As travel restrictions begin to loosen worldwide and churches start thinking about long- and short-term mission trips, a group of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission leaders, World Mission staff and mission co-workers joined together on Zoom Wednesday night to talk about how to be thoughtful travelers when visiting global partners in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“Returning to Church,” a thoughtful and thorough resource for ministry during the pandemic and published by the Wisconsin Council of Churches, may be the best thing to come out of the Badger State since bratwurst.
A church doesn’t have to be wealthy to be a giving church.
When she was co-pastor with her husband of a mission church in rural Alaska, the Rev. Heidi Worthen Gamble hosted many short-term mission trips from Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations elsewhere. “As time went on we struggled to continue to find work projects for these groups,” Gamble told the Moderator’s Colloquium on Ecclesiology Wednesday (April 24) at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (APTS). “We began to ask whether it wouldn’t be more beneficial to create jobs in the village rather than mission projects for church groups.”
Part of the experience of attending a General Assembly is sampling the local flavor of the area while also seeing how various PC(USA) churches and mission organizations are serving that community. Opportunities are plentiful to engage in cultural and mission trips while at the Assembly in Pittsburgh.
Many ideas start with just one person, but it takes the work of many to make them a reality. In this case the one person is Catherine Gillette. Now a sophomore at the College of Wooster in Ohio, Gillette went on two mission trips to Honduras during her sophomore and junior years of high school that left a lasting impression on her.
In the past few years, short-term mission trips have gotten a bad rap, but on a recent delegation to the U.S./Mexico border, nine Presbyterians heard from those in the field who don’t immediately dismiss short missions.