Time for a Missions Trip?
Summer is upon us, and it’s a prime season for a church to send a team on a mission trip. It’s also a popular time for families to travel together to serve on the field.
Whether you’ve got a mission trip this summer or plan to take one in the winter, or maybe you don’t have any on the calendar but you’d like to!...there are endless possibilities of how you can serve local churches in the destination you are headed to.
Over the years, The Crecer Foundation has helped many churches connect with local congregations throughout Argentina for their missions trip. Each team is unique, but all share a desire to use their talents and abilities to glorify God and bless the local church.
Here are three practical service activities that mission teams have done in the past that may spark your ideas as you plan your next mission trip.
1. Construction (Mill Creek Community Church - Shawnee, KS)
One of the most common ways to serve a local congregation is by helping them establish their meeting place. Sometimes this involves more complicated tasks, like building a stairwell or demolition. But often, it can be as simple as painting, setting up bookshelves, or creating a garden in front of the church building.
The great thing about construction is that it involves much more DOING and less TALKING, which makes the language gap less noticeable.
In Argentina especially, teams that can do construction tasks have been an enormous help in getting Seminario Bíblico William Carey’s administrative building renovated into a usable space. Construction teams from Mill Creek Community Church in Shawnee, KS, turned an empty field in Cachi, Argentina into a pastoral house and church building!
While projects like establishing an entire church building are not realistic for just one week, there is still much that can be accomplished by a team willing to put in hard work hours over 5-7 days. These smaller projects save money from hiring local laborers and often expedite the construction process as local workers tend to execute on a more relaxed timeline and don’t bring the drive and focus that a missions team does!
2. ESL camp (Freedom Baptist - Noble, IL)
English as a Second Language (ESL) is in high demand in many countries. ESL camp, whether for kids or adults, is an outreach ministry that allows a missions team of English speakers to connect with locals, helping them learn the English language, all while sharing cultures and forming relationships.
The friendships and trust gained throughout the week allow for a more open reception of the gospel, always presented during the program, and a genuine and sincere invitation to church.
In the winter of 2020, Freedom Baptist of Illinois came to Córdoba, Argentina, with a team of 8 adults (all over 50) eager to connect with students of all ages and help them learn more about ESL and Jesus. Using ESL materials that rely on the book of Mark, the team taught basic greetings and sentences and talked about the Bible with students. Across five different classrooms, they reached over 50 students and shared the gospel with all students and their parents and friends on the final “graduation day.”
ESL camps have a significant community impact, especially in city-based churches, as Argentine locals emphasize English abilities but don’t always have access to ESL education. These camps are a great way to reach new people who have not attended church before while still using a mission team’s native language.
3. Bible Classes (Briarcliff Church - Kansas City, MO)
If you are involved in pastoral work or teach at your local church, your Bible knowledge would be a big blessing for a church abroad! Local pastors are often overwhelmed with biblical counseling, Sunday school, church services, prayer meetings, visitation, and upcoming outreach events; the list goes on and on. Receiving the Word from a visiting pastor else is not only a blessing for a local church, but it is also medicine to a weary native pastor.
In Argentina, sometimes, this looks like a pastor or Bible teacher with advanced training giving a formal theology course to local seminary students. These courses can be recorded in Seminario Carey’s classroom studio and train future generations of leaders.
More often, however, we’ll see pastors from the US give an intensive weekend workshop or conference on a specific topic that the church is eager to learn about. Briarcliff Church of Kansas City sent their head pastor, Tim, to teach Personal Bible Study at the Iglesia Crecer church plant in Saldan.
Saldan is a small, blue-collar town where education is often cut short in favor of getting a job to support the family. The local congregation loved God but was underdeveloped in their study skills, affecting how they could read and comprehend the Bible. Tim’s class lasted a week, and he worked with church members to learn more about Hermeneutics, an overall biblical panorama of what the Bible is about, and practical skills for studying the Bible at home.
Mission teams that can provide biblical teaching are a massive boost to local churches and, even more so, a welcome help to a local pastor.
Stay tuned for part two with more way to engage your church in international missions in Argentina.
If you’re a bit lost on how to get started on mission trip planning, The Crecer Foundation is a great resource to handle all the trip logistics for your church. We ensure you’re involved in the planning but take care of all flights, translators, food, project planning, lodging, etc. All you have to do is SERVE.