It is estimated that $2 billion is spent annually on short-term mission trips, according to an article by Baylor University. This staggering number has caused many to question the effectiveness of raising money to send teams overseas for such short periods of time, because why would such a short trip matter? Is raising money to go overseas a waste of time and resources? Are we supporting someone’s vacation or a band-aid solution to missions? When going on these trips or supporting others, these are important questions to consider, so I decided to bring these questions to our resident missionary Mr. Eshelman.

Mr. and Mrs. Eshelman spent 14 years as medical missionaries in Albania with their four children. He was involved in the medical education of young healthcare professionals, while she taught science to middle and high school. Both have gone on multiple short-term trips– some good and some bad, hosted short-term teams, sent teams out, and prayed for teams, and this summer, they are leading a Cairn team to Albania. At Cairn, the couple is involved in all things missions and supports students who grew up in foreign countries as they transition to life in the US. Here’s what Mr. Eshelman shared:

Are short term mission teams helpful?

“I believe short-term mission trips done well are a critical part of what God is doing in world missions cross-culturally…but I would also quickly add, not all short-term trips and teams are the same. I think they can be done very well, very strategically short-termand meet critical needs. I think they can also on the other end have very little long-term impact and be done, potentially, for the wrong reasons. So one of the things that I’ve asked myself is what are the components that make that difference? A couple of years ago, Cairn signed up to be a part of an organization called the Seven Standards of Excellence for Short-Term Missions. So that has become very influential in our thinking as we look at

what trips does Cairn want to offer, and what are the components of forming teams and sending them cross-culturally?”

[These standards can be found at https://missionexcellence.global/7-standards/]

How can we justify spending so much money when we could send that to the missionaries?

“I believe God does call and use people to go short term, and he calls people to get behind supporting local workers… Stewardship of what God entrusts to us is an important responsibility that we have, so we should be wise with the costs, but sometimes short-term teams can do what long-term workers on the field can’t.

In Albania, our team plans to partner with an existing church in a kind of challenging corner of Albania to come alongside that local church and enable them to have a four-day children’s day camp for the kids in the community. Albania is a very relational culture, and if a group of foreigners comes to their little corner of the world– it’s encouraging. It’s fun for them. It’s an honor to them. Like you guys at your own expense left your comfort zone and came to be with us. That’s pretty cool.

`The key thing– we’re not just going somewhere encouraging things and then flying back home, but we’re going there and doing this in the context with a local church who asked

us to do this. They have had other teams come other summers, and they have sort of figured out a really effective community outreach to children.

The next layer of ministry is discipleship. One of the priorities besides serving Christ in the world for Cairn students is to grow in Christ, and this is an intensive time of

discipleship from our team’s point of view with each other. As we grow together as

disciples linking arms with our cross-cultural counterparts in the church. In the city of Schoz, we will encourage one another. We will worship together. We will pray together. We

will do a common ministry together… so we will greatly encourage and be encouraged by brothers and sisters in another culture.”

How can we choose meaningful and effective trips when going?

“A book that was very influential to me, written to an American audience, is When Helping Hurts [by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert]. It looks at the negative side of this–people coming, trying to do something quick, doing it independently, maybe having a savior complex. So When Helping Hurts has given me a vision for why this is really important and how to do it well.”

How can we best support friends going on a trip?

“I’ve been challenging my team members– ask, ‘would you pray for the Albania team every day, starting a week before we travel, every day we’re there and every day for the week after we get back?’ 30 days of prayer. We believe that God is honored

when we pray for one another. And I believe that this is a big ask. It’s probably bigger than asking, ‘would you give us 50 bucks towards our trip?’ If the Lord puts it on your heart, sure, we do have to raise some funds, but mostly we want to raise a team of prayer partners.

Yes, we’re serving over there in a people group, in our case Albania. But at the same time, God is using us here in the local church that sends us…we’ve seen many, many, many stories over the years of how God used our testimony or our request or our need to really change people on this side too. So when God does something, it’s not just, oh, we’re helping Albania. It’s like, no, God is growing us. He’s growing them, and he’s growing circles of people in our network all at the same time.”

What other advice would you give to someone involved in a trip?

“Focus on what God will ask you to do that would require faith… Take the preparation and the follow up training and processing seriously and invite others along on the journey.”