activities will be far less ‘programmed’, more ‘last minute’. Flexibility without frustration will be essential. Travel can be a challenge. Flight times change due to weather; luggage is loaded onto the next flight without passengers being informed; a hotel no longer has the rooms you’d booked in advance. One team was stranded in Delhi airport due to a volcanic ash cloud over Europe followed by 5 days of uncertainty in a hotel, before boarding then disembarking the aircraft and returning to the hotel! Such unplanned…

The Good Short-term teams can literally be life-changing. They provide a whole range of opportunities in terms of discovering God in fresh ways, becoming engaged in a deeper way with His big plan, developing relationships and becoming more like Jesus. You don’t get that from 2 weeks on a beach in Ibiza! There is also a cascade of very valuable benefits to both the sending and receiving church or churches. Let’s look at some of these. 1. A bigger vision of God We all have the tendency to settle for a safe but restricted view of who God is based on what is familiar to us. Left to ourselves we flatten out our image of God and end up with a fixed view of God that’s easily transferable and eminently…