This chapter discusses various options for mission work beyond traditional missionary agencies, including short-term mission trips, tentmaking opportunities that utilize professional skills, relief and development work, and missions supported by megachurches. It provides an outline of the chapter sections on these topics and short summaries of considerations for each path, such as balancing job, ministry, and family for tentmaking missions or megachurches learning the significant time and resources required to support missionaries overseas.

1. Chapter 11:
Charting a Path from Here
to There

2. Chapter Outline
• Introduction
• Short-Term Mission Trips
• Choosing a Mission Agency
• Connecting with a Local Church
• Professional Skills Options: Tentmaking Mission
• Relief and Development Opportunities
• Megachurch Missionaries
• Conclusion

3. Introduction
In addition to the traditional path of going
with an agency, a multitude of other options
are open. Many people have technical skills
that enable them to find international jobs.
Professional organizations are available to
help by networking to send people with
appropriate skills overseas. Relief and
development agencies enable those who can
sensitively serve needy communities find
meaningful places to help around the world.

4. Introduction (cont.)
Some of the larger churches have been acting like
mini-agencies, funding and overseeing their own
missionary force. Before looking at those, however,
we must detour long enough to explore an exploding
phenomenon that many see as a contemporary bridge
from here to there: short-term mission trips.

5. Short-Term Mission Trips
• One of the hottest trends in contemporary
missions
• Offer opportunities to try out agencies or locations
• A wealth of Web resources are available:
• MisLinks Short-Term Missions
(www.mislinks.org/practical/shterm.htm)
• ShortTermMissions (www.shorttermmissions.com)
• Globalmission (www.globalmission.org/st.htm)

6. Choosing a Mission Agency
• Take the time to sense “fit” by asking these seven
questions (McVay, Ask-A-Missionary Web site):
• What is God's calling on the agency?
• What doctrinal areas are important to you?
• What is the financial policy of the agency?
• What support services does the agency handle?
• What structure does the agency have and how flexible
are they?
• Which countries and people groups is the agency
working among?
• Is God bonding you with the agency?

7. Connecting with
a Local Church
• Traditional support raising through
speaking at numerous churches is becoming
more difficult.
• Focusing on subgroups within the church,
rather than pulpit ministry, is imperative.
• Get to know those who support you and
develop relationships that go beyond the
financial connection.

8. Professional Skills Options:
Tentmaking Mission
• A Spectrum of Tentmaking Options (Lai
2001)
• T–1: Company employees who work in another
country and minister because they are
Christians and have been sent by their company
• T–2: Company employees who consciously
choose to locate their employment among a
target audience

9. Professional Skills Options:
Tentmaking Mission (cont.)
• T–3: Employee/missionaries whose jobs
provide partial support, supplemented by an
agency or church; typically affiliated with a
mission agency
• T–4: Missionaries who do professional work
(doctors, dentists, relief work); fully supported
by mission agency
• T–5: Missionaries who take on the appearance
of professionals for entry into “creative access”
locations

10. Tentmaking (cont.)
• Tentmaking is difficult; balancing job, ministry,
culture/language learning, and family is
challenging at best.
• Tentmakers often have more regular contact with
nonbelievers as part of their jobs.
• Tentmakers, wherever possible, should work as
part of a team. The tentmaker(s) can provide the
contacts, and the rest of the team can provide the
ministry skills.

11. Questions to Ask about
Tentmaking Opportunities
• What are my best aptitudes, gifts, and interests?
• What do I like to do?
• What do I do well?
• What vocations are helpful in a needy world?
• What skills are marketable in my target country?
• What career will enable me to support a family
and make me marketable at home and abroad?

12. Relief and Development
Opportunities
• The reality of ongoing pain and suffering
stemming from natural and human-made
disasters as well as the overwhelming need
for development in many countries in the
world make this path to ministry one that is
strategic both in terms of human
development and sharing Christ.
• Web resources: MisLinks site
(www.mislinks.org/practical/rdorgs.htm)

13. Megachurch Missionaries
• Some megachurches have decided that
traditional models of missionary agencies
are not the best means of sending people
overseas and have, in effect, established
their own agencies.
• In the process, however, they are learning
that the work of supporting people far away
from home requires a great deal of time and
resources.