By Luis Ortega, Costa Rica

Every year Costa Rica hosts many teams from various Christian associations and organizations from the United States that may come with good intentions but unhealthy practices that could potentially hinder the spread of the gospel and church spiritual growth locally. What if the national partner has a major role in either avoiding or allowing this situation? Allow me to elaborate…

In my case, I have been given the freedom to come up with the different activities the VSM teams will do throughout their trip here, as well as the churches, local leaders and pastors they work with. My vision and goal is to see the Costa Rican churches growing in greater health and the US teams to walk more toward deeper and healthier missions engagement.

In some instances, there have been pastors and leaders that have become accustomed to only receiving money, resources, and labor from the U.S. teams without being able to replicate or carry on the ministry without said support and resources from the U.S. These leaders rely more on what they get from the U.S. instead of actually applying effort to achieve spiritual growth within their congregations. The danger of this comes when they wait for a US team to come and do evangelism for them, or give money to them for a church building improvement without putting in the work themselves.

As a national partner, it is my job to ensure that the work done on short-term mission trips is done with our long-term goal in mind. In my approach, I always make sure the pastors understand that in order to host a team they must agree to work alongside the team, and even have their church members to try to outwork the team instead of making the team take over and do everything for them. We have been able to step-by-step have more local leaders and church members get involved with the U.S. team members and work together hand by hand and form better relationships with each other.

As for the teams go, I always tell them to be ready to work and be flexible as in Latin American countries, people are not as time oriented and things can always change. Even though they come to the most beautiful country in the whole American continent, mission trips here are not vacations, so they must be ready to listen and act as needed.

It is through Vacation Bible Schools, Sports Mini Camps, Bible Studies in Small Groups or even just having fellowship over a cup of coffee and pastry to encourage a church planter and his family to faithfully continue the work God called them to do, that I have been able to see good changes in how Costa Rican pastors and leaders do ministry.

My aim is to spark a positive impact on both sides for the long term. This is much bigger than one mission trip to Costa Rica or any other country, this could mean one step closer to new missionaries, new leaders, to reaching ethnic groups that have not heard of the name of Jesus, and one step closer to doing healthier missions through healthier Ministries.

If you want to find out more information or would be interested in experiencing this first hand by joining a team in the near future, you can contact Angela Rice at angela@bmaglobal.org for further details.