Through Generations Ministries, GCI in the U.S. facilitates short-term mission trips to locations in the U.S. and abroad. This post provides information about these trips in a short article and a video interview. For further information, click here or email Anthony.Mullins@gci.org.
The value of short-term mission trips
The article below is from Charles Fleming, GCI’s Caribbean region missions director and a member of the Generations Ministries mission event resource team.
I have found that people often misunderstand what short-term mission trips are about. One misunderstanding is that a mission trip must be a hard-core, deeply sacrificial event. However, the reality is that mission trips are as varied as the people travelling and the people in the host community.
Over the past 15 years, I have been privileged to make mission trips to dozens of places. Some have, in fact, been hardship trips where we worked in difficult and even dangerous places. Others have been less intense. However, in all cases visitors and hosts alike came to know God better and understand themselves and others better while making a practical difference in the lives of people in the host community. From this experience, I have learned that successful short-term mission trips have the following characteristics:
- In the same way that God, in love, adapts himself to our needs, successful mission trips adapt to the needs of the host.
- They accommodate the interests and experience base of the visiting mission team.
- They also make practical, lasting contributions to life in the host community.
- Most importantly, they build relationships of mutual respect and care between visitors and hosts.
As the pictures here show, successful trips combine fun, learning and hard work. I hope you and your family will consider going on a short-term mission trip. Through Generations Ministries, GCI in the U.S. sponsors several short-term mission trips and other events each year – some within the U.S. and some that travel internationally.
Mission trip to Cleveland
The video below tells the story of the short-term mission trip conducted by GCI’s congregation in Youngstown, Ohio to help the Cleveland congregation conduct a Vacation Bible School as an outreach to the neighborhood where the church meets.
