Monday was a day off in Ukraine, and the UEC was closed. I thought we were still having our Psalms group but it was eventually cancelled. Instead, we invited Oleg over for some lasagna and a movie. Lena and I earlier in the day enjoyed a long way in the park where we started dated. We walked past the old arsenal, parliament, Marinsky Palace built by Catherine the Great, the Dynamo Football Stadium, over the Lover's Bridge, to the Yoke of Friendship Arch that overlooks the Dnipro River. It was a beautiful day. The lasagna, by the way, was pretty good even though we use not exactly the right kind of ingredients and some sort of pasta pieces had to substitute for the noodles.

Today Sergiy returned from his travels in Egypt and we ate supper together before a planning meeting with our worship leaders. I spent a lot of the day reading articles on church planting and short-term missions. I remain convinced that there is something terrible wrong with the burgeoning short-term missions industry in America. Most missionaries seem to agree, at least from my reading of the limited scholarship on the subject.

I have come to believe that we must be much more selective in whom we send on short-term missions, we must raise the standard for training, churches must strategically follow-up on those who do go, missionaries must work in greater cooperation and spend more time helping to prepare and debrief those who go, and churches must be careful about allocating too much money from the missions budget for short-term trips.

Most of these conclusions are supported by the research and my own experience which indicates that with the current system, short-term trips have little lasting impact on those who go and on those to whom they are sent. The trips can actually reinforce negative cultural stereotypes, something ethnocentric Americans definitely don't need, and for many--especially very young people--the trips might actually be harming them spiritually since there is so little debriefing.

It also seems that short term missions has become something of a sacred cow in churches. In some places, it has become a kind of rite of passage or sacred right. Mission committees must ask much harder questions about who is going, why they want to go, what have they done to prepare to go, how are they involved in cross-cultural ministry in the US, etc. It seems that short-term trips within the same country would function in much the same way as an international trip but would be cheaper, would not be as problematic culturally and linguistically, and would be an indicator of who, especially among youth, needs to be nurtured for involvement in cross-cultural missions.

I am also deeply concerned that short-term missions may be weakening the very notion of long-term commitment and may be competing with funds for long-term missions.

I am not against short-term missions. I simply believe that this phenomenon is out of control and deserves much-needed scrutiny.

I've added a cool counter by the way. It shows where readers are. Never been too interested in how many people read this blog, but this counter adds an interesting dimension.