Skip to main content
Cover of Short-Term Missions Workbook

Short-Term Missions Workbook

From Mission Tourists to Global Citizens

  • Evangelism & Missions
  • Publisher: InterVarsity Press
  • Published: 2018

FritzSearch.com earns a commission on purchases made through Bookshop.org links.

Publisher's Description

Going on a short-term missions trip can be a life- and faith-transforming experience. It can enrich the way we view the world. It can cause us to rely on God more fully. It's an opportunity to develop deep relationships with our team and the people we serve. A short-term missions experience can also involve weeks of physical and spiritual challenges. An unprepared team can wreak havoc on each other and the people they intend to serve. To get the most out of a missions trip, we need to go prepared. Whether we're going on our own or with a team, the keys to preparation are here in this workbook. In this ten-week course, you will find a concise summary of crosscultural principles help in facing spiritual warfare tips on avoiding a tourist mentality spiritual preparation through individual or group Bible study questions for individual reflection and group discussion This revised and expanded edition includes updated content throughout and new chapters on facing risks, fears, and suffering, and making the most of the trip after returning home. If you are planning to go on a short-term missions trip, don't leave home without working through this book!


Endorsements (7)

“This is the best tool I’ve seen for preparing individuals for the entire short-term mission experience. The topics covered prepare the soil of one’s heart to allow the transformation process to begin. Don’t let a team leave without working through it!”

Bennie Ingraham

“Mission preparation’ is a spiritually invigorating, powerfully pragmatic exposure to effective global ministry. Captured passions turn into lifelong commitments; resources are maximized toward relevant actions. Tim is sharing a lifetime of wisdom. Don’t leave home without it.”

Robert A. Seiple

“This workbook is really a complete resource kit to help the short-term ministry team prepare themselves culturally and spiritually for their service. It provides just what is needed (and what we have lacked)—a program of preparation and reflection that will help turn the short-term ministry into preparation for a lifetime of service. Don’t leave home without it.”

Bill Dyrness

“Tim Dearborn is extraordinarily wise. This workbook is an outstanding guide to help all Christians think more thoroughly about our mission in the world—wherever and however we serve. The questions in this manual are useful for each of us personally, for discussion groups, for congregations. They challenge our assumptions, upset our provincialisms, widen our horizons, and deepen our visions. Most of all, this guide ushers us into following Jesus more faithfully—globally and locally.”

Marva Dawn

“If we Christians are not personally engaged in God's great mission in the world, we have missed the very thing God created us to do. But doing what we were made for isn't always easy. Traveling to the hard places and entering other cultures to witness and to serve can be fraught with challenges. And how we do it has everything to do with the impact we have as ambassadors of Christ. This classic guide from my dear friend Tim Dearborn continues to be an excellent resource for preparing your most important missions tool—your heart.”

Richard Stearns

“Tim is a lifelong friend who never fails to inspire. I am thrilled to see an updated version of his practical and deceptively simple book. Via simulations, discussion questions, and the study of Scripture, mission groups are able to process the joys and frustrations of doing ministry together. The book is so full of gems that it's hard to count them all!”

Alec Hill

“Tim Dearborn’s very helpful workbook draws on over twenty-five years of experience in enabling the Western church to relate in partnership for mission with the church and mission groups in the non-Western world. The workbook focuses on the key issue in short-term missions: the challenge of crossing into a different culture. It leads the short-term mission aspirant through a practical and theoretically rigorous learning process. It enables the short-term mission team member to discern the richness of the gospel as experienced and lived out by people of many cultures. I commend this book warmly.”

Vinay Samuel

See something wrong on this page? Report a problem