Episode 18: Why Most Short-Term Mission Trips Miss the Mark (And How to Fix It)

I have a confession to make.

Years ago, I led a short-term trip to India with twenty-two people and the best intentions in the world. We stuffed twenty-two of our forty-four duffel bags with Beanie Babies for orphan children. We built a medical database nobody asked for. We spoke at a Bible school where no one understood our English.

And when I came home, I felt confused, depressed, and deeply disappointed — and I couldn't figure out why.

When I went back a year later, the Beanie Babies were in a caretaker's private room. The database had stopped working. The computers had died in the heat and humidity. And the school director had spent forty nights in jail on false charges.

I hadn't known my WHY.

In this first episode of the summer series on short-term trips, I'm talking about the one question that changes everything before a trip even starts — and what it looks like when a church actually gets it right. I walk through how my own church built a whole sequence of short-term trips in service of one long-term vision: getting long-term workers to unreached Muslims. Morocco, Turkey, Algeria, Bangladesh, and a survey trip — each one with a specific purpose, each one feeding the next.

I also talk about why a short-term trip is actually a six-month trip — and why pre-trip training and post-trip debrief are just as important as what happens on the ground.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Across the Street and Around the World by Jeannie Marie (Chapter 7: the full WHY checklist + pre-trip training framework): 
• Neighbors and Nations Course (the pre-trip training I built): jeanniemarieacademy.com/nncourse
• Global Goer Quiz: jeanniemarieacademy.com/quiz
• Free Video Training

Next episode: the three types of short-term trips — and why mislabeling yours might be the most expensive mistake you make.