Lifetree Adventures Blog

I've been thinking a lot recently about the cost of going on a short-term mission trip, especially with the seemingly never-ending rising cost of international flights.  Fundraising for just the living expenses and material costs for a mission trip can be daunting (anywhere between $599 - $1199 for one of Lifetree's mission trips), but when you add in a plane ticket that may cost up to $1500 or more, the question kind of needs to be asked:  "Is this a worthwhile expense for me (or my group or my family) or would it be better for me to just give the money away or use it for something else that I need or want?"

I'm not great with numbers, so if you were hoping that I could produce charts and pie graphs with hard data on number of lives touched vs. dollars spent on all of Lifetree's short-term trips in 2011 (both trip costs and airfare), you've come to the wrong blog.  But I did have the honor to serve alongside 39 people this year in two different countries on three different short-term international mission trips and there isn't a pie graph big enough to measure the fruit that God continues to pour out both in their lives here back home in the U.S. and the lives of those touched in the countries they visited.

Here are some numbers that I do know about that have come from the 39 people I served alongside:

• 10% of those who served now financially sponsor a child in an impoverished country on a monthly basis.  Another 10% have committed to financially supporting a Peruvian ministry.  That's 20% of those serving who came back home and committed to a monthly financial sacrificial gift! 
• 1 person came home from her first international short-term mission trip and shared the gospel with all four of her neighbors for the first time.
• 2 people have decided to serve on even longer mission trips in 2012.  Several others have already committed to serving on another one week trip in 2012.
• 2,000 children received Spanish New Testaments on our recent trip to the Dominican Republic.  It's estimated that at least five people will read each Bible given to the children (parents, grandparents, siblings, etc. of those who received a Bible.)  That's 10,000 Dominican people having the opportunity to read God's good news to them because 29 people cared enough to take Bibles to them!
• 1 person single-handedly provided enough clothing, school supplies and toys to get dozens and dozens of Shipibo children through the year.  Since coming home, she's begun looking for ways to help those she works with and lives near above and beyond what she used to do.
• 30 Shipibo people now have a church they can worship in.  A U.S. church that sent someone down to help build the Shipibo church has decided to supply this new Shipibo church with 50 Bibles. 
• A family of 5 in Pucallpa, Peru now have a house that doesn't leak when it rains and their little girl now has a bed to sleep in.

I haven't even touched on the stories from the other 83 people who served on mission trips with Lifetree Adventures this year! 

Thinking about all of this makes me want to do something crazy - I'm going to try and make some numbers happen. 

Let's assume it cost approximately $2,000 for each of these 39 people to serve on a short-term mission trip with Lifetree Adventures in 2011.  That's $78,000 invested in missions.  If we add up the numbers from the list above, let's say that there are approximately 11,000 people, both abroad and back home in the U.S., whose lives have been touched in some way by these 39 people going to serve on a short-term mission trip.  If we divide 78,000 by 11,000, the true "cost" of touching this many lives breaks down to just $7.10/person whose life was touched.  If you divide the $2,000 each person invested in a mission trip by $7.10, you end up with 281.69.  Let's round that up to 282.  For one person who invested $2,000 and one week of his or her life into a mission trip to another country, 282 lives were directly touched in some way.  1 person + $2,000 = 282 lives touched.

Like I said, I'm not a numbers person, but that seems like a pretty good return on investment to me.

All of these numbers remind me of a quote I read not too long ago in a book called Maximum Impact Short-Term Mission by Roger Peterson, Gordon Aeschliman, and R. Wayne Sneed.  This book has been helpful to me in better understanding the role of short-term mission trips in the grand scheme of Jesus' Great Commission.  Look for a future blog to come on more that was gleaned from this book.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with this quote and a few numbers to kick around as you ponder whether $2,000 - $2,500 is too much to invest in Kingdom work in the upcoming year:

"Short-term mission is currently the one mission structure available to the entire church worldwide which, if properly put into practice, could actually release all of God's real people into the world He so loves.  Can you imagine the world's 800 million Great Commission Christians set loose across the globe over the course of the next five years?  It breaks down to roughly 13 million people a month at a time.  If logistically that's too many, then consider just a tenth - 1.3 million short-termers every month.  Could it be done?  It'd be messy, it'd be confusing, and there'd by millions of problems (literally).  But could it be done?  The massive problems it would create still pale in comparison to problems four to five billion people have who aren't yet walking in the full reality of God's love and His redemptive plan for all of creation."

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