The WHY of short-term missions: Being honest about motives, with Dr. Greg Burch Artwork

Re-Imagining Short-Term Missions

In this podcast we take an honest look at short-term mission practices, and talk frankly about unhelpful models even as we dream of healthy alternatives. In this podcast we look critically at the top-down, one-way, unbalanced relationship dynamics between sending organizations and the communities that receive their teams. Instead, understanding that all churches in every culture are broken in some way, we try to re-imagine how churches in cross-cultural partnership can serve one another in mutuality service. The essential aim of this podcast is to consider new ways for Christ-followers in every part of the world to collaborate, working together to meet the world's deep needs.

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Re-Imagining Short-Term Missions

The WHY of short-term missions: Being honest about motives, with Dr. Greg Burch

March 14, 2023 • Greg Burch • Season 1 • Episode 7

Why do people go on short-term mission trips? Are the things we do in the name of “missions” actually reflective of the Great Commission? If we’re honest, how many of these trips are really more about the personal transformation of those who are sent? And if we admit that our primary motive for short-term missions has to do with personal transformation, is that motive actually a bad thing?

In this episode Forrest talks with Dr. Greg Burch, professor and chair of Global Studies at Multnomah University. Even though Greg has devoted his career to studying the problems that are part of short-term missions culture, he is honest about the fact that the short term trips he went on as a youth were deeply transformative for him. So, even now he wrestles with the question: Is our own personal transformation a legitimate motivation to go on trips that we are calling “missions”?

Greg Burch
MA in Global Development and Justice at Multnomah University

MA International Community Development, Northwest University

Website: https://reimaginingstm.com

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