Updated in 2020, including a chapter on traveling amidst the coronavirus (Covid-19), a worldwide pandemic. Short-Term Missions, A Christian Guide to STMs is a full and concise guide to STMs. What you need to know about planning a STM, or joining a STM team, and considering the options as part of the Great Commission, from the Good News to good works. This book is full of anecdotes and advice with informative timelines, and a biblical framework for STMs to help you engage in cross-cultural missions; with viable solutions to common mission issues to make your STM more effective to the glory of God. Mission considerations and types of STMs. What to do, where to go, with the best methods. How to pick a team or choose a STM organization. Raising financial support and managing your STM budget. Travel kit list, items to buy and what to leave behind. Emotional and spiritual work, before, during and at home. Security, safety, duty and character, and being streetwise. Dealing with social media and disruptive team members. Medical advice, obtaining a visa and your plane ticket. What to pack, how best to travel and airport etiquette. Christian literature, building a home or sinking a bore well. Communication, language issues and public speaking. Team dynamics, food and drink, the tribe, and social time. Working with the locals and being culturally sensitive. What to do before and after you return home. Mathew Backholer is the co-founder of ByFaith Media (ByFaith.org) and films and presents the reality mission series ByFaith TV which airs globally on numerous Christian networks. He has been on more than thirty mission trips and has experience: as a team member, a leader and as a host. Mathew is passionate about the Great Commission – to make disciples of Jesus in all nations by the power of the Holy Spirit. He has travelled the length of Africa, from Cairo to the Cape, across South-East Asia from India to Vietnam and from Nepal to Russia via China and Mongolia and has survived the Trans-Siberian Railway. He has driven around Europe, visited North Africa six times, and has journeyed alone, with friends, as part of team and as a leader.

Brian Howell provides an anthropology of short-term mission (STM) among American Christians. Providing a history of STM along with an ethnographic case study of a trip to the Dominican Republic, Howell argues that the movement is sustained by a uniquely Christian travel narrative that borrows from the anthropology of tourism and pilgrimage.

When Helping Hurts is a paradigm-forming contemporary classic on the subject of poverty alleviation with over 300,000 copies in print. This stand-alone resource applies the principles of that book specifically to short-term missions. Helping Without Hurting in Short-Term Missions: Participant’s Guide aims to train and debrief team members, preparing them to do short-term missions as effectively as possible. To do this, it provides practical examples and guidelines for team members, and it creates interaction and reflection opportunities through questions and journaling. With eight units, six of which are built around free online video content, this book equips teams to avoid harming materially poor communities and to translate their experience into lasting and mutual engagement with missions and poverty alleviation. In conjunction with the separately available Leader’s Guide, it is an ideal resource for churches, Christian colleges, mission agencies, and missionaries.

Revised and updated in 2017. How to Plan, Prepare and Successfully Complete Your Short-Term Mission (STM) will guide you through all you need to know about your STM. The author has been on more than thirty mission trips and has experience: as a team member, a leader and as a host. He has participated in the most incredible mission adventures, sharing the Word in Sudan, preaching in villages in India, supplying Bibles in North Africa, assisting the persecuted Church in Asia, and maintaining mission centres in Europe. The book Includes: • What to buy, take with you and leave behind • Who to go with, where to go and when to depart • To join a mission organisation or plan your own STM • The duration, destination and timing of your mission trip • Types of STMs – evangelistic, preaching or humanitarian • Medical issues, your passport, visa and travelling with money • Emotional and spiritual work before, during and on your return • Understanding culture, language and giving your testimony • How to get the money to go and setting a realistic budget • Food, drink, accommodation and working with the locals • Team dynamics, etiquette, leadership and the team • Security, wisdom and safety – being streetwise • Having a safe and successful STM Mathew Backholer is the co-founder of ByFaith Media (www.ByFaith.co.uk) and films and presents the reality mission series ByFaith TV which airs globally on numerous Christian networks. He has travelled to forty nations of the world and is the author of many books, including: Short-Term Missions: A Christian Guide, Extreme Faith: On Fire Christianity, Revival Fires and Awakenings and Global Revival: Worldwide Outpourings.

Budget Travel, A Guide to Travelling on a Shoestring is a practical and concise guide to travelling the world and exploring new destinations with fascinating opportunities and experiences. Full of anecdotes, traveller’s advice, informative timelines and testimonies, with suggestions, guidance, ideas and need-to-know information to help you survive and thrive on your budget travels and have the adventure of a lifetime! Whether you go solo, join with friends, participate in humanitarian work, join an overland bus trip or take your own vehicle, this book is for you. • Why travel, options, ideas, opportunities and experiences • The style of your trip, what to do, when to go and the cost • Gap year safety, medical and health related issues and remote travel • How to travel with money, cash, ATMs, haggling and remunerations • Your rucksack/backpack, what you need to take and leave behind • The plane ticket, review sites, applying for a visa and airport etiquette • Finding a place to stay, reservations and accommodation checks • Personal hygiene, scams, settling in and a foreign language • Be smart, shrewd and safe, the laws of the land and social media • Food & drink, keeping a journal, culture, writing and photography • Buses, trains, taxis, motorbikes, overlanders and vehicle maintenance • Overland bus trip and researching an organization • Humanitarian and development aid and leading a volunteer-vacation • A working-vacation, advice for leaders and a working team • Can you help me and the end of the journey As a world traveller, Mathew Backholer has visited more than forty countries and has travelled the length of Africa, from Cairo to the Cape, across South-East Asia from India to Vietnam and from Nepal to Russia via China and Mongolia and has survived the Trans-Siberian Railway. He has driven around Europe, visited North Africa six times, and has journeyed alone, with friends, as part of team and as a leader. He is the co-founder of ByFaith Media (www.ByFaith.org) and films and presents the reality mission travel series ByFaith TV which airs globally on numerous networks. He is the author of many books, including: How to Plan, Prepare and Successfully Complete Your Short-Term Mission and Extreme Faith.

Effective Engagement in Short-term Missions represents the single most ambitious effort to date to understand and improve upon patterns of ministry in STM. In six sections, the authors explore topics such as the links between STM and older patterns of long-term missions; engagement with people of other cultures; international partnerships; specialized ministries such as medical missions; legal and financial liabilities; and last but not least, the impact of STM on participants. The goal of this book is to improve the ways in which STM is carried out and to improve the understandings needed on the part of all who engage in the ministry. In short, this book attempts to provide a knowledge base for those who provide leadership within the short term missions movement. Youth pastors, mission pastors, lay leaders, college and seminary students, and missiologists will all find information that is helpful and relevant to their concerns.

Spiritual Warfare contains powerful prayers, declarations and decrees to release God’s blessing into every area of your life, and to break the powers of darkness over you and your family. Discover a commanding five-month collection of strategic prayers and proclamations to strengthen and equip you. These daily biblical declarations and confessions provide a template to renew the mind, so you can press into God’s promises and enjoy an abundant, victorious life in Jesus Christ. Learn how to enter Christ’s fullness and overcome the enemy in countless areas of your life through proclamation and warfare prayers. Including: Living under God’s blessing, healing and wholeness, freedom to sleep in peace, God’s favour on finances, stress defeated, victory over the enemy, Christ’s perfect peace, liberty from rejection, blessings on my home and family, the spirit of boldness, insecurity and inferiority defeated, fear and intimidation overcome, what Christ has done for me, revoking negative confessions, no condemnation in Christ, freedom from evil spirits, the best is yet to come, and much more. This devotional includes a potent introduction to the efficacy of biblical confession in spiritual warfare and provides you with biblical principles to overcome evil, as you enter Christ’s inheritance. Powerfully assert Christ’s victory in your life, as you thrive, renewing your strength each day with hope. Enter the Lord’s generous and abundant life, as you know God’s Word, believe God’s Word and confess God’s Word. Including: Self-Worth and Confidence: No Condemnation in Christ, Justified and Sanctified, I am an Overcomer in Christ, Christ is My Refuge, What Christ Has Done for Me, I am Wonderfully Made Abundant Wealth and Poverty Defeated: Renouncing Poverty, Financial Abundance, Blessed Everywhere, Abundance and No Lack, The Power to get Wealth, I Call Forth My Hundredfold Fear, Anxiety & Panic Attacks Overcome: Overcoming Social Anxiety and Panic Attacks, Freedom to Sleep in Peace, Fear and Intimidation Defeated, Inferiority and Insecurity Defeated, Depression Defeated, Self-Loathing is Defeated Healing and Courage: Stress and God’s Perfect Peace, Healing and Wholeness Suicide, Self-Harm and Death Defeated, Healing Declarations, The Best is Yet to Come, Healing and Youth Renewed Curses and Evil Spirits Defeated: Revoking Negative Confessions, Release from Ungodly Soul Ties, Renouncing Unbelief and Curses, Freedom from Evil Spirits, Freedom from Ungodly Ancestral Ties, Free Yourself from Demons. Victory and Protection: The Armour of God, Victory in Christ, God’s Power Over the Enemy, I am More Than a Conqueror, The Blood of Jesus, Travelling Mercies. Paul Backholer is the co-founder and global director of ByFaith Media (www.ByFaith.org). Paul is an author, broadcaster, explorer and analyst who has appeared on Christian channels globally. As a faith-based documentary maker, he produces and co-presents ByFaith TV. Paul is the author of many books including The Baptism of Fire, The End Times, Heaven, Paradise is Real and How Christianity Made the Modern World. Paul studied theology at Bible College and has travelled to over forty nations working with Christian projects and charities.