Mission Education: Philosophy & Practice
If you're a faithful blog reader, you've no doubt read about "Mission Education" short-term teams.
Therefore, I was honored when Regional Director Rev. Ted Krey asked me to unpack the term and its implications at last weekend's DR FORO. It was somewhat cathartic to finally structure my thoughts around a concept I'm on a quest to make into a household term in LAC, and I'm confident that the resulting presentation is going to have legs far beyond its original purpose. And no, I'm not just saying that because I'm about to turn it into a blog post... :)
Defining terms is always a good place to start. By "Mission Education," I mean a type of short-term mission team - equivalent to a VBS team or a medical team or a construction team. That being said, ALL short-term teams are mission education teams. Missionaries are teachers, so whether volunteers know it or not, they're learning about the mission of the Church while doing children's ministry, running a clinic, or painting a church. I'm talking about a full week sans any of those more traditional projects, though. I didn't invent this concept, though I've certainly championed it since coming onboard as an OIM missionary and helped make it a fixture in the LAC repertoire. I'm not claiming our name for it is the best, but it's the one we're running with for the time being. Other sending organizations term such pursuits like so: Vision Trip, Vision Tour, Come & See, Scouting Trip, or Sneak Peek Trip. Some didn't have an exact equivalent listed but offered "custom" trips, which I'm led to believe would be similar (just wait).
Perhaps the most helpful way to get at what Mission Education IS is to contrast that with what Mission Education IS NOT:
Mission Education IS NOT poverty tourism (synonyms: slum tourism, ghetto tourism, trauma tourism), aka tugging at participants' heartstrings by showing them the poorest of the economically poor and highlighting what is lacking above all else. It's also not just plain tourism. I have serious questions for any "mission" trip advertised with a photo of someone ziplining through the jungle.
vs.
Mission Education IS eye-opening. We want participants to see the reality of where we and the members of our local churches live and work, but always in a way that upholds their dignity and highlights the beautiful diversity of the Church. Photos and storytelling are encouraged as we strive to build up a network of advocates. "Mission" means there is oral witnessing involved, but every trip includes at least one excursion because understanding a place helps one understand its people.
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- worship
- Bible study
- congregational life
- pastoral ministry & formation
- diaconal ministry & formation
- church planting
- community home visits
- mercy work
- education
- health & medical outreach
- meals in missionary host homes
- work projects; and
- cultural excursions.
- Students, especially seminary and Concordia University students as they explore their future vocations, whether as missionaries themselves or as laypeople or church workers who help to send and sustain missionaries.
- New congregations, as a way to get their feet wet and assess where and how they might become involved in an ongoing fashion (even if that means somewhere else in the LAC region or even the world). Mission Education isn't necessarily something the same team would do year over year unless a majority of the team members were new, although our work is constantly evolving and there's no way to see it all in seven days, so no repeat trip would be alike.
- Those with physical limitations, since it's not physically demanding as a general rule and can even be customized (see above) to include less walking, more A/C, etc.
- To increase participants’ awareness of the Church’s mission around the world. So many in the church, through no fault of their own, simply don't know that their church has X number of missionaries serving throughout the world, where they serve, what they do, etc.
- To demonstrate how the Holy Spirit is working through missionaries to sustainably Spread the Gospel, Plant Lutheran Churches, and Show Mercy internationally. We attack our threefold motto in a way that promotes development, not dependency, knowing that ours is a generational effort we won't see the end of.
- To help participants to understand more clearly how God might be calling them to get involved in international missions in the future. For some: a low-threshold action like following the LAC region on Facebook. For others: taking a leap of faith and starting the application process to serve as a missionary (if you know any Lutheran CPAs, send them my way).
“But getting things done quickly is simply not what development is all about! Development is a lifelong process, not a two-week product.”
“…a good first step is for the STM* trip to be done as part of a long-term, asset-based, development approach being implemented by local ministries. The STM team needs to understand how it fits within the overall strategy of the local ministry and take care not to undermine the ministry’s effectiveness.”
- a Mission Education alumni-led team;
- a deaconess panel at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis;
- weekly Spanish Vespers using Himnario Luterano at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis (pictured below);
- a new deaconess-to-be enrolled at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis;
- three months of Sunday school offerings funneled to a LAC project;
- two applicants to serve on the DR Missionary Kid Program Team; and
- a Mission Education team taking their presentation on the road to at a local Lutheran congregation's fundraising event.
“This is a Mission Education trip. You won't spend all your time in direct service, like on many other mission trips. You will have the opportunity to watch an active and vibrant mission in action, participating every step of the way. You will be involved, and you will be learning, learning, learning, making connections, and building relationships for eternity."
That from a January 2023 short-term volunteer who got it. I can't make this stuff up. To further corroborate the soapbox you've endured if you've made it this far, check out this video put together by the LAC Communications team:
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