BIBLE STUDIES TO PREPARE FOR SHORT-TERM MISSIONS
When Jesus called the 12 disciples to short-term ministry in Luke 9:1-9, he was careful to load them up with items of ultimate importance and relieved them of those things that would only weigh them down. As you read this passage, ask Jesus to give you what you need for the journey and to help you leave behind things that will only get in the way.
God has been preparing you in various ways to serve in short-term missions. Luke 9:10-17 is an example of how God prepared the disciples for their own short-term mission. As you read this passage, think back upon the various ways Jesus may have been preparing you for what's ahead.
There are so many moments when our association with Jesus is unpopular. In Luke 9:18-27, Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for the life of unpopularity that awaits them. As you think about following Jesus on mission, consider the parts of your mission trip that are popular and the parts that are unpopular.
In Luke 9: 28-45, we get a better understanding of who Jesus is, helping us carry out his missions even better. His authority to forgive sins and his unequaled power to give orders to powers of darkness dumbfounded his disciples. Ask the Father to give you a more complete understanding of Jesus the Messiah as you read the next passage in Luke.
In Luke 9:46-62, the disciples were beginning to get famous, just by their association with Jesus. It's really too bad that God has such a radically different definition of greatness. Mother Teresa said, "Don't seek to do great things, seek to do small things with great love." Ask God to use this study to thrust one more spear in the heart of our desire for human-defined greatness. There is no other way we can follow him into the hard places.
"I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves." Those are the words Jesus spoke to his disciples directly before their short-term mission in Luke 10:1-16. On your short-term trip, you may be sent as a lamb into wolf-infested places. Reflect on some of the fears you have as you follow your master out of the familiar and into the unknown.
BLOGS AND WEBSITES
Listening, learning, and asking questions will help you understand the people in a different culture so you can build authentic relationships with them. Find helpful questions to reflect on as you enter a new culture.
When we read about Jesus sending the 72, we love the evangelistic fervor. We love the intentionality of being sent to every town and place. We love the inspirational call, the Go! Yet there is more here than just the activity of mission. There are important principles around how we do mission. Learn how to go as Jesus sends the 72.
Operation World is widely regarded as the definitive volume of prayer information about the world. Find ways to pray for hundreds of different countries around the world. Search by country or region, or use the daily prayer calendar.
The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, or IFES, is an organization of Christian student movements in over 150 countries. InterVarsity is a part of the IFES, and your Global Urban Trek may partner with a local IFES movement. Find ways to pray and learn about the needs of different countries on the IFES website.
Latinos have an important place in God’s great plan of shalom! God wants—and even needs—to use you and your story in his global mission.
BOOKS
10 Books on Missions Everyone Should Read
Top 10 picks from the Urbana blog.
Pray for the World is a shortened book format of Operation World's prayer resources.
Going on a short-term missions trip can be a life- and faith-transforming experience. It can enrich the way you view the world. It will cause you to rely on God more fully. A short-term missions experience can also involve weeks of physical and spiritual distress. Tim Dearborn gives practical ways to prepare for a mission trip, including cross-cultural principles, spiritual warfare, and Bible studies.
Short-term mission trips are a great way to impact the kingdom. Yet they can lack effectiveness because of mistakes or naiveté on the part of participants. David Livermore calls us to serve with our eyes open to global and cultural realities so we can become more effective cross-cultural ministers.
Poverty is much more than simply a lack of material resources, and it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve it. This book encourages us to see the dignity in everyone, to empower the materially poor, and to know that we are all uniquely needy. This book focuses on both North American and Majority World contexts. For a version specific to short-term missions, see Helping Without Hurting in Short-Term Missions.
VIDEOS
Using the text of Genesis 11 and the tower of Babel, Brenda Salter McNeil shows God’s desire for diversity in the human family, and how it challenges us to leave our “homogeneous comfort zones to be a part of a multicultural, multiethnic, multi-lingual, multinational family of God.”
Oscar Muriu challenges Urbana participants to consider full unity as a global body of Christ, basing his reflections in 1 Corinthians 12. Muriu focuses especially challenging to the Western Church to consider the Church of the two-thirds world as a primary contributing member to theology and action in the 21st century.
Samuel Escobar asks, What does it mean that this is God's mission? First we must re-emphasize the truth that our missions efforts must be made in obedience to God. It also must be carried out in Jesus's way. How did Jesus go about missions? The answers will probably surprise and disturb us, because they may call into question our traditional methods and concepts.
What do we need when we go on mission? This humorous skit from Urbana 03 shines light on our assumptions about our ability to prepare and consider every contingency, and how it can interrupt our capacity to meet God as we go.
Many of us go on mission with the idea that we will help God to transform and change others. But what if God’s work is primarily to transform and change us? In the context of a secular storytelling forum, Andy Kim shares his short-term mission experience and how God showed him how he was the true mission field.
URBANA AND PERSPECTIVES COURSE
The Urbana Student Missions Conference happens every three years in December. As the largest student mission conference in the world, Urbana offers opportunities to:
- find out how your education and skills fit needs in the world, whether you're pursing nursing, art, physics, business, teaching, law, design, youth ministry, or technology
- connect with Christians from around the world who will share insights that are hard to find anywhere else
- encounter God in profound ways and seek his will for your life
Find out more here.
Perspectives on the World Christian Movement is a fifteen week course designed around four vantage points or "perspectives" — Biblical, Historical, Cultural and Strategic. Each one highlights different aspects of God's global purpose.
- The Biblical and Historical sections reveal why our confidence is based on the historic fact of God's relentless work from the dawn of history until this day.
- The Cultural and Strategic sections underscore that we are in the midst of a costly, but very "do-able" task, confirming the Biblical and Historical hope.
Urbana 15 participants have an opportunity to receive a scholarship for the Perspectives course. Find out more here.
