Pre-Trip Missions strategy

Recently, I was asked to formulate a rationale for doing pre-trips before you take a Short-Term Missions team somewhere in the country or the world. Here is what I came up with:

1. There are things that can and do happen in a partnership in ministry/short term trip that can not be anticipated by emails and phone calls.
An example of this was recently on a pre-trip to Mexico we saw the “red light” district where teenagers were going to walk with evangelistic materials and share their faith with people. As we drove down the street where scantily clad prostitutes were pursuing cars and people walking – we determined that was not a place we wanted teens to see or experience and we were grateful we could make that determination before the trip.

2. There are conversations regarding vision and strategy that can occur with Missions partners without the pressure of leading a team.
Another example – recently we were able to have conversations with a Missions partner and then tailor our short term trip to meet their needs more effectively. Instead of a clean up project we ran a program for children. I think it would have been more difficult to assess those needs and make adjustments prior to the trip without talking to them first hand and seeing the environment where they are doing ministry.

3. It is important to have research and development happen before we go to a place where Corinth has not taken a team.
We have set a precedent for this by doing pre-trips to Chicago, Newark, and Tijuana. We had built this into those trip budgets. We will not have to do this every year- unless the leadership or environment changes where we choose to send a team.

4. A lot of this has to do with our vision for missions.
That is, we're not simply relying on an agency to coordinate everything.The leaders are not just along for the ride with participants. They are part of integrating the mission vision in to the cross –cultural spiritual formation vision. Thus, we require more input than Pastors who utilize (and pay more per trip) an agency to take care of everything.

Essentially, we're saying: Before leading a large group of people somewhere, we want to scout out the land, look into our hosts' eyes, hear their heart and be sure we have the same vision for what our people are going to experience. We don’t believe you can do that without a pre-trip.