Wasting money on short term missions?

Andrew Jones on Tall Skinny Kiwi tackles the issue: Are Short Term Missions a Waste of Money?

I've been inclined to think they are, but Andrew makes ten points mostly in favour of short term missions, obviously feeling that the gains outweigh the losses. I've just given the beginnings of each point. You'll find the rest on his site.

1. Short term missions might be an expensive past-time but if they are a far better alternative to overseas vacations and holidays.

2. A cross cultural experience, even if only for a week, is good training for a career in overseas social enterprise or preparation for long term missions.

3. The fall in number of long term missionaries worries me but I am encouraged by the number of missionaries being sent out by the global south.

4. We should send out young people for longer periods of time.

5. Short term mission should be more relational.

6. Missions today is multi-directional and it is a mistake to talk about missions only in terms of our country sending missionaries to others.

7. Pilgrimages and self-guided mission experiences sometimes offer a better posture of learning and receiving hospitality than traditional short term missions.

8. Churches must stay involved in both sending overseas missionaries or they will lose their vision within one generation.

9. Partnering with an established mission organization is a good way to get some cross-cultural sensitivity training for the team.

10. And lets not forget the massive resource we have with retired missionaries now living back home.

Wikinomics

In a recent post on the blog, Tall Skinny Kiwi, Andrew Jones writes about the changes that are taking place in Mission.
...In my travels over the past 2 weeks I have talked to mission leaders in Norway, Netherlands, England and Scotland about the relentless change going on in their worlds. I have been in missions and social enterprise for more than two decades and I really can't remember a time when things were changing so quickly and so radically. There is a dramatic reshuffling of priorities, a flattening of hierarchies, a giving away of the farm, and a greater openness to collaboration with each other. A lot of this change in priorities and thinking is reflected in and/or stimulated by the change of media from print-based to web-based aggregation, retrieval and distribution of new media .

That last sentence is the essential point he's making, and he goes on to recommend some books related to the topic, plus the way in which the giving away of information, or of "losing your life in order to gain it, and I was reminded of other passages in the Scriptures that call for transparency, generosity and trust rather than secrecy, hoarding and self-interest."

One book he recommends is Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams. It's not particularly focused on mission in the Church sense, but does talk about the way the worldview is changing in the light of the Web and all the implications that go with that.