Short term missions encouraging long-term missions???

I'm Just Wondering...

Does short term mission participation encourage long-term mission service???

This is an important questin to peel apart, because soooo many pastors and short-term mission agencies put out as intuitively true that short-term mission involvement will spark long-term mission committment.

In other words, the hypothesis of Christian leaders is that short-term mission involvement will result in persons making long-term mission committments.

This means that an increase in the number of people involved in short-term missions should correspond with an increase in persons serving in long-term mission positions.

This data analysis tried to look hard at international-only situations: "domestic missionaries" (people calling themselves missionaries while working and living in the West and working in the West were considered as domestic church workers and not international missionaries).

I decided to peel apart the data on this question.

First, is there data? Yes. Tons.

Why data? Well, any intuitive assumption, regardless of theology, should be able to hold up to scrutiny.

("Reality is what's left over after you stop believing..." Philip K Dick, sci-fi author)

The Journal of Christian Nursing will be publishing a data-driven article I wrote about short-term health care missions. I looked at short-term missions by the numbers.

They didn't look so good.

Here's the data:

Short-term mission involvement (mostly defined as activity of less than 30 days in country) went from
540 participants in 1965
120,000 participants in 1989
>500,000 participants in 1998
2,500,000 participants in 2003
2,800,00 participants in 2005 (estimated)

(Sources: Loobie, 2000; Honig, 2005)

Meanwhile, during the period of 1988 to 2005, the number of full-time, internationally-serving missionaries from the West decreased from 65,000 persons to 35,000... a 47% reduction over the same time-period.

(Source: Lucas, Sterns & Sterns, 2006)

Analysis of the data:
120,000 short-term participants in 1989 compared to 65,000 full-time international missionaries in 1988 means a 1.8 to 1 ratio of short-term to full-time.

2,800,00 short-term participants in 2005 (estimated) compared to 35,000 full-time international missionaries in 2005 means a 80 to 1 ratio of short-term to full-time.

Analysis of the hypothesis that "short term mission participation encourages long-term mission service" is not, in any way supported by the data or statistical facts.

Actually, these are opposing curves of information: Short-term is exponentially increasing, while full-time missionary service is on a clear linear decline. The group comparison ratios are strongly disparate.

Summary: "Short term mission participation encourage long-term mission service", by any measurable trends or data is NOT generally true.

Discussion: Yes, I have been personally involved in a three cases where the person considering full-time work did go out on a short-term trip to 'try it on'... but they went already primed for mission service, and the short-term trip was a further step towards those pre-trip intentions.

I have not personally seen somebody NOT interested in missions go on a short-term trip and find themselves serving full-time at a later time.

Reflecting on the classic mission writers of the 1800's, where there was no such thinkg as 'short-term', the missionaries produced on a 'sight-unseen' basis seems to have a different preparational dynamic. I'd love to know Willima Carey's take on this data and the 'short-term paradigm'.

Closing: Ouch! It hurts when something we assume does not hold up to scrutiny. I would like to hold that God is a God of reality, not assumption. Francis Schaeffer, when I heard him speak in the 1970's, said "all truth is God's truth, and we need not be afraid of the truth".

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The article to be published in the Journal of Christian Nursing Summer 2009 issue is titled
"Evaluating short-term missions: How can we improve?" by Christopher Bajkiewicz.
I'll post when it's out. Sorry, because of copyright agreements I signed, I can't post a version of the article.