You’ve probably heard of mission trips. Maybe you’ve even been on one! But are they really worth it? Some people think they’re only for adventurous types or the “extra spiritual.” Others question their effectiveness.

But what if God wants to use you among the nations? What if a short-term trip could be part of your story?

Today, Scott and Mariah share how a short-term mission trip impacted their lives. They invite you to consider joining a short-term mission team with East-West. After all, you’re one step away from impacting someone’s life for eternity.

Continue reading for highlights from this episode of the Even You podcast, or watch the full episode below.

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Purpose

Scott: On the Even You podcast, we talk a lot about the ordinary doing the extraordinary. At East-West, we send more than a thousand people per year on short-term mission teams to more than 20 different countries around the world. We’re not pulling those people from the ranks of spiritual giants, from seminaries, from people out of pastor positions. Those are ordinary people. Those are moms, dads, brothers, sisters, people that are using a week of PTO and taking a step out of their ordinary life to do something literally extraordinary on the gospel frontier.

I got recruited on my first trip on my very first day on the job. There’s a guy—who’s a good friend of mine today—and he said, “Hey, good to meet you. If you’re going to be telling people about East-West, you need to go and see what we do. You need to come with me this October on a short-term mission trip.” That was like two months away. I had a million questions, some of which we’ll talk about today, like, “How do I get from here to there? What am I going to be doing? How do I pay for this?”

I had never been to the other side of the world before. But that trip proved to be a transformative experience. It showed me that hearing the vision is compelling, but experiencing it is life-changing.

And about eight weeks later, I found myself in a village on the side of a mountain in a conversation where the reality sunk in that there are people who literally have not heard of the name of Jesus. They’re 40, 50, 60, 70 years old, and no one’s told them yet. That was something that I had heard of, but it was totally different when I found myself in a conversation like that.

I was so glad I went on a mission trip because it just formed an urgency in me and an understanding of what the mission is here, and I can’t stop going back.

What about you, Mariah? What led you to finally say, “Yes”?

Mariah: It was something in my heart that I’d been wanting to do for a while, but I think I was intimidated. I think I felt like I was not equipped. I had never really shared the gospel with somebody in a different country before. It intimidated me.

But I got to a point in my faith where it just felt a little dry, and I wanted something that would wake me up from this spiritual slumber I was in. I wanted to feel dependent on God in a new setting.

And so, I knew that East-West structures our trips to focus on evangelism, and I knew that God would work through me and, hopefully, there would be impact on other people’s lives. But I think I went in with more of a selfish mindset, thinking that I wanted my faith to grow and I wanted to feel intimacy, dependence, and nearness with God in a way that I can’t figure out how to find in my day-to-day life right now. That’s what honestly compelled me.

Waiting to Hear the Gospel

Mariah: Scott, what compelled you to step into the role of Director of Short-Term Mission Teams? And why do you feel mission trips are such a big strategy for the Kingdom?

Scott: When I think about how the Kingdom of God has grown over the last 2,000 years since Jesus left and gave us this Great Commission—to go and make disciples of all nations—it has happened at the hands and feet and mouths of those who go and tell.

I think of my own life. I was 19 years old and not a believer at the time, personally trying to earn favor with God, trying to be a good person. The only reason I am where I am today is because God sent a laborer to me to come and tell me the gospel.

I think of Matthew 9 where Jesus says He saw the crowds and they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And then His response was to ask God to send a laborer, a gospel laborer, someone who has a message to go and tell others.

And someone came and told me when I was in college, “You’re trying to earn saving grace, but you need to stop and accept this free gift of salvation.” That changed my life. That changed my marriage today. It’s changed my career, my eternity. And so, I have an incredible passion to invite people into that adventure of faith and the adventure of spreading the gospel, both here but also around the world. The reality is that there are more than 3 billion people who don’t have access to the gospel. They’re waiting for someone to come tell them.

I love where it says in Romans 10 that all who call in the name of the Lord will be saved. That seems pretty straightforward. The Gospel is for everyone. But then it gives kind of this stark reality in verse 14: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”

In my own faith journey, I was waiting for someone like Dave to come and tell me the gospel. And until that point, I just didn’t know. No one had had a gospel conversation with me. But when Dave came and told me, all of a sudden, I could believe in the One of whom I had heard because God sent Dave into my life. There are people all over the world who are longing for hope, waiting for a message to change their lives, and we need people to go and tell them.

What Short-Term Teams Look Like

Mariah: So tell us more about East-West short-term teams and their strategy.

Scott: A typical East-West team is seven to 10 days. Typically, our trips are going a long distance, so it may take two days to get there and two days to get home.

A trip has four or so days of ministry. And what ministry looks like is venturing into targeted areas to have gospel conversations with as many people as possible. Our teams before are trained in a simple, reproducible, evangelism tool, and then they take that gospel message into this local field and find people to share the gospel with. It looks different in different places due to the restricted nature of some of the places we go where, candidly, it’s illegal to have these gospel conversations. Oftentimes, we have to be creative in both how we get to those fields and what we do in that local context to get into those conversations.

As an organization, our core purpose is getting the gospel message to those who have not yet heard. And so, in support of that and that strategy, we will send nearly 120 short-term mission teams this year. Literally every single week of the year, we’re deploying teams with the sole objective of sharing the gospel. A typical team will share the gospel, on average, 500- 600 times over the week.

I remember one of my first times I was in South Asia, I asked, “Why do you need us to come? You’ve got church planters and pastors living in these mountains. Why do you need 10 Americans to come?” They said, “Scott, when a team comes in, not only do we get access to these villages, but because of the interest in the Americans, we can have 500 to 600 gospel conversations in a week. Do you know how long it would take me and my partner here to have that many conversations, to get into that many villages, to enter that many homes, to build up enough spiritual interests, to have 500 gospel conversations?” They said, literally, it would take years.

And so it’s just a no-brainer. Can we just pour gasoline on the fire of the gospel movement in support of our brothers and sisters in those places who are trying to reach their communities? That’s what a typical trip looks like.

Feeling Unequipped and Inadequate

Scott: So you said when you first decided to go, you felt like you weren’t equipped for this. Talk about some of the common fears that people experience when they think about going overseas?

Mariah: I think one would be articulating the gospel. Here in the U.S., we have a very robust understanding of the gospel. People who have lived in the Bible Belt or who have been around the gospel their entire lives know the many nuances to it. But when you are tasked with sitting across from somebody who has a blank stare and doesn’t know who Jesus is, who’s never ever heard the gospel or the name of Jesus, there’s this overwhelming wave of not knowing where to begin. For me, that was a huge one. How do I articulate the gospel?

There are also a lot of unknowns. Where I went, I had never been before. And I just didn’t know what these villages would be like in receiving Americans that were talking about Jesus? That was a natural fear of mine, just being out of my comfort zone.

I grew up a believer. I’ve known the Lord my whole life, which is the greatest blessing. That I felt unequipped is confusing and almost prideful in a way, thinking that the way that I string together words is going to be what brings salvation to somebody else and discounting that the Holy Spirit would work through me and that really I had nothing to do with it.

Scott: I remember on my first trip, there was a particular conversation where someone really explicitly said, “Jesus, what is that? What are you talking about?” I realized at that moment that I’m about to articulate for the very first time who God’s Son, the Savior of the world, is. And I remember being flooded with feelings of doubt, feelings of insecurity, feelings of inadequacy, feelings of humility, and thinking, “Lord, surely there’s someone else who’s more prepared than me to do this.”

Ultimately, it’s His power, the Holy Spirit moving in spite of us, that points to Him and His grace and goodness in the first place. In spite of my inadequacy, the gospel is powerful enough to transcend hearts and change lives.

Never Felt More Alive

Scott: You talked about what you were feeling and experiencing leading up to the trip. What did that look like as you came back home?

Mariah: I think it totally shifted. On my last day of my trip, I remember looking over and saying, “This is the coolest thing I have ever done in my life. I don’t know if I have ever felt more alive as a believer. I am walking in my calling and identity because I am truly living out what I’m called to do as a Christian.”

I remember I got in my tent the first night and thought, “I don’t want to keep doing this. I cannot do four more days of this.” On the last day, it was our like steepest climb of the trip. And I remember looking over at our trip leader and saying, “I don’t know if I have ever felt so confident in my identity as a believer.” There was just something so deeply profound and moving about literally walking, and hiking, in your calling.

It deepened my faith and my understanding of what the Bible calls us to do and what it means to go and tell the nations. When you are walking out and living out Scripture and what God has asked us to do, there is a deep clarifying of identity and a sense of confidence and excitement and joy.

Scott: I get the chance in my role to hear some of those stories of people who have been changed because of an experience they had on the mission field. And you always hear the same line. They always say, “I felt so alive while I was there.” It begs the question, why? What’s changed? It goes back to people being moved by the idea that God has created us for purpose, for calling, and for contribution in the Great Commission and that He might use us to have a spiritual impact. Those things are compelling. But when you experience it firsthand, it changes something in you. It wakes something up in us.

I don’t think everyone has to go on a short-term mission team. I don’t think it’s the only way to experience this, but I do think it provides a raw, catalytic moment, an immersion in the mission of God that is hard to get back at home in our ordinary life.

And that’s why it’s an important thing that we do at East-West. The Kingdom of God grows through the hands and feet of those who take it to other places. Why would we not invite people into that mission with us?