Why Short-Term Mission Trips Are Good For The People We Serve

Maybe you’ve asked this question or something similar at one point in your experience of traveling on a short-term mission trip. How could one week or one month make any difference at all? After all, our interactions with people may be brief or happen only once. How could that be beneficial to anyone?

After traveling overseas on several short-term trips, I’ve seen many ways that these trips have offered benefits to the people we serve that I think can be summed up in three simple ways: being a friend, sharing about the love of Jesus, and showing kindness.

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Friendship

In 1989, Royal Servants sent a team to Scotland. Tina met those joy-filled American teenagers and experienced firsthand the love of Jesus through these foreigners. It wouldn’t be until years later that Tina would finally give her heart to Christ, followed by several in her family. Tina saw the compassion and love of Jesus through the friendship of one young girl on that short-term mission trip team. 

Through the faithfulness of that friendship, showing up year after year through the difficulties and hardships of life and the strain of a cross-cultural friendship, Tina was reminded again and again about Jesus. Tina’s friend wasn’t there to shame her or tell her how wrong she was. She was simply her friend and reflected the love and forgiveness of Jesus in every aspect of their friendship. And it all started on that one short summer in 1989. 

Yes, we are commanded to go into all the world preaching and teaching the Gospel. But we are also commanded to love the people in front of us and to emulate the love and friendship of Jesus to those He puts in our path. 

Short-term mission trips are abundant with opportunities to make new friends all over the world. Through these friendships and the community that is shared, we have the opportunity to be reflections of Jesus’ love for others. 

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We are also commanded to love the people in front of us and to emulate the love and friendship of Jesus to those He puts in our path. 

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Evangelism

I am reminded of a conversation one of our students had in 2024 on our Europe team. Our students shared the Gospel with a woman who very quickly accepted Jesus. She told them, “This is why you are here! To talk to me!” It was one of those ‘divine appointments’ where it felt like God perfectly orchestrated their meeting. Jesus came to this world to reflect the love of the Father into a dark and lonely world. As followers of Jesus, we are called to reflect that same love back into the world. We do this with our words and actions, like the girl who befriended Tina, but we also do this by openly sharing the Gospel.

So many people have never met Jesus. Many have been introduced to a distorted version of Jesus. When we go on short-term mission trips, we have the opportunity to ask people directly if they know Jesus and share with them if they don’t. Sometimes, this is even easier than asking the people in our immediate circles. It’s easy to work up the courage to have a brief conversation about faith and the Gospel. The harder part is leaving the results up to God and being at peace with not leading every single person that we talk with to Jesus. Sometimes, we are just meant to be seed planters, one step in someone’s journey of coming to faith. 

The ripple effect of that one summer in 1989 continues today. The ripple effect of that summer in 2024 in Europe—we may not know until Heaven. 

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Jesus came to this world to reflect the love of the Father into a dark and lonely world. As followers of Jesus, we are called to reflect that same love back into the world.

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Kindness

Short-term mission trips bring the hope of the Gospel and the love of Jesus to people all over the world in simple, yet direct ways. A smile, an act of kindness, or meeting one’s basic needs are all simple ways to share the love of Jesus despite the barriers we face overseas. What differentiates kindness from evangelism is that kindness is not hindered by the lack of a shared language, whereas if you don’t know the language or have tools to bridge the language gap, evangelism is not an option. Kindness is always an option. 

I think of the days on my first mission trip to Nepal. The language barrier was something my team faced on a daily basis, as we only had a handful of translators to share among our large team. We worked with a lot of kids over the course of our summer. It was my favorite part of the trip. I wasn’t a very bold speaker back then, so evangelism was very difficult for me. But loving on kids? Easy! Playing ring-around-the-rosie or showing off our puppet routine were easy and simple ways to show kindness to children by just showing up and showing love. Acts of kindness are limitless and can be one of the most effective ways to show the love of Jesus. Whether 13, 33, or 103, we all have the capabilities to share Jesus’ love with others. 

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Acts of kindness are limitless and can be one of the most effective ways to show the love of Jesus.

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By surrendering our time, trusting God, and taking that leap of faith, we are becoming the hands and feet of Jesus to be used in ways we may never fully understand. We may see the immediate fruit like the students in 2024. We may not see the fruit until years later, like in Tina’s story. The fruit from your ministry isn’t always as tangible as sharing the Gospel and someone accepting Jesus. Sometimes, that fruit looks like living out hope and love. 

Simply put, friendship, the courage to share the Gospel, and kindness are three simple ways that can change people’s lives through the impact of a short-term mission trip.

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