Serving with Eyes Wide Open; Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence

Short-term mission trips are great ways to impact the kingdom. Yet they can lack effectiveness because of mistakes or naivete on the part of participants. In this insightful and timely book, David A. Livermore calls us to serve with our eyes open to global and cultural realities so we can become more effective cross-cultural ministers. Serving with Eyes Wide Open is a must-have book for anyone doing a short-term mission or service project, whether domestic or overseas.

Author Information: David A. Livermore, (Ph.D., Michigan State University), is executive director of the Global Learning Center at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary and is cofounder of Intersect, a ministry that provides leadership training and consulting to emerging leaders in ministries around the world. Through these and other ministries he has served with national leaders in over fifty countries worldwide. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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This book is an excellent resource to consider as an overview for the concept of short-term mission trips. It challenges the way churches promote, prepare, and serve in the cross cultural context. The lessons of this book have helped me as a pastor to define a strategy for short-term trips that grows our people in their walk with the Lord and encourages our mission partners in the ongoing process of making disciples of all nations. I highly recommend it for anyone in mission trip leadership.

I think this book is a great resource, that should be used by anybody planning on going short term. The book requires companion books when training short term mission teams but this book is so cheap that it makes it worth your while to buy it with some other cultural mission books or guides. The book may make you angry because it forces you to deal with the reality that most shot term mission teams are just vacation times that make you feel good. You have to be open to change and willing to look at your mission experience from a different light. If you are not willing to do this you will not like the book.

While making the valid point that American short-term missionaries need to exercise humility and sensitivity, this book is overkill on the subject. Livermore here makes an argument that could have been written in far less pages -- American short-term missionaries sometimes are clueless to the true spirit of missions. I agree with that point, but disagree with the extent to which he magnifies it. Livermore goes as far as to question the validity of the entire idea of short-term missions, a practice that is revitalizing missions work in the 21st century. Short-term missions trips are far from "mini-vacations" and should never be viewed as such. In my experience with them as a pastor, I have yet to find any group who actually viewed them in such a manner. If you want a book to equip you for a short-term missions work, try getting a volume that will educate you on the customs and practices of the people to whom you will be ministering. Understand better their customs and way of life, and show appreciation for those two things. You'll be putting into practice the valid point of the author here, and also saving the money required to purchase this book.

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