Grow Your Church by Hosting Short-term Mission Teams
Workshop Overview
This workshop will explore how to grow your church numerically and spiritually by utilizing short-term mission teams. You will leave this workshop with practical tips, creative ideas and a customized plan for finding, preparing, hosting and sending short-term mission teams well.
Presenter
Dustin Conner is the Lead Pastor/Planter of Hope Hills Church of Calgary. He and the team at Hope Hills work with 5+ partner churches and 50+ mission team members each year to reach new people and make more disciples with the help of short-term mission teams. Hosting and utilizing mission teams well has helped Hope Hills Church build good rapport and gospel relationships in their highly unchurched community. Learn more about Hope Hills Church at www.hopehills.church.
View and download the PDF version of these notes
What is a Mission Team?
A group of Christians from another church who come for a short time to help your church with an evangelistic community event, kids camp, project or initiative
- Community Event » Stampede BBQs, festivals, conferences, block parties
- Kids Camp » Day Camps, Sports Camps, VBS, Backyard Bible Clubs
- Project » Construction, renovation, packing gift bags, pre-launch preparation
- Initiative » Evangelistic prayer walking, gospel conversations, fundraising
Why should your church or church plant partner with established churches?
- Churches collaborating is central to the gospel message and Kingdom work
- Established churches are in a better position to support new churches with their experience, people and resources
HOSTING
LEADING
Why should my church host or send mission teams?
#1 Mission Teams can be a huge benefit for your church or church plant
- Do what your church doesn’t have the resources or capacity to do at this time
- Provide outreach/evangelism support, prayer support and manpower when starting to make disciples in a new place
- Greatest benefit is knowing you have established churches and fellow Christians who are on your side Praying, Coming and Giving regularly
- Praying for your family, church members and lost neighbours
- Coming regularly to support you your evangelistic work
- Giving regularly to support you financially until you are self-supporting
#2 Your church can be a huge blessing to mission teams and their church
- Their church benefits from members gaining new experiences and training in other contexts that give them ideas and confidence for disciple-making back in their community
- Their members feel connected to Great Commission work globally
- They often grow spiritually after their time with you
HOSTING
LEADING
When should we have a mission team come?
- When we are a new church just getting started and need support
- When we have an outreach opportunity we can’t run by ourself
- When we are ready to welcome new people into our church
- When we have a pathway for making disciples in place
HOSTING
LEADING
SAMPLE OUTREACH FUNNEL
If a mission team helps you reach new people evangelistically, do you have a disciple-making plan and pathway ready?
What is your disciple-making pathway?
How do we find or connect with a mission team?
- Who is in your network of churches both in Canada and around the world?
- Contact your SEND City Missionary or contact CNBC’s Evangelism office
- Calgary area: Daryl Molyneaux dmolyneaux@namb.net
- Edmonton area: Nate Vedoya nvedoya@namb.net
- CNBC Evangelism: Cesar Parra cparra@cnbc.ca
- Create a webpage or downloadable document for Partners to access your personal and ministry information (www.hopehills.church/partner)
Make it clear and concise!
HOSTING
LEADING
How do we plan with a mission team leading up to their trip?
- [9-12 months] Share opportunities with partner or interested churches
- Use Calendly to schedule
- [9-12 months] Schedule an “interest call” with the pastor or team leader
- [6-9 months] Send their Team Leader your Mission Trip Planning Form
- Use a service like Google Forms to capture essential information for planning with the Team Leader and Preparing to host the team
- [3-6 months] Send a Week on Mission Guide to the Team Leader
- I recommend a Google Doc so you can send a simple, sharable link that you can also update as needed
If you’re leading a team, ask the church you’re helping for all this information and forms!
HOSTING
LEADING
How will you prepare for hosting the mission team?
- [4-6 months] Complete the plans for your event or camp they are helping with
- [1-3 months] Collect team member’s information with a simple online form
- [1-3 months] Host a video call with the whole mission team
- [1-6 weeks] Send prayer and role updates via email or text message
- [day before] Host an orientation and training session when they arrive
- Distribute Roles & Responsibilities Sheet and get team members together who are working together
HOSTING
LEADING
What will you have a team do with and for you during the time they are with you?
#1 Fall in love with your city
- [Take them to your specific locations to pray for your family, your church and your community
- Take them exploring in your city so they can experience the sounds, tastes and culture of it
- Take them out to fun places unique to your city or to buy souvenirs
#2 Get to know your people
- Worship together (be sure they get to see what Sunday looks like at your church)
- Eat meals together (with you and church member hosts)
- Serve together (how can you involve your own church members to serve with the mission team members?
#3 Help you reach unchurched people with the gospel
Your agenda for a mission team should include these key times throughout the week
- Training Time (orientation and evangelism training)
- Serving Time (helping you run the camp or event)
- Sharing Time (sharing God stories after each ministry session)
- Debriefing Time (what are you celebrating, what worked well, what could be better, ideas for improvement?)
HOSTING
LEADING
What will you do to keep up the relationship with the mission team after they have left?
What can you do to be a blessing to the mission team and their church after they have left?
Ready to host or lead a mission team?
- Putting the work in ahead of time to host and lead a team is well worth it!
- Going through the phases of finding, planning with, preparing for, hosting and leading a mission team seems overwhelming on paper but is so rewarding once you do it!
- Your church grows by reaching unchurched people
- The sending church grows by giving their members unique mission experiences they can bring back to their community
View my sample Tracking Sheet to see how I keep up with which mission teams are coming and when.
Schedule a meeting with me and I’d be happy to coach you through hosting and leading mission teams.
Dustin Conner | dustin@hopehills.church | 403-690-5253
Concluding Thoughts
Additional questions for hosting and leading mission teams and planning outreach events in your community:
Hosting Mission Teams & Your Outreach Planning
- How do community events or kids camps requiring a mission team’s help fit in to your church’s overall disciple-making strategy and pathway?
- What type of outreach event, camp or initiative would fit best in your community?
- What type of outreach event, camp or initiative would your church be good at?
- What are passions and skills within our congregation we could use?
- What equipment do you have or have access to?
- Other church’s equipment
- CNBC Event Trailer
- What events are already happening in your community that you could simply partner with and support?
- A mission team could come help you help another organization which would help you build rapport.
- How will you consider seasons as you schedule events and camps?
- Consider holidays, winter, school schedules, etc.
- How will you advertise your outreach event? Who are you trying to reach?
- Email campaigns to those already on your contact list?
- Facebook, Google or other social media advertising?
- Flyers your members pass out 4 weeks before the camp or event?
- Prayer walking and distributing door hangers that you’ve printed?
- How will you register participants so you will know how many to expect?
- This is essential when having a mission team! You don’t want a team to arrive with no one to minister to.
- How will you collect participant information at the event so you can follow up with them and invite them to the next event or church service?
- Connect Cards? Online forms? Printed QR codes that lead to your website?
- How will you recruit volunteers outside the mission team?
- How can your church members participate so they can build relationships with participants?
Leading Mission Teams
- How can you form a long-term partnership instead of just having a one-time project?
- What geographical regions or people groups do your members have connections with and need the gospel?
- How will you be a blessing and not a burden to the church you’re helping?
- What is your philosophy of short-term mission teams?
View the Hope Hills Church Partner website for more ideas and to see how we make partnering and planning simple.