Having just returned from an observation trip to Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, where I joined our RPGM Short Term mission team, I have a lot to ponder. I am glad you are joining me as I process my time there.

I stayed with host pastor Harry Coulter and his wife, Heather. Their grown daughter, Anna, has been involved in the development of our RP Global Missions Short Term training and trips since I joined RPGM in 2020. Anna lives with her parents while she pursues a degree to become a chef and works at a local bakery. Harry and Anna have designed our team’s ministry to the RP church plant—Hope Reformed Church—in Enniskillen, the primary town in the center of Fermanagh County.

With one local ruling elder and three provisional ruling elders, this church has a ministry of hope that manifests itself with deep involvement in mercy ministries, faithful preaching and teaching of the Word, and, notably, a regular ministry of sharing the gospel from street corners and at various public events. The outreach ministry is called Having Hope Sharing Hope. It is based out of a small bus where they give away coffee and tea (and of course some baked sweets as well). The pastor and his wife carry the brunt of this ministry with the help of the local elder and an occasional member, as they each have time.

Why should we send a team of workers to labor with this small church?

The most obvious reason to the church is a notable increase in the number of events and street corners the Hope ministry can explore without putting a heavy burden on the members of the church. RPGM’s team goes out on the Hope 153 bus more frequently and helps identify locations, times, and opportunities that will be strategic for the church for the remainder of the year. For each event, instead of a handful of people scattered strategically around the parked bus, the ministry can send out four to seven people when our short-term team is on board. In addition, our team goes out on the Hope 153 bus three or four times each week, compared to the one or two weekly trips during the normal ministry season. From what Pastor Harry reports, the extra people make a difference.

There are other ways our teams can magnify the ongoing work of this church plant. Since the short-term team is ministry focused, they function alongside other church members in greeting newcomers and even reaching out to members of the church. The RP Global Missions team is able to do diaconal work that is hard to sustain amid the pastor’s and elders’ regular mercy ministry. For instance, the manse is a delightful building, but the landscaping needs some TLC. A crew of short-term workers can tackle a lot of trimming, weeding, raking, and other landscaping that are hard for the Coulter family to keep up with. The team prays daily for the rich variety of ministries the church is involved with as they come alongside the church emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

The RPGM Short Term teams all receive training focused on developing a vision for taking the gospel to the nations, and they acquire a wide repertoire of ways to be involved in sending missionaries to the ends of the world. Their training places their work as short-term teams in the larger context of the long-term work of church planting. Among other preparations, they practice sharing their testimony and the gospel. The training, alongside the significant amount of time set aside for our trips, gives this program an advantage over other shorter programs that lack training.

RPGM Short Term trips provide a manageable level of cross-cultural ministry experience to people who are new to the idea of serving the church around the world. When a person is interested in going to a remote or challenging part of the world, our regular short-term trips are a first step in their training. This opportunity helps them discern God’s calling to be more involved in long-term missions and gives them hands-on training for the more extensive work of planting churches.

Many people question whether short-term missions are justified—and rightly so. However, we consistently hear from our hosts that they want our teams! These small churches and mission works are encouraged and invigorated in their work. We hope the long-term return on investments made by our donors are worth the short-term costs and efforts. We think they are.

Short-term missions critic Darren Carlson wrote an article entitled, “Toward Better Short-term Missions,” suggesting that even with his generally negative view of short term missions, there are good and productive short term trips. We think we meet Carlson’s criteria for good trips, with some room for improvement. Carlson provides these key points of advice to short term trip coordinators and managers:

Really Prepare

“You can save yourself and others a lot pain if your team has a capable leader who truly disciples those being sent out from your church.” RPGM has been training team leads for decades with a view of impacting the lives of the team members. Our team leads go through eight training sessions and a good deal of reading and writing to train for the work of leading community life, facilitating worship opportunities, preparing the team in advance for outreach events, and conducting training in basic cross-cultural communications. Additionally, our team leads are trained to deal with conflict that arises within our teams.

Focus on Long-Term Partnerships with Local Churches

“The next step is to work primarily through local churches with a long view in mind. When your short-term ministry team leaves a particular setting, Christians will still live and work where you visited. Your desire should be to serve at the request of and under local church leadership.” RPGM only takes trips to local Reformed and Presbyterian churches with an emphasis on working with RP Global Alliance churches. We go to great lengths to ensure that our teams are needed for the work that we send them to do.

Short-Term, Cross-Cultural Ministry Should Be an Extension of Local Ministry

“At this risk of stating the obvious, your short-term cross-cultural ministry should be an extension of your local ministry. If you have thousands of Hispanics in your surrounding area, but only interact with Hispanics when you send a short-term team to Mexico, your local mission has a hole in it.”

While we cannot know for certain that each of our host churches mirror the ministry demographics of our teams, we often find that team members apply to work in cultures that reflect cultures they desire to have a ministry with. We anticipate integrating our training for work with internationals who are coming to America with our short-term program with a view toward having cross cultural ministries that flow out of our trip experiences.

Ask the Missionaries

“To protect against doing unintentional harm, go directly to the missionaries your church supports and trusts to find out whether they would like a team to come and partner with them.” The first part of this article describes the trip I took to Northern Ireland for this specific purpose. In the summer of 2025, I hope to visit our host church in Cyprus for the same reason. In the meantime, we communicate each year on multiple occasions with all of our host churches, ensuring that the advantages of short-term teams are being realized in each of the churches we send teams to.

RPGM has confirmed the vital role that a short-term trip program has for the development of the long-term work that needs to be done in the world. We are working toward firming up those advantages and offering a program that encourages the church and addresses the concerns of our critics.

Near the end of my week in Enniskillen, I had breakfast with Pastor Coulter. I gave him the whole picture of our finances for the trip and asked if the benefit is worth the cost, or if there was a more cost-effective path that has an equally effective impact. He paused but responded by indicating that there are no other groups of people that he knows of that are available for the amount of time and level of commitment that our team provides.

To be sure, the benefit is mutual. We have a training field for our participants that helps them deepen their commitment to the Great Commission and helps us evaluate their suitability for long-term missions. For these reasons, we will continue our work with short-term missions, trusting the Lord to grant fruit both to us and to our hosts.