Do you consider that God's mission seems to be about reconciliation and seems to move from brokenness toward wholeness? If you do, you might find mission trips are becoming more about developing long term relationships that empower transformation of a community from within and through the vision and desire of community leadership.
This way of mission leads to lots of meetings with local church and community leaders and a lot of planning in support of projects designed and implemented by locals. Which doesn't leave much for "us" to "do".
So what does a mission trip look like in light of this?
It is a concern because there is value to people pursuing altruistic ideals of reaching the world and spreading the word and serving others.
So it might be OK to sprinkle in a few painting and building projects along with some bible school while working as a catalyst for change through community building partners.
We were painting a wall in a community (which really didn't seem to be too interested in having it's wall painted) recently when I asked one of our younger team members if he felt like this was "mission work" enough for him.
No, he said, look at all these people (the ones who didn't care about having the wall painted): we don't know any of them.
I'm guessing the future of missions is about spending enough time with a group of people to get to know them.
For the sake of getting to know them.
And then figuring out what it is you want to do together.
From what I can tell the future may thankfully already be here.
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