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By Shane Bennett<\/p>\nBy Shane Bennett<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve read more than two of my columns, you know I have totally drunk the short-term missions Kool-Aid. You\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a bigger advocate. In fact, I\u2019m dying to invite you to come on a short-term to Sicily with me! But just for fun, this month we\u2019re going to look at why you might not want to go overseas\u2014why instead, you may want to do something just as cool but that\u2019s within a stone\u2019s throw (or a day\u2019s drive) of your house.<\/p>\n
So here are six reasons why you and your church should not plan an amazing trip to Faroffistan this summer, but rather do something equally strategic and helpful nearby.<\/em> [Click to tweet this<\/a>]<\/p>\n I for one have stood on the rooftop of my short-term housing in Faroffistan and wistfully watched planes fly away, whispering in the darkness of my own heart, \u201cSomeday soon I will be on one of you!\u201d Being more spiritual than me, you probably have felt another kind of sadness nearing the end of a short-term assignment: something like regret that you couldn\u2019t stay longer, a sense of tearing as new found relationships come to an end, a wish that you could complete or at least continue the work your team began.<\/p>\n Well, good news: If you do a short-term trip near where you live, you live near there! (Take whatever time you need to process that logic, then read on!) You can go back next month or next weekend. You can have your new friends over for a barbecue. No plane ticket. No passport or shots. Just gas money equivalent to the change you can scrounge from under the couch cushions.<\/p>\n For many of us, the key value of dropping into a foreign culture can be pretty much accomplished within driving range, sometimes walking range, of our house. If you arrange your efforts to focus on people different from you and to engage them in conversation, you\u2019ll get at least a little bit of cultural disorientation (and connection).<\/p>\n Furthermore, if you focus well, and perhaps drive a little farther, you can serve unreached people. There may be communities near you representing whole peoples who\u2019ve largely been overlooked in our sharing of the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re into missions, you may have heard this, \u201cI don\u2019t know about going all the way to Faroffistan. We have plenty of needs right here and the Bible says to bloom where you\u2019re planted.\u201d Well, we do and it doesn\u2019t, but there is a point here. Steve Hawthorne said that being exclusively concerned about overseas stuff is like a team who only plays \u201caway\u201d games. It\u2019s silly. God has placed us where we are and we do have a certain stewardship for our place. It would do us well to look around a bit and ask God what he\u2019s up to here.<\/p>\n And you\u2019re telling me you\u2019re going to take them overseas? Let them get groped by TSA along the way? Expose them to Zika? Probably lose them in a crowded train station in Calcutta? (Yes, I am reading your mom\u2019s email!) I\u2019m all for taking kids overseas, but I figure the effort required to shift the family is large enough to make a one-year stay the minimum for most families. And cross-cultural exposure is so important that if you don\u2019t already live someplace like San Francisco or Amsterdam, you may need to make some special efforts to get your munchkins immersed among people different from them. If you don\u2019t want to give Mum a coronary, doing that domestically may be a good start.<\/p>\n OK, work this out to its logical extreme and the cheapest thing to do is stay on the couch! I get that. But making a cross-cultural experience more accessible to more people is a worthwhile idea. For good reasons or bad, some of our friends cannot imagine finding $2500 to spend a week in Faroffistan. But they might pony up US$250 for a long weekend of immersion in a nearby city. And sometimes it only takes three or four days of hugs and hummus to change minds and knit hearts to newcomers.<\/em> [Click to tweet this<\/a>]<\/p>\n While I was writing this column, President Trump was signing a new executive order limiting refugee admittance and temporarily banning travel to the US from several countries. We may think the order is ill-advised and will do little to increase the security of Americans, but this much also seems true: We shouldn\u2019t complain if we\u2019re not willing to act. I feel a little foolish ranting and raving about my country not letting in refugees while I myself fail to drive across town for tea with some who beat the ban. This spring break or summer could be a really good time to go hang out with refugees.<\/p>\n What have you done to connect with unreached peoples domestically? If you were going to take a small group from your church to reach out to refugees nearby you, what would you do? I\u2019d love to hear your ideas and experiences.<\/p>\n \u00bb Please take a moment to share them with us below or through Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n If this kind of experience seems like a good idea for your church, but you don\u2019t know where to start, let\u2019s chat. A good bud and I are once again dreaming and scheming about effective, high-caliber, domestic, unreached-focused, short-term trips. And, well \u2026 we need some guinea pigs!<\/p>\n \u00bb Email Shane<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Shane Bennett If you\u2019ve read more than two of my columns, you know I have totally drunk the short-term missions Kool-Aid. You\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a bigger advocate. In fact, I\u2019m dying to invite you to come on a short-term to Sicily with me! But just for fun, this month we\u2019re going to … Continue reading Six Reasons to Bail Out of Overseas Missions This Summer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-practical-mobilization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7018,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016\/revisions\/7018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Because you live here!<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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Everyone is \u201chere\u201d now.<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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We need to play the home games, too.<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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You have kids! (Well, some of you do.)<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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Lower cost means more workers.<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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Action beats whining \u2026 every time.<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n