Short-term Missions
Overview
Christians can become involved in the Great Commission through participation in short-term missions. Church Planting International plans short-term trips every year to Peru and Mexico. Our teams are involved in evangelism, church planting, work projects, serving at orphanages, leadership training and helping the needy. Additionally, CPI can custom design short-term trips for churches or youth groups. We emphasize on field care, devotional life, service, team unity, cross-cultural experience, affordability, and careful coordination of all logistical details.
Why short-term missions?
Short-term missionary work helps in the fulfillment of the Great Commission in two ways: missions’ mobilization and missions’ impact. One of the most effective ways to mobilize the Church for missions is participation in dynamic short-term missionary trips. On the mission field, team members are confronted by the great material and spiritual needs of others. They often encounter people who are very receptive to the Gospel but have comparatively few Christians available to teach them. As team members experience these needs first hand, compassion and a burden for a lost world grow within their hearts. During the short-term mission experience, team members are immersed in devotional life, sacrificial service and teamwork. As they lose themselves in serving God, they experience a taste of what life in Christ is meant to be. One team member summed up her mission experience in this way:
“I have just returned from Mexico and I am desperate for God. I need God for I know my heart has had revival with Him. My heart for the lost had become lukewarm because of my preoccupation with my American life and its cares. Something happened to me in Mexico when I began to focus on the purpose of God, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I realized that my God was powerful and was using this trip to save me from my self-focused life. This realization came not by His Word alone, but by the demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit. My God was giving me a God focused life – a life with His power, His love, His vision, and His compassion, ultimately helping me to replace my life with His. Thank you for showing me my heart’s cry.”
Global Impact
In addition to impacting those who go on the trips and mobilizing them for the Great Commission, short-term mission trips can have a powerful long-term impact on other countries. One instance occurred in the interior of Mexico when about 20 people went to pray and evangelize in a village which did not have a Christian church. Several brothers and sisters from a church in Mexicali (near the U.S. border) were also part of this team. One of their members had actually been raised in this very village. Later, the Mexican church on the border sent this man and his wife back to this village as long-term missionaries. Other CPI teams visited them year after year. Through these groups, this Mexican missionary couple received some support and was helped in building a church in this community. Also, as a result of another group trip to this same area, CPI became acquainted with a missionary working among an unreached mountain tribal group. It was learned through him that the supply of New Testaments in the language of this tribe had been completely depleted. As a result, funds were later raised by CPI for the reprinting of 2,500 New Testaments in this tribal language. A church was also built in one of their remote mountain tribal villages. A Christian worker from the tribe received support for one year through CPI as he established a new work among his people. These works developed through a chain of events occurring during short-term mission trips.
Effective short-term work is supportive work. For short-term missions to make an impact, it is important to work with an ongoing work, to build relationships over time, and to continue to persevere in the little things. God takes the little bits that we do and links them together to accomplish His glorious master plan.
Is God Calling You?
CPI seeks to make each short-term mission trip both an opportunity for service and an experience that will move the heart with a sense of urgency for the Great Commission. Maybe God is calling you to become involved. All you need is a willing heart.