My son is almost 13. For the past couple of years, I have been looking for a good opportunity to take him on a short term missions trip. There are a number of reasons why I want to do this.

1. Global Perspective -For Josh, a bad day is when he doesn’t get to play on his XBox 360. I want him to gain a better perspective of what life is like for those in other cultures. Places where a good day is that you get to eat.
2. Passion for what God is doing - I think that seeing a group of Christians participate in sharing their faith will energize his excitement for what God is doing. He is active in our church plant, but I think there is always room for more passion.
3. Teach him to share his Faith - He invites people to church, but I don’t think that he has ever learned how to share his faith. That is probably quite the indictment of me as his father. I have probably not done a good job of modeling evangelism. I hope that the missions trip will help remedy that.
4. Model Missions within our Church - We are part of a small church. I think that we should model risk-taking in missions and evangelism. I have not done a great job of this. I am great at rolling up my sleeves and working, not so good at the inviting others part. I need to move outside of my comfort zone and stretch myself.

One of the challenges that I have faced is finding the right trip. The missions agency that is associated with our denomination does some great stuff, but they don’t offer short term opportunities for individuals. Our church is too new and too small to sponsor a short term missions trip on its own, or through the missions agency. One of our sister churches has done some missions trips, but either the dates haven’t worked out, or they have been going to a country that is too unstable to take my son. I know some other local churches that have done trips, but they were either full, or the dates were bad.

So, I have been looking for missions agencies to sign up with. This has been a bit of a challenge as well. I am focusing primarily on Latin America. This is for a variety of reasons. My son has studied a little bit of Spanish, and I hope that exposure to the culture will help him want to learn more. I also don’t want travel expenses to be too large a component of the cost of the trip. I like that fact that trips to Latin America are not as expensive as other destinations.

Recently, I met a missions pastor from the Orlando area. His church has a relationship with e3 Partners, a missions agency that focuses their efforts on church planting. I like the idea that their short term missions trips are focused on building churches, not church buildings. They partner American Christians with nationals to do evangelism and discipleship. I don’t have any strong objects to missions trips that focus on doing service projects, I have done some of those trips in the past. But, I like the idea of doing evangelism with my son. It matches up with my goals for this trip a little bit better.

So what do you think?

Do you know of any other good groups for short term missions trips?