By Steven Price
After the Israel-Hamas war canceled a trip to Israel that I had planned for the beginning of 2024, the Lord opened a door for a different type of trip: scouting for future short-term missions efforts. This was the goal John Peasland (CMML’s executive director) and I (CMML’s medical adviser) had as we met in Istanbul with plans to visit ministries in Moldova and Turkey. What we did not anticipate was the magnitude of vision that this excursion would cause us to consider.
However, I am getting ahead of myself. As I mentioned, our goal was to obtain an assessment of needs and insight into what temporary assistance a small team or an individual from the West might contribute. The results would then contribute to the development of a template for finite mission expeditions to the established mission field.
Are short-term laborers in the Bible?
The Bible includes minimal direct evidence of short-term labors in the New Testament, but we do have some indirect data to support the notion of a mission trip. For example, Paul’s first missionary journey may have been as brief as four months and as long as 10 months.1 Additionally, several people, such as Dr. Luke—whom I, as a doctor, consider a colleague—accompanied Paul for finite periods. Although the author of Acts, our beloved physician doesn’t include himself as part of a missionary team until Acts 16:10–12, when he appears with the second missionary team, traveling from Troas to Philippi (about AD 49). Soon after, he disappears from the narrative until Acts 20:5, during the return leg to Jerusalem (AD 54–57). Finally, Dr. Luke is rediscovered with Paul as he accompanies a military escort to Rome in Acts 27:1 (about AD 59–62).
Each incident indicates a short period when Dr. Luke traveled with the world’s first-known missionary.2 Others, such as Aristarchus, Secundus, Gaius, Timothy, and Aquila and Priscilla, all followed a similar trend (Acts 20:4, 18:18). The notation is obvious: a host of early believers had limited touchpoints with the mission field through Paul. This pattern bears consideration, if not duplication, today.
What skills are needed?
It is not as if short-term missions work is absent from the current Christian horizon. Rather, it may be less visible in the daylight of US assembly evangelical work. Our Europe-Asia trip was designed to reset the paradigm.
Indeed, our imagination could not keep pace with what we saw. In the area of Moldova we visited, we witnessed at least 10 venues in which skill sets may be employed to increase the footprint of the Gospel. The most noticeable opportunity, to me, was the demand for short-term medical work. In Cahul, under the auspices of the local assembly and missionaries, we serviced the shut-in elderly and the populace of undocumented Russians. Their subculture has neglected its elderly. Many of them have been deposited into shelters that are called apartments but that would hardly pass an occupancy code in the West. These people are simply waiting to enter eternity. The Russian population has no available government services since they are not part of the administration’s census. Their hardship is glaring and heart wrenching.
Such was the case with countless other avenues of service we observed, which need teachers, skilled craftsmen, firefighters, and children’s workers. At times, the demands seemed to echo from our hearts to the bone.
However, what we saw in Moldova was merely a foreshadowing of the plight we saw in Antakya, Turkey—once the ancient Antioch of Syria, where Paul and Barnabas were commissioned to be the church’s first missionary team (Acts 13:1–4). We arrived nearly on the one-year anniversary of the 7.5 magnitude earthquake. We witnessed communities’ “shell shock” as they recalled the 75 percent of their city blocks lost in the rubble and an equal number of neighbors lost and never found.
The earthquake had occurred at 4:00 a.m. in the middle of winter with the result of utter darkness and no heat. At the time, the local and foreign believers had set about to do relief work aimed, at first, at simple survival—such as a tent to sleep in or a blanket to stay warm under. Over the last year, the modes of service have evolved to provide for food, clothing, and hygiene needs. Today, the assembly mission relief work includes an efficient system of erecting suitable living structures for a family or two. Most of those who had lost their homes had begun living in tents or leaky converted shipping containers. The tiny home project addresses their need. Thousands of homes have been built, yet the waiting list contains approximately 4,000 families.3
Their gratefulness is enough to fill a bowl with one’s tears. All such efforts merely prompt the recipients to ask, “Why are you doing what you are doing?” They remark that the government is unable to help and the mega relief organizations have moved on but the Christians remain. Thus, they become seekers of Christianity to find out the hope that resides within the believer (1 Peter 3:15).
Will you contribute your skill set?
During our trip, it became abundantly clear that one could assemble a team of six to eight people and spend a week of the year in a place like Turkey, building 30 houses and encouraging souls to seek Christ. The work would be done in tandem with the embedded missionary, who could then follow up with the recipients of such blessings to share the Gospel and further demonstrations of Christ’s love.
These eyewitness accounts galvanized our thinking, and we now seek to revive the call to missions generally and to short-term missions specifically. Yet this is the mere tip of the iceberg. In our circles, we have countless skill sets waiting to be employed in foreign or domestic fields and to become the calling card to Christ. My field is medicine, but what is your expertise?
Many of us sit on training that could be used to assist missionaries in building projects or IT dilemmas or vast education needs. What would be the harm in consecrating our vacation to service somewhere in the world or on a missions frontline at home? What the mission field needs is not more skill development but a willingness to surrender to God’s call and go make disciples. It is perfectly in step with the tenor of our Lord’s Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20.
If the Lord has generated a spark of desire in your soul, we encourage three things: dedicated private prayer about your burden, group prayer with your church leadership, and possible consultation with CMML, which might assist in determining needs and direction. I look forward to seeing you on such a field. n
Steven Price, CMML medical adviser
Originally published in Missions magazine, June 2024. For more content, sign up for a free subscription (US) to Missions at CMML.us/magazine/subscribe
