What does a mission-minded church look like?

Hi, from the Salvation Army, you're listening to Words of Life. Welcome back to Words of Life. We are now in week four of a six-part series on missions. This series began on October 20th, so if you missed any episodes, scroll back on your favorite podcast store to the first episode to get caught up. This week, we focus on short-term missions. What are they? What are we looking to achieve?

As well as what negative impacts can they have when done poorly? But before we get to this week's conversation, we wanted to set the stage by sharing an interview we did a few years ago with Commissioners Kelly and Donna Iglehart. They had recently returned to the States after serving in Africa, and this was recorded before they were in their current positions as the territorial commanders in the South. In this particular episode, they were discussing risk and some of the risks that can possibly be involved when it comes to serving in other countries and potentially dangerous parts of the world. If you're on the fence for accepting an opportunity to do mission work because of fear, please listen to Commissioner Kelly's words, and his passion for mission work is just so contagious. Well, I would just first say the first two letters of the word gospel is go, and two-thirds of the word God is go, and so we are going and sending people. Certainly, the Lord never called us to safety. You think of the life of Christ and the life of those early disciples. They were called, and they were faithful, and they went into places that were not safe. But you know, I think for me, it's in those valleys of the shadow. It's in those places that I sense God even closer than the places of safety, and the Lord will also protect you.

His holy angels, I have no doubt were busy with us the whole time that we were away, but I would just suggest and urge anyone who's considering or feels that the Lord may be calling you into service outside of your culture or even outside of your country that you go, that you never second guess, and I believe that you'll always sense in your heart that it was the right decision. Welcome back, friends. Welcome. Hello.

We are in the middle of our series on missions. Can we start that over? No, I love this. Sorry, I thought everyone was going to pipe in, and then it was just me. Well, I did the last time, and no one said anything too.

It was just me. Ready? So we're in the middle of a series on missions, and this week we're going to kind of get a little more granular by talking about short-term missions. Most of us, when we think of a missionary, we think of someone who goes into a community that's not their own and embeds themselves in that culture for quite a long time, but when we're thinking of sending people from our congregation over to do a missions trip, those are short-term missions. Let's talk about what are they, what do we usually hope to accomplish in these?

So I would say that short-term missions are useful for a number of reasons. The first is to allow the group that is going over to experience Jesus and sharing the gospel in another context. It's also for the people who they are visiting, right? Of course, that it is for the people they are actually going to minister. Our hope is that, you know, their heart is blessed and that the truth of Jesus Christ is revealed to them. I think that it's joining in on what God is already doing in that place that they're going and partnering with whoever they're going to to do what already is happening there.

Not to do something new, not to start what they want to start, but to join in on what is already happening. I think that that is important that they're not going to just start and figure out what they want to do from this side of the world, but they actually are in conversation and in partnership with the people that they're going to see. Yeah, and I think that is one of the strengths of the Salvation Army that we have, because we do have people in 130-something countries already. Like, we have embedded, established ministries ready to receive and the resources to keep those ministries going. I think too, there's also congregation buy-in to some kind of project that they're doing. So I'm thinking of, you know, a church in Atlanta who is sponsoring the building of a school in Africa and a few of their youth go to help work on it. Could they have got workers locally?

Of course. But these people are now going to come back and tell stories about what's actually going on there, which is just going to encourage more buy-in, more donors. And so even just like sharing that story and hearing the passion from someone who just experienced it, that's what happened with these SSC group that just came back. Like, they came back and then they went to a youth conference and they told them what they saw, what happened. And now even if maybe you yourself aren't able to go or to help, now you're like, okay, well, that really moved me.

I would love to invest in this project, let's see what's happening. I could share a little bit about how a short-term mission ship had a long-term effect on me and on the church that we were at in London. Is it kind of the height of the refugee crisis in Europe? And I actually found out about that and what was happening. And I actually did a 50K walk to raise money for the Salvation Army in Greece to do their work there. And then after that, we did a justice conference and we talked about refugees in London. So people from around the city came to that and heard about that. And so then after that, we had a young adult mission trip that was 10 days to Greece.

And also a women's group went and did a 10-day mission trip to Greece. So we had two groups going after the justice conference. So you're getting the buy-in.

You're talking about it a lot. People are finding out about what's happening with the refugees. You're joining in and what's already happening in Greece. You're not starting something new. You're not going and buying things for them. You're going in to what they're doing and what they're already working on.

You're volunteering to help them. And then as you come back and as they come back, you're telling the church what's happening. And it changed my life completely. And it changed some of the young adults' people's lives there.

And it's just that it's continued, but it's changed my heart forever. And so I feel like it can have such a huge impact. It can change people's lives forever if you do it right and if you join in partnership with God. And God can really just get into your heart and into your soul.

And the people of that community can do that. But you have to make sure that you go with the right motivations and that you go ready to allow God to minister to you while you're there. We talk about so much within our own ministry and churches here, like the importance of a moment, like going out and just like one moment with someone could have an impact for them for the rest of their lives. And I think that's one of the best things that you can get from a short-term trip as well is you have all those little moments with someone and you may never see them again, but that moment could mean the world to them and could change their trajectory of their life entirely.

You break down short-term mission even more and you could say, like, walking down the street, that's a short-term mission trip for me. I'm never going to see these people again, maybe, but that could still have that monumental impact on someone's life if I'm going where God wants me to go and following His direction and talking to who He wants me to speak with and that kind of thing. I mean, it's even those—I mean, this is a little bit of a tangent, but we'll get back on course, I promise—but it's even those moments when you're going into the gas station and you see someone who's kind of balled up in the corner and maybe they're even asleep and looking quite rough, and all the people that just walk by one after another and it's fine.

We're all busy and, you know, we don't know what this person's story is and all that. But, I mean, just, I remember recently going in and seeing this exact case and just being like, I can at least just get him a water and just, like, say, like, hey, I see you, like, back to your point. You know, maybe that's not missions work, but I mean, just staying in that mindset, like, hopefully that person, depending on, you know, what their cognitive state was at the time, but just at least very much, you know, subconsciously felt seen, even though I couldn't help them beyond that.

But I think just as the body of Christ, like, just keeping that focus. We haven't really talked about missions with young children, and I want to mention that something that I really like to do, even just with my own kids, is when it comes to missions, is, you know, my kids are not old enough yet to necessarily go to a refugee camp or something like that. But we make what are called blessing bags, and they're just Ziploc bags.

They have, you know, something in them like maybe toothpaste and a toothbrush and some socks or whatever, and we put those in our car. And when we drive around and we see someone who needs it, I'll roll down my child's window, and they'll get to hand the bag out the window to someone. So I think it's important to mention that missions is not just for 18 and older, right? Like, missions is also for young children, and there are ways to do it.

Even if they can't do the heavy lifting, there are ways to start encouraging our children as well to get involved. So I used to do that as well, but I remember being very discouraged because two people in a row, and this is in Philly, when I tried to hand them this said, I'm looking for a hand up, not a hand out. And so this also kind of goes into community and how we enter someone else's space with like respect and humility to make sure that we're doing something for them that wouldn't possibly demean them or something. So I don't know if you guys have encountered anything like that as well of, you know, I genuinely just want to help, but it's not being received in the way that it was intended. So like, what do you do in that moment?

I think that, well, I don't, I don't necessarily know how to respond like in that moment, like if you did something like, oh, maybe I shouldn't have done that. But I think a way to kind of try and avoid that is we had talked about this, I think off mic a little bit, it really kind of learning about where you're going before you go there and figuring out what are their needs. And this again, goes back to we have the Salvation Army, we're already there established. And if we're going somewhere with with the Salvation Army, hopefully they know what the needs are. And that's one of our Salvation Army strengths across the world is figuring out what the need is in the community and giving them that rather than just, here's what we think you may need, we're going to do this and offer this, but like really figuring out and talking with them figuring out how can we truly help you and then serving in that way. Well, I think this ties right into as we start to talk about, you know, what happens when missions are done poorly?

Like what are some faux pas? So join us next week. Thank you so much again for listening. We have two more weeks in this series on missions, and we still want to hear from you. So if you have a story about how a mission trip really shaped and impacted your life, we want to hear from you. Send us an email hello at words of life podcast.org or visit our website, you can find our contact page words of life podcast.org. God bless.

We'll see you next week. The Salvation Army's mission doing the most good means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support. You can subscribe to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org. Join us next time for the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Thanks so much for listening to Words of Life. We want to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the show. Visit lifeaudio.com where you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They have shows about prayer, Bible studying, parenting, and more. Thanks again for listening.

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