Short term mission trips are far more than a week away from home. Short term mission trips are created in order to spread the gospel to all the ends of the earth. Therefore, individuals should realize that people are priority when ministering. People involved with missions must get past their wants and desires, and be willing to serve others before anything else. Short term mission trips require hard work and a sense of passion. Without the right heart, mission trips can become mundane and completely meaningless. It is important for individuals to realize the significance and the benefits that come with short term mission trips. However, this is only possible if people approach missions with the right heart and work ethic. Short term mission trips are beneficial because they enable individuals to grow spiritually, they provide opportunities for new relationships to be built, and they allow people to gain new perspectives within their daily lives. Those traveling on short term mission trips can gain the benefit of spiritual growth. Mission trips require individuals to be fully emerged in God’s word and presence. If individuals …show more content…
Mission trips can be the most humbling experiences an individual faces. Mission trips are typically located in areas where individuals are facing extreme poverty. When people travel to areas where individuals are struggling to provide food for their families, and to provide a roof over their families’ heads, it changes their perspective. Individuals realize how truly blessed they are when they see people struggling to make ends meet. People’s perspectives can be changed while on a short term mission trip because they see firsthand what it is like to have nothing. It makes people appreciate what they have more than they thought they ever word. It also allows them to stop taking all their possessions for granted, and view their needs and wants
Engagement with others is the most fertile ground for spiritual growth. Yet, salvation cannot come through individual questing nor good works in the community of the world alone. Salvation can only come when the journey and the work become
Where is A Mission? The thought had always lingered inside of my head, aimlessly suspended like a climber stuck in an awkward position. Debating whether to reach for the next gap or to give out and abandon the idea. I had always dreamed of going on a mission trip, unfortunately my actions didn’t concede to the idea as easily as I imagined. Each time I was given the opportunity to go, I would push it back further and further by using a different excuse to cover my hesitation.
I grew up in a home with a family that attend church weekly and was active in the church family. I knew about God and about His son but I never remember the story of salvation and the personal need for a savoir. As a teenager I walked away from the religion that I thought did not offer my anything. In my thirties, my husband was diagnosed with cancer and I immediately started my negotiations with God. Little did I know that He was not a negotiator but it was during this time in my life that I needed God more than He needed me. Since accepting the gift of God’s love, the salvation of a Savoir, and the renovation of my heart, I look to God for the path of my life. I share Gods truth through my career change to a Christian nob-profit that’s vision is to share God’s love to the community through the platform of pregnancy care and family services. Personally I have fulfilled God’s call to help the less fortunate by adopting a sibling group and participating and supporting mission trips to third world countries to support his children and missions there. My final piece of God’s plan I feel lead to complete is to volunteer my professional expertise and finances to work with a mission group that provides laboratory services to third world mission hospitals. I have done one trip for them and am currently planning a trip to Honduras in the new year. My day to
A mission trip is an amazing opportunity, not a responsibility, to go out of the comfort of your perfect house and step into the dirt floors of other countries. Open up your hearts to help other people, not because of the responsibility that has been bestowed upon you, because you don’t have a responsibility, but because you have been blessed with an opportunity to help other people.
Mother Teresa said “let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.” Many times in life the only way we can extend love to others is through a smile and an embrace. A great example of those times is on a mission trip to a place that speaks a different language. I have experienced just how true this is firsthand. This trip truly changed my life, completely affecting my outlook on my daily life as well as the “big picture” plan for my life. I now appreciate things I once took for granted, luxuries that we have come to expect in our sheltered lives that we live here in America. In my life, I have never experienced extreme poverty for myself, but this trip gave me just a glimpse into what life is like for those who are not so pampered as our country.
I spent every spring and summer in middle school doing mission work and community service. I loved the opportunity that it gave me to build relationships and share my beliefs with people I didn’t know. Little did I know that this would pave the way for a life-changing experience that I would encounter one day. Each spring my church would host a missionary event called “The Ignite Project.” I felt an urge to join the group, recognizing that it was a calling to profess my faith in Jesus. These mission trips helped me to go out
With over 70,000 members worldwide Mara Salvatrucha(MS-13) is the most dangerous gang in the world. MS-13 has a tormented founding, which is why they are so dangerous. During the 1970s many Central American countries were engulfed in civil war, such as El Salvador. Refugees fled their home countries and immigrated to cities like Los Angeles. In Los Angeles the new ethnicities, mainly El Salvadorian and Honduran, were persecuted by the already established minorities, African-American and Mexican. In order to protect their livelihoods the immigrants founded MS-13. Quickly, Mara Salvatrucha rose in the ranks of LA’s most dangerous gangs, because the founding members were ex-guerrilla fighters in El Salvador’s civil war. For example, to strike fear into their rivals MS-13 members would use machetes in turf wars. Mara Salvatrucha, a transnational gang, affects homicide rate, drug production, and civic peace in Central America.
“The call is something that is an indescribable joy and an indefinable burden at the same time.” (Bryant and Brunson 2007, 32). There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a congregation of the redeemed moving forward in their faith. However exciting this may be, it is usually not the thrill that propels the pastor in his service. It is the burden placed on the pastor by God that compels him in his work. The pastor understands that he is largely responsible for the work of God being accomplished by his faithfulness to his calling. “All through the Word of God and down through the annals of history, when God has moved it has almost always been attended by the preaching of the Word.” (Bryant and Brunson 2007, 31)
Throughout the world, missions are taking place, changing lives forever and for the better. As people serve in various places of the world, they can learn a lot, not only about themselves but also about how one person can truly make a difference in another person’s life. There are many groups and organizations out there that travel together and share their stories with the world. All God’s Children is a group that travels to various third-world countries to help children in orphanages. They stay with the children in, generally, worn-down buildings or huts, with no indoor pluming or running water. Sharing how their experiences have impacted their lives, express the hardships of the children and suffering they go through, and sharing the Word of the gospel are only a few of the things most organizations do among many others such as branching out into local communities.
In general, I do not believe that Christian mission and contextualization occurs only when a Christian or a group of Christian travel to remote places in the world to spread the Gospel; that concept of missiology is another way of imperialist point of view. Mission and contextualization occurs every day, not only on mission abroad.
Last summer, I was given the amazing opportunity to go on my first mission trip. My church, Berlin Baptist is a very small church, with a congregation of thirty people and only around seven youth, including myself. Despite our small numbers, we wanted to do something of significance. Our youth minister Micah wanted us to go on a mission trip, but because we were such a tiny group we would have to accompany another church in order to go. In a stroke of luck, Spring Arbor from Fairview invited us to help minister to a few apartment complexes filled with Nepalese refugees in Fort Worth, Texas.
I did not want to leave. I had been here for ten days and I had established relationships and friendships with people from everywhere and all sorts of backgrounds. We all sat in the car preparing to leave. Every single one of us, my parents, brother and me, sitting in silence. Wanting to cry, waiting for someone to say the first word. Each of us had learned something that trip. For me, this experience had taught me what gratefulness was, the impact a good attitude has, what a servant looks like, and really how the relationships we make with our life is the most important aspect about life.
Throughout my college experience, I have gone on multiple missions trips. I could say with confidence that I feel as
Missionary life begins with an act of reception; missionary zeal grows upon knowledge of the Spirit so received; missionary work is the expression of that Spirit in activity. The quest to understand theology as it relate to a church leader, three areas of focus are critical for growth. First, each church leader should care about the health of the church. Second, they believe that the church has a critical role to play in the community given its track record of being the dominant social institution in the community. Third, they believe that the rise and fall of the church depends on its
I pray God is with you during this Christmas season. Although, it is just the start of the new year, I am preparing now for an extended mission trip with the Missioners of Christ in Comayagua, Honduras. The last three summers I have served on shorter mission trips with the Missioners and through prayerful discernment, God has presented me with this opportunity. The challenge is raising the needed funds while continuing my college studies at Christendom College. An extended mission experience will allow me more time to live among the Hondurans, spreading the Gospel.