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This is a video of my time in the Congo last year …

I just got back from a weekend in Ottawa. I helped a friend put on a Short Term Mission (STM) clinic for 40 people, facilitated a missions committee as they worked through their issues surrounding the start-up of short term initiatives, spoke about micro-finance issues to a couple of hundred people, had supper with an old childhood friend, and then spent today in a conference with a dozen and a half leaders in international work. It was a fun weekend.

While I was speaking to the missions committee, I found myself challenging them to engage with the partners they presently have in place. A partner they had just read a report of to a crowd that exhibited evident excitement and interest. They were thinking of international engagement, but as is often the case when people are deciding to take a trip overseas, they make the decision based on fear of danger, ease of the travel arrangements, or a low financial cost. At first blush, these reasons do make perfect sense, after-all – shouldn’t we ease into engagement?

My thoughts were this. It is far easier to raise an extra $1000 per participant, than it is to raise interest in a new inititiative. I think it is important that we engage where we are engaged. This sounds so self-evident that it might be almost foolish, and yet for some reason it is all to easy to think of a STM trip as a ends in itself … this should not be the case. The most effective STM experiences always take place within the context of relationship … extended and continuing … for this is Short term mission, wiht a long term focus.