To be blessing and not a curse to our host organization
To attempt to meet the needs of those whom we have the privilege to serve
To remind our students that to follow Christ means to serve
To provide a reality check for our students (and leaders) by getting them out of their “normal/safe” environment into a new and challenging one
While we are obviously firm believers in short-term mission projects (since 1991 we have sent out 19 different teams to Dominican Republic, Romania, Canton, MS and Dorchester, MA), we recognize that there is a danger to such programs. One can see their short-term experience as another “notch” in their spiritual belt and treat the experience with a rather cavalier attitude. Others might use such a trip to jump-start their lagging faith. While in of itself this may not necessarily be a bad idea, there is the danger that with such an attitude the trip becomes only a mountaintop experience. Even worse, some may go on a mission trip only to build up their college bound resume.
It is our sincere hope that our projects both at home and abroad are merely an extension of who we already are in Christ. All ministry should be incarnational in nature. In John 20:21 Jesus says to this disciples: As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” With Jesus as our model we are to go in humility, not in triumph, in weakness, not in power. When God ordained Jesus to come into the world, Jesus came equally committed to the world in which he lived and to the Father, to whom he belonged. He never denied the Father by assimilating to the world. Nor did he ever deny the world by a false pietistic devotion to his Father. His double devotion to God and men, to the Father and to the world, is seen at every stage of his earthly ministry. Throughout his ministry our Lord fraternized with dropouts, the “friend of publicans and sinners,” although without ever losing his own purity. And in death he was actually “made sin” for us, although without losing his personal sinlessness. At each stage he identified himself with our humanity, although without losing his identity.
As Christians we are called to immerse ourselves in secular society - to become one with people in their need, although without ever losing our distinctive Christian identity as those who know God and belong to Christ. A church thus immersed in secularity for Christ will be marked by service, sensitivity and suffering. Amen!