5 Ways to Debrief After Your Short-Term Mission Trip

Brianna Langley • Aug 08, 2017

Short-term mission trips are once-in-a-lifetime experiences that can be highly impactful for both the participants and those they serve. However, coming home after such an intense foreign experience is often a difficult process to navigate.

You’re likely to experience reverse culture shock , and accepting the realities of being back home may take longer than you anticipate. That’s why having a plan to debrief your short-term mission trip is so important.

If you’ve recently returned from a short-term mission trip, here are five practical tips for a healthy and productive debriefing process:

1. Share your experience with others.

People want to know about your trip, but they often only think to ask vague questions , such as, “How was your trip?” or “What was it like over there?”

Where do you begin? One of the easiest ways is to come up with a 30-second highlight reel.

Anything longer will most likely be overwhelming for you and too long for whoever is listening. Coming up with 30 seconds of things you want to emphasize from the trip is a good way to keep the big picture fresh in your mind and offer others important information in digestible chunks.

Another fun way to share your experience with others is to host an international night with friends and family members who weren’t able to join you on the trip. Prepare dishes from your host country, tell funny stories about cultural blunders you made and turn up the foreign music!

“When a dear friend of mine returned from Italy, she made espresso for her family from the moka pot she purchased in Italy, because one of her favorite memories from Italy was drinking espresso and praying for the ministry every afternoon,” says TEAM missions coach Kristin Schambach. This is a great example of sharing your experience with loved ones in a tangible way.

2. Keep your zeal for missions fresh!

Don’t lose the passion for what God’s placed in your heart when it comes to global missions! Stay in touch with fellow team members as well as with the missionaries and locals you met abroad.

Ask to be put on the missionaries’ newsletter email lists, write them letters and assure them of your consistent prayer for them. You might even consider supporting them financially as a way of investing in their long-term vision.

It’s also important for you and fellow team members to remind each other of the experiences you shared while abroad and express how God has been using those experiences to shape your life since you returned.

On your own, read about new organizations and ministries as often as you can, and stay up-to-date on missional efforts.

3. Continue growing.

TEAM ’s manager of short-term ministry advises jotting down three areas in which you want to keep growing after you return home. These can be anything ranging from something personal, like becoming a better friend, to something more spiritual, like developing a more consistent prayer life.

Be sure to dedicate yourself in these three areas over the next 12 months.

Then, when you hit the one-year anniversary of your short-term mission trip, look back and pay attention to how the Lord has grown and stretched you in those three specific areas.

Remember: If you haven’t left for your trip yet , ask that the Lord will open your eyes to exactly which three areas He wants you to focus on. He will make it clear.

4. Reconnect with your home church.

Re-entering church life is often an unexpected difficulty. You may feel like fellow church members can’t understand what you’ve experienced or who you’ve become. You may even find yourself missing the worship style you experienced in your host country.

But it’s important to be intentional about reconnecting with your home church after your short-term mission trip. This will help you not only to debrief after your foreign experience but also to stay alert to what God is doing around your community, even though that work may look different than what you experienced abroad.

A couple of easy steps for reconnecting with your home church include finding a mentor to meet with on a regular basis or joining a small group, where you can explore what God has done — and what He is doing now.

You can also help facilitate or even head-up local mission efforts. This will let you spread your excitement while you personally stay missional in both your actions and mindset. It will also help you channel the momentum of passion and energy that often accompanies a mission trip into something positive, rather than allowing yourself to become discouraged by differences in your home church.

5. Lean into the Lord.

One of the Enemy’s favorite times to attack us is after we’ve recently experienced a spiritual high point, which often happens during and after a mission trip.

Prepare yourself for spiritual warfare by surrounding yourself with people who will encourage and uplift you.

Most importantly, be sure to carve out daily time for prayer and scripture reading. Strengthening yourself spiritually during this time is essential for a successful debriefing process.

As you follow each of these steps, consider taking some time to be alone and reflect on your experience. Record your emotions verbally, keep a journal of your thoughts or create a scrapbook of pictures you took while abroad. Not only will this help you cement what you’re learning in your memory, but it will also be a reminder of God’s faithfulness for years to come!

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Bridging Dissonance: Finding Connection in Music and the Gospel

By Emily Sheddan • 18 Jul, 2024

TEAM worker Luke Standridge and his fellow musicians use music to build connections to faith in Japan. In music terms, dissonance creates movement or even suspense in a song. It invites tension. That tension is what helps grab our ear’s attention and the interchanging of these notes with pleasant melodious parts is what makes music such a delight. In a similar way, God is using music to grab people’s attention and catalyze Gospel impact in the largely unreached nation of Japan. TEAM Global Worker, Luke Standridge moved to Japan in 2019 with no clear direction on how he was going to use his passion for composing music while doing ministry. However, after Luke got involved with a local church and began developing deep friendships, the Lord opened unimaginable doors for Luke that in time, coordinating his creative skills with sharing the Word. “People Need to Come to Japan!” Growing up as one of ten kids in a family that was heavily involved in ministry and missions, Luke never considered that it would one day be a part of his own journey. In 2016, via a Japanese language learning class in Indiana, Luke and his brother had the opportunity to travel to Japan. Hearing, learning, and using the language in the context of Japanese culture was the goal. While it was Luke’s first international trip – even his first trip on a plane - it was also his first time hearing about the spiritual condition of the Japanese people. “And just through that, God did a huge 180 change on my heart,” says Luke. “More people should come here as global workers. People need to come to Japan!” The call God was laying on Luke’s heart is echoed when looking at the spiritual landscape of Japan. The nation is home to the second largest unreached people group in the world. It is one of the most difficult places for the Gospel to take hold and grow. Japan is also home to a deep and rich culture that prizes creative arts from pottery to ink to music to anime – a fact that would help Luke find his niche in life and ministry. God’s Guiding Hand In the short three-month timespan of that first trip, Luke found that opportunities came naturally to share about life, and people’s curiosity for Christianity grew. “I left Japan knowing I just had to come back,” Luke shares. “Even if I didn’t get back to the same area, I knew Japan was where God wanted me to be.” The Lord is good all the time and all the time the Lord is good. His plans do not fail. Luke returned to Japan in 2019, and less than a week after arriving, he was put in touch with a renowned composer in Japan. The composer saw some of Luke’s music and invited him to help write the music for a beloved in-country animated show. But God wasn’t finished yet! Fast forward a year, and more connections and opportunities allowed Luke to help with music for Pokémon - a franchise that has brand recognition around the world and was being developed into a TV series in Japan. Luke recalls how the Lord began using these connections in the production world to open doors for Gospel conversations. One night while having dinner in downtown Tokyo with famous artists and composers from all around the country, Luke was asked about his ministry-focused visa. This was a rare opportunity in a setting with people otherwise uninterested in Christianity. Luke shares, “The whole time I could see God’s hand in guiding the entire thing.”

Connecting in a New Kind of “Neighborhood”

By Lorena de la Rosa and Suzanne Pearson • 13 Jun, 2024

Through creative arts and other forms of innovative outreach, “The Neighborhood” is creating connections to the Gospel and the love of Jesus. CONNECTION. It’s a common word with powerful implications. Dictionary.com defines connection as a joining or linking together; a relationship between people or objects that unites or binds them together. God has created each of us with a deep need for connection with Him as well as connection with others. Hebrews 10:24-25 speaks to this, as the writer exhorts, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” This God-given need for connection lies at the heart of a creative and innovative ministry in Japan known as “The Neighborhood.” TEAM Japan global worker, Kelly and her family created The Neighborhood as a place where connections are formed through creative arts, educational opportunities, and simply just providing a space for people to be together. A Family Calling The journey to the creation of The Neighborhood began over 5,000 miles away from Tokyo, in California where Kelly, her husband Jeff, and their five children were living. The kids were the first to sense God’s calling to missions, and asked why their family wasn’t serving in this way. How Kelly and her family came to TEAM is a God-story in and of itself. “God placed a TEAM Japan worker at our lunch table the same week that the kids posed that question to us,” Kelly recalls. “We had never heard of TEAM and so we thought, ‘let’s check this out.’ After that, God just kept confirming that we were supposed to be here.” After a period of fundraising and with much excitement, the family of seven moved to Japan in 2014. For the first five years, Kelly and Jeff served as a part of other TEAM ministry initiatives, but they began to sense a stirring for something new. Creating The Neighborhood Kelly and her family truly have a deep gift for hospitality, and regularly opened up their home to others they met in Tokyo. They saw a great need for people to have a place to gather and connect, and they wondered what doors the Lord might be opening for them to meet that need. “About a year before we were to return the States on home assignment, we were just really thinking about our future in Japan,” Kelly says. “We saw a need for people to have a ‘third place’ – a place that’s not home and it’s not work. They didn’t have a church community or any other place where they could meet people and just connect.” Kelly goes on to explain that in Japan, the culture is such that people don’t generally invite each other into their homes, but as her family did so, people embraced that opportunity. “This idea formed in all of our hearts of a student ministry center – a place where we can create community and learning,” says Kelly. “It was born out of what we were already doing in our home, but seeing how we could expand it and have better space.” God’s Provision What happened next is a true testament to God’s provision. Kelly, Jeff, and the kids returned to the States and began sharing their vision for The Neighborhood with their supporters and churches who responded generously. Upon returning to Japan, the search was on for the right space. “We had a Christian realtor that we told our dream to, and he just went looking for it,” Kelly recalls. When the realtor found a 5-story apartment building, he said, “It’s kind of out of your budget but it has what you need and want.” The Lord provided the funds and the family moved into the space in November 2019. They now occupy all but the ground floor, with living space for their family as well as classrooms, areas to study or hang out, and guest rooms for exchange students or others who need a place to stay overnight. The first floor is occupied by a pizza shop – a welcome amenity for the many groups and students who visit The Neighborhood. “It’s very convenient!” Kelly says with a laugh. The Neighborhood began to see lots of activity right away until the pandemic hit in early 2020. During the height of the quarantine, Kelly and Jeff used the time to redecorate the space and plant gardens outside the building. Then as the restrictions eased, they invited individual students or families over for meals and fellowship. It wasn’t until March 2023 that The Neighborhood was able to fully open again as intended. Kelly shares that despite the setbacks of COVID, the Lord continued to provide the funds to pay the rent.