Just over a week ago, I reviewed No Shortcut to Success a book which among other things suggests that mission work needs to be more professional; that is, we need to be more serious about the training and equipping of mission workers. While the book mainly addresses issues in the USA, I do think that there are some issues that it raises which are pertinent to the UK.
Let me start off with an assertion: cross cultural workers need more training than their equivalents who are working in their home culture. Very often, it is assumed that missionaries don’t need the same sort of rigorous training that pastors require in the UK. Frankly, that’s ridiculous. A cross-cultural church planter has to do everything that their colleagues in the UK do, but they have to do so in a language and culture that is not their own. There is nothing about this that is easy and it adds a whole new area of training and preparation that the missionary pastor or church planter needs over and above their home based equivalent. Now, I’m not going to argue that this training needs to be primarily academic or that having an MA or whatever is an indication of good preparation. A large part of any preparation for ministry should be church based and involve mentorship. That being said, there is a place for college based, academic work (I’ve got a diploma and two degrees in theology – I would say that).
One of the features of the modern mission movement from the UK is short-term mission. However, this isn’t just people taking summer trips or gap-year visits. Many mission agencies use short-term work as a recruitment tool or entry portal to the organisation for long term work. You go on a – say – two year short-term placement as an introduction to the agency and then return as a career missionary.
The thing with short-term work is that it doesn’t leave much time for training. It is very unlikely that someone is going to sign up for a three year training course before heading out for six months (or even two years) in Africa. It doesn’t make sense. As a result, a number of training institutes have created three month crash-courses in mission to help equip people who would otherwise hit cross-cultural mission with virtually no training at all. At one level, this might seem better than nothing, but I have a concern that these courses might give students a false-confidence that they know more than they do.
In the interests of fairness, I should add that many of the training institutions that have created shorter courses have also added excellent MA programmes in mission to their prospectus. It is entirely possible for people to take a short-term trip and then return to the UK to study for an MA before returning much better equipped (though see my caveats about academic training above).
The dynamics behind short-term mission trips are complex. Churches, individuals, mission-agencies and training institutes are all involved in normalising them. We can’t pass the buck to someone else. However, if the way that we are using short-term work as a recruiting tool means that our missionary force is less trained and equipped than it needs to be, then we need to address the issue across the board.
I have deliberately titled this blog post with a question. I fear that the move towards short-term placements and training is leading to a generation of long-term mission workers who are not adequately prepared for the work that they are called to do. But I do not know if this is the case.
if the way that we are using short-term work as a recruiting tool means that our missionary force is less trained and equipped than it needs to be, then we need to address the issue across the board. Click To TweetWhen I post things like this, I often get replies on Twitter from mission agencies saying that they have everything in place to address the issues that I have raised. The problem with this is that I often know enough about the particular agencies to know that this is not the case. Agency leaders saying that their people are well prepared will not convince me that this is the case (I apologise if this sounds cynical or judgemental – but it is based on prior experience).
The issues raised by No Shortcut to Success are important ones and they need to be addressed seriously. I would love to see someone do some hard research on the topic. A simple survey that looked at British missionaries involved in Word ministry (Bible teaching, evangelism, pastoring …) and what amount of training they had undergone in theology, biblical languages and so on, in addition to intercultural studies would be very revealing. It might tell us that we are sending out a wonderfully equipped and trained mission force – I really hope so. Then again, it might tell us that we have a big problem that we need to address together.
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