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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 128 128 Volunteerism in Mission home. This standard recognizes that cementing long-term changes as a result of people’s short-term experiences usually necessitates post-trip follow-up. Longer-term Short-term Volunteers As the numbers of participants on short-term mission trips have increased over the last few decades, remarkable things happened. One was that short-term volunteers began saying, “I don’t want to go home after two weeks or a summer. I have a skill and time and money. I want to come back as soon as possible.” Those short-termers began returning to mission fields to serve as volunteers for periods of up to two years. A positive thing for the career missionary is that midterm volunteers, as Miriam Adeney has called them, need less direct supervision than a team that will be on-site for only one week. The longer time frame gives more opportunities for the volunteer to learn culture and language. Thus, those midterm volunteers can usually assume more significant ministry roles than is possible for those who are on a field for only a few days. Retirees In many countries, people are able to retire from the work force while continuing to receive an income. Like the retiree previously mentioned who shared his dream with the missionary, other retirees are asking: “Is that all there is to life?” As people retire, they are faced with deciding what to do with the productive years they feel are still ahead of them. In an Evangelical Missions Quarterly article titled “Boomers, Busters, and Missions,” Ken Baker noted that numbers of American evangelicals 50 years of age or older are giving themselves to a second career in <strong>missions</strong>. 12 Precareer Volunteers Spending a year or two in volunteer mission service has attracted college and university students wanting to do hands-on cross-cultural ministry before beginning their careers and families. The U.S. government fanned interest in volunteerism with its creation of the Peace Corps and Americorps. In Britain, taking a “gap year” during one’s university years has been a long tradition. Those kinds of programs gave young adults a way to see the world while helping their fellow human beings. The government programs, plus the example provided by young Mormon volunteers, gave churches and mission agencies models for providing young adults in-depth mission experiences. Thus, in addition to those going to a mission field as volunteers for one to two years right after they graduate and before they launch into their career, some are taking a semester or even a year off during college to serve as mission volunteers. There are pros and cons to sending young adult volunteers to serve along-
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 129 Volunteerism in Mission 129 side older career missionaries. One drawback is the volunteers’ lack of life and career experience. Another is their frequent failures to comprehend how negative certain behaviors can be for the church in other world settings. As Craig Sheppard, missionary to Kosovo, has noted, “Short-termers hold the integrity of the gospel and the ministry of the church in their hands. I have seen and experienced volunteers compromise the integrity of the ministry.” 13 The positive side is that young adults tend to be flexible (a good characteristic to have in cross-cultural mission) and willing to adapt to new situations. Even when they fall short of their high expectations of what can be accomplished in a year or two, their enthusiasm to change the world can be contagious. Their presence may push those with whom they minister to be more radical in sharing the gospel than they would otherwise. Volunteer service for a year has more potential to produce lasting change in a person than will a 10-day trip. This is one reason why mission agencies need to offer significant midterm opportunities for young adults. Factors in the success and failure of young, midterm volunteers include how self-motivated they are, whether they feel they are part of something significant, and how thoroughly they understand what is expected of them. When young adults have mission experiences, the good and bad ripples from that can influence a church for years to come. As was previously noted, it is not uncommon to hear of full-time missionaries receiving their call while serving as midterm volunteers. Some midterm volunteers have even made seamless transitions into career missionary service. Tentmakers One group of hybrid longer-term mission volunteers is known as tentmakers. While other volunteers take time off from their jobs and use savings or raise funds from friends and family to go on short-term mission trips, tentmakers fund their mission experience by taking a secular job in another culture with the intention of doing evangelism, discipleship, and church planting in their free time. There are several options between the extremes of having a fulltime tentmaking job and being totally supported by donors or churches in one’s home country. William Carey did some tentmaking as he ran indigo processing plants and other business operations in India. Tentmaking has also been a way to do mission in creative access areas where visas and resident permits will not be issued to those doing missionary ministry in traditional ways. The downside to being a tentmaker missionary is that much of a person’s day and energy is soaked up by a secular job. One example of a tentmaker missionary was Kim Sun Il, a Korean kid-
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discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

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