In areas like mine, ministry is slow and needs to take place over the long term. The way in which we are going to see people come to faith is through long term, ongoing relationships where we have repeat opportunities to speak with them about Jesus. There may be lots of things we want to say about that, but it tends to mean that short term activities and one-hit wonder events simply do not work in areas like ours. They require lots of effort to run and generally do very little for the kingdom.

Given all that, we are not big fans of short terms mission trips to “help” us. The issue we have is that short term missions tend to mean doing a lot of things we don’t usually do for a limited period of time. Not only does it give people a false impression of what ordinary ministry in our area is like, it also requires a lot of extra work to be done to please those who are coming to “help” so they feel like they’ve done something for the kingdom. The extra work of putting new stuff on to fill the time is almost never actually fruitful. It is lots of events and one-hit-wonder outreach programmes none of which does anything to build meaningful relationships or create ongoing opportunities to share the gospel. These things are even worse when group simply arrive in the areas, don’t bother speaking to the church at all and just crack on with these ineffective things with no thought or concern for the local culture.

Some might hear these things and think we aren’t interested at all in facilitating people coming to us. That isn’t true. We are very happy to have people visit us. What we are less keen on is people coming as short term mission teams. It creates a lot of extra work for us, creates a false sense of reality for them and does not lead to meaningful gospel fruit for anyone.

If not that, it bears asking in what way we are happy to welcome people. We want to encourage people to think less in terms of mission trips and more in terms of vision trips. Instead of thinking you are going to come and do something for us and, simultaneously, something great for the kingdom, we want people to think in terms of coming to see what ministry is really like in our context and whether that is something they might fit into long term. We are very happy for people to come and see the reality of what we do and whether coming to Oldham (or somewhere like it) is for them longer term. We are very happy for people to come and see what goes on in reality (rather than what we have artificially manufactured for their visit) so that they can pray more meaningfully for us having seen what things are like. We are very happy for people to get a true picture of what we actually do and decide if it is for them. I am happy for people to train along with us for going into similar contexts. I am happy for people to see what we do so they can partner with us more helpfully. But we are less keen to put on a load of stuff we don’t normally do, create a lot of unncessary extra work that will bear no meaningful kingdom fruit so that you feel you had a lovely trip. We are happy to facilitate vision trips; we don’t want to facilitate manufactured short term mission trips.

When we get our head around this shift from mission trips to vision trips, some other helpful things happen. For one thing, a larger church partner who are already supporting the church don’t need to come and condescend to us about all the ways we should be doing mission here. Instead, we can serve them by helping them get a true picture of what mission in our context is really like. We can say to them, this is specifically what your support is facilitating and why – though it might look less impressive than a flurry of activity for a week or two – it is more likely to be fruitful. We can also serve partners by giving any of their members who may be thinking of doing so a taste of what longer term overseas mission is like. If people want to go to Pakistan or Muslim-majority contexts, we can give them a safe environment that is a step removed from such countries (but really quite close in certain respects) so they can get a feel for that ministry before they go. Even more specifically, we can give them a taste of what context exactly like ours are like day to day. We can also serve them by giving them some training or ideas of what they can do to reach out to those on their doorstep who they are perhaps not reaching at the moment but are similar to folk we have in our area. A vision trip seeing one church actively reaching their community might just light a fire in those returning to their home churches for how they can reach out to their own community.

In the end, we want to take a kingdom mindset to these things. We are very happy for people to visit. We are very happy to facilitate teams coming to see what we do and how we do it. We are very happy to offer whatever insights we have to them about the ministry and how we approach it. All these things are ways we can serve our partners and serve the kingdom by either encouraging their folks to join us in active ministry, serve them in pre-training before they go out to a similar context or just give them a vision for what they might be doing at home and how they can be active in the kingdom where they are. All these things may have some meaningful gospel fruit down the line too. All in ways that a mission trip with a flurry of activity driven by a team of people who don’t know the context probably won’t.

So, we want to encourage more vision trips. Not just to us, but to other places of real gospel need. Partners should be willing to be served as well as serve. They should be able to see how the partner churches they support can actually serve and help them. Though they may be financially poor, or resource poor, they may well be rich in many other ways and able to offer insights that will help your church back home. They may be able to help your church to grow in ways you didn’t realise, if only you will let them. Whilst there is no denying that smaller churches really do need the prayers, finances and even people from larger, better resourced churches – and we are so grateful to them when they graciously send them to us – true partnership is two-way and there are a host of ways smaller partner churches can serve you. Come on a mission trip driven by your agenda and desire to do something and you might miss it. Come on a vision trip and you might just gain far more than you realised you might and your existing partnership may just be enhanced beyond what you thought it might be.