WASTED DOLLARS AND DAMAGE can result from poorly planned trips, missionaries say, but careful, focused efforts can transform lives for the better. Most missionaries have a “don’t point your camera at that” story.

An American, overwhelmed by an exotic new country, tries to capture every moment in megapixels and, despite warnings, snaps a photo of a sacred burial ritual — or worse, a large man with a gun.

“Many visitors will not do what missionaries or national hosts advise them to do,” said Linda Benskin, a former missionary to the West African nation of Ghana.

She has nothing against short-term missions. In fact, she and her husband, Richard, became full-time missionaries because of their experience on such a trip.

But they’ve also seen their ministry damaged by short-term workers who wear clothes that local people see as indecent, give gifts that are extravagant in a Third World country and make promises they can’t keep, she said.

As Spring Break and summer approach, thousands of church members are packing their bags — and cameras — for mission trips. Tina Samuel, a junior at Lipscomb University, Nashville, Tenn., will lead six people on a medical mission to India in May.

Samuel, who grew up in an Indian home, offers culture briefings in the team’s weekly meetings.

“It’s when people are ignorant of the differences that there is a greater chance of offending the people in India,” she said

NEW PERSPECTIVES, HIGH COSTS

Ati Levai thought Christianity was practiced only at Christmas and Easter until he encountered a group of young people “living out the reality of Christ’s love,” said his wife, Ruth.

Now he is a minister in his native Hungary, and will host a dozen students from Pepperdine University, Malibu, Calif., on a Spring Break campaign.

In nearby Serbia and Montenegro, the Belgrade church will host a team from Let’s Start Talking, a Texas-based ministry that teaches English using the Bible. The teams “make a bridge between the church and non-believers,” said church member Drasko Djenovic.

That’s not always the case, said Scott Raab, a missionary in Belgium.

“We had two years of difficult groups,” he said. As a result he and other missionaries in the area opted not to host short-term teams this year.

In the past campaigners worked during the week and went sightseeing on weekends, missing the opportunity to interact with churh members. “This meant that the church, in the long run, had no connection to the contacts made during the campaign,” Raab said.

Though most teams work hard, “quite often the hands-on work they do would be done more effectively, and certainly less expensively, by nationals living at home,” said Roger McCown, a former missionary to Guatemala who ministers for the Brentwood Oaks church, Austin, Texas.

Such trips have numerous benefits, but their cost raises concerns for the sending churches, “which already suffer from a lack of dollars for evangelistic missions,” McCown said.

‘VALUE ADDED’ MISSIONS

The 700-member Brentwood Oaks church has set aside about one-sixth of its annual mission budget for short-term projects. The church made the decision only after its leaders made certain that its long-term mission efforts had adequate funding, McCown said.

The church also takes a “value added” approach to short-term work, sending teams to accomplish tasks that could not easily be done by people in the field.

The high costs of short-term work demand “intentionality while on the field and preparation before arriving on the field,” said Gary Green, who coordinates the World Wide Witness Program at Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas, with Wimon Walker.

The ministry will send 65 students to 18 locations around the globe this summer to work closely with churches and missionaries, Green said. The student interns’ training revolves around what Green said are the two keys to success in short-term missions — relationships with locals and mentoring from the missionary.

Several ministries, including Let’s Start Talking and World Wide Youth Camps, are designed specifically for short-term work. Jeremiah’s Hope, a ministry for orphans in Ukraine, built short-term missions into its work, said missionary Andrew Kelly.

Visits from young people outside Ukraine encourage the orphans, Kelly said, and they also “seem to help us Americans step back and put things in focus.”

FROM SHORT-TERM WORK TO LONG-TERM SUPPORT

Four mission trips to Jamaica have made it easier to talk about Christ in the grocery store at home, said Dave Culbreath. He’s leading a Spring Break team from Lipscomb University to work with the Morant Bay church on construction projects and door-knocking evangelism.

“Every day is a mission opportunity, no matter where we are,” he said.

Short-term missions also plant seeds that yield fruit years later, said Dale Hartman, minister for the Eastside church, Midwest City, Okla., who has helped coordinate campaign groups for Australia.

Even if short-term workers don’t become missionaries, “who knows which of these kids will be elders, or elders’ wives?” he said.

Ken Grimm said that someone else’s short-term work sparked his long-term ministry. Grimm, who has worked in India and Sudan in recent months, struggled for many years to find full-time support.

Decades earlier a young Christian named Dave Johnson had participated in a short-term mission trip. Johnson, now an elder for the Westminster, Md., church, “became one of the catalysts God used to put me where I am now,” Grimm said.

Grace Nyanga has worked with several short-term mission teams in his native Uganda. During a recent visit to the United States to raise money for a Ugandan Bible school, Nyanga encountered one of the former campaigners — now a member of his own church’s missions committee.

The most successful campaigners are “willing to look silly, eat strange things” and still ask, “What can we do?” Raab said. “Young people who really think of others because they know Jesus are an immense force for God’s kingdom, wherever they go.”

March 1, 2006