Short-Term Missions Documentary Produced to Prepare Churches, Travelers
A documentary-style DVD and curriculum aims to help short-term missions travelers embark on global missions trips better prepared, more culturally aware, and equipped to build lasting change and relationships.
Produced by Christianity Today International, Round Trip follows teams from two churches as they prepare for trips, work thousands of miles away from their homelands, and afterward as they process the experience.
While one team traveling from Chapel Hill, N.C., will find themselves in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, the other team will find themselves in North Carolina, traveling from Nairobi.
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"The future of missions is multi-directional," explains Andy Crouch, executive producer of Round Trip and senior editor at Christianity Today International.
"Many short-term mission trips are undertaken with outmoded assumptions about developing-world needs, and without enough genuine partnership with those who will 'receive' Westerners' help," he says. "Especially lacking is awareness that the church in the global South is just as committed to, and capable of, engaging in mission around the world as the churches of the North and West."
According to missions experts, more than two million Americans travel abroad each year on short-term mission trips, sponsored by the more than 40,000 American churches, schools, and other organizations that send teams around the world. And each year, the United States leads in the number of missionaries sent overseas.
Notably, however, it is the Church in the Global South that is rapidly expanding and Christianity in Africa, particularly, that is growing faster than anywhere else.
Nigeria is already sending out 5,200 missionaries, according to Dr. Howard Brant, champion for New Initiatives in Mission at SIM (Serving In Mission) International. And believers in the Eastern nation of Ethiopia envision sending up to 500 foreign missionaries in the next ten years and 50,000 within a century.
"It is our turn to come and be missionaries to the rest of the world," says a member of the African team in Round Trip.
"We cannot afford as the African church to only receive, receive, receive," adds Oscar Muriu, senior pastor of Nairobi Chapel. "The African church can give back."
In the Round Trip DVD and the accompanying curriculum, teams walk through the major stages of preparation and planning for their short-term missions trips, a process that takes about 3-4 months. It includes direction on practical and spiritual preparation, and includes commentary from experts on missions and cross-cultural relationships.
"Short-term missions teams now have a resource to prepare for an effective, life-changing trip," says project director Nate Clarke. "They can watch how the churches in the documentary prepared for their trips, how they served while overseas, and how they return home: how the trip changed, and didn't change, their perspective on themselves, the global church, and God's mission in the world."
The Round Trip program was founded on key values of partnership, learning, and sparking lasting change, according to its promoters. The hoped-for result, as reflected by the two teams featured in the Round Trip documentary, is that Christians will begin living with a broader perspective, asking themselves, "How should we live at home in light of what we saw over there?"
"The new round-trip missions are as much about receiving as giving," says the film producer Andy Crouch. "They are as much about learning as teaching. They are as much about what happens after we get home as what happens during the time we are there, and as much about lasting friendships as snapshots of brief meetings."
Round Trip is geared toward individuals who are considering a short-term mission trip, churches who are sending short-term teams, and the teams themselves as they prepare to go — "anyone who wants to do short-term missions with excellence, integrity, and real partnership with the church around the world," its producers say.
The trailer for Round Trip and other video clips are available at the documentary's website, www.RoundTripMissions.com.
