Innovation in Short Term Missions

A lot has been written about Short Term Missions for sure. We have heard the good and the bad. Whatever your experience has been, the movement has impacted global missions in a significant way. Lately it has all seemed to be the same old . . . but a member of our facebook group connected me to a new innovation in short term missions.

The site is called www.onlinemissionstrip.com. Their tag line is "Sharing Christ through social media." Here is the amazing thing about this site. They are organizing a global mission trip where youth groups can sign up to do missions on facebook and other social media.

The experience is completely virtual but has all the components of a typical trip. You get training through January 31. Then the trip goes from February 1-14. After that the group is organizing online follow-up events to disciple new believers.

They are signing up youth groups who are going to take this on as a project. One youth pastor named Brad Cooper wrote:

"God didn’t allow the internet to be created so the whole world could be addicted to pornography…

He has much bigger plans….

Im hoping we wont miss the opportunity He’s giving us!

Innovative… I think so…"

Usually the Internet evangelism efforts have been spread out and ongoing. The innovative elements of this are:

1. They are giving it a beginning and end to build it as an event.

2. They are signing up youth groups to do online evangelism together

3. They are offering training and follow-up materials to help people engage those they reach.

4. They are using all of the new tools strategically. They have YouTube videos, twitter feeds, facebook apps, and on it goes. So many times we try to use old school tools in new environments.

One of the most innovative pieces is the accountability. As I mentioned above, because it is being done in youth groups, there will be local/live interaction about the ministry effort. Instead of being isolated by technology, this group is using it to give youth groups a plan and an strategy for their outreach.

Take a look, what can missions learn from an effort like this?