Originally posted on May 2015 lausanne.org By: David Ro, Director of the J Christy Wilson Center for World Missions at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and as International Deputy Director for the Lausanne Movement in East Asia. Several prominent Chinese leaders from the unregistered churches have been convening in Seoul with global and Korean evangelical leaders to discuss…
Planting Broadly for a More Plentiful Harvest: God Raising Up Latino Hands for His Glory “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to…
Didn’t the Apostle Paul say, “All things work for good…”? This week has been difficult for a couple of new missionary families seeking to discover their financial support. Both couples have been challenged to evaluate their motives by family members who do not trust their reasons for leaving the U.S. Others are struggling with the…
How short-term trips helped me discover my calling! I had just returned from my third short-term trip to Honduras with my local church. I had fallen in love with the country, the people, the language, the culture, and everything that missions was. Since my first trip there when I was fourteen, I felt God nudging…
At Riverbend Community Church in Lexington, SC, a missions-minded church of 450 attendees, we have felt the need for local churches and mission organizations to cooperate more in fulfilling the Great Commission. Many times it seems that once a missionary is sent, the only contact is an occasional newsletter or visit while on home assignment,…
United World Mission can help infuse critical elements into your short-term trip to make it a success. You may be wondering how a mission agency can help your church improve your outcomes? Below are three critical elements you need to consider… The Long Game: Everyone knows that a short-term trip can have some immediate impact…
Discouraged. Disheartened. Disqualified. That is how I felt in 2009. I was suffering the aftermath of a divorce and was, to tell the truth, hiding from the Lord. I felt so much shame, and I believed that my divorce had disqualified me in the eyes of the Lord. I had stopped going to church because…
For many of us we we hear someone say “short-term” missions or a missions trip, and we associate a negative feeling or thought with those phrases. We stereotype what they look like and the impact they could have on the “real” work of missions. We ask questions like: How helpful could this really be? What could short-term…
Much has been written recently on the viability of short-term mission (STM) trips, both on the impact they have on those in the host country, as well as the lasting impact that these trips have on the participants. Much research tends to agree that the lives of the vast majority of STM participants are not…