Dear Pastors and Mission Leaders,

Greetings in Christ.  Short-term teams are one major way that churches are doing missions today.  Personally, I believe, that all young people at one time in their life should go on a short-term team.  How are your short-term teams working?  Here are some ideas that could be of help to you and your church with short-term teams.

Resources:  Getting Started manual.  Next Step Resources has a leader and team member manual.  You do not have to reinvent the wheel to lead a short-term team.  Start with this resource. The manuals sell for $12.50 each.  Leader manual is LG RGC519 and the team members are LG RGC520. https://nsresources.com

WEAKNESS of short-term teams:  There are two areas to strengthen.  One area is to have good pre-field training.  The other area to strengthen is debriefing.  DualReach has 8 resources for short- team follow-up.  Go to dualreach.org.

TEST YOURSELF:  Take the Grow to Go test.  See how ready you are to go across the world or across your neighborhood.  The test is free and you can see your test results right away.   https://www.jeannie-marie.com/growtogotest

TEN STEPS to Planning an Effective Short-Term Trip:  This is a good basic list to make sure that you are covering the basics for a short-term team.  Go to www.jeannie-marie.com.

REMEMBER TO PRAY:  Prayer is the key for all aspects of your short-term team.  Sign up prayer partners for each person on your team.  Send out a prayer guide with daily requests.  Set your phone to pray every day at 10:02.  Refer to Luke 10:2.

SIGN-UP Genius:  Here you can start a sign-up sheet for 24-hour prayer or for mission trip donations.  Check is out at  https://www.signupgenius.com/churches

TEAM OPPORTUNITIES:  Consider APEX for 2020 for high school, college and post-college. www.apexmissions.org .  Crisis response teams.  crisisresponse@efca.org   Or contact me.

Blessings,
Steve Austvold