The Cure for a Dread Disease
Dan Wilson, BA
Short-Term Missions Coordinator, ACSI
Affluenza has swept the nation, and your students are at risk! The symptoms include a narrow view of the world, selfish attitudes, a sense of entitlement, and a passive faith that accepts the truth but doesn’t put it into practice. Affluenza, as you have probably guessed, is not a physical disease but an infection of the soul. Those who live in affluence can contract it, and most of us in developed countries are at risk. This infection often breeds many other germs, including laziness,self-indulgence, and greed. Affluenza has infected a whole generation of Christians, blinding them to the bigger purpose that God has for their lives and to His heart for all people.
While only the Holy Spirit can actually cure your students’ affluenza, an opening must be made in your students’ souls in order for the serum to be effective. One of the surest ways of achieving that openness of the soul is to remove the students from their affluenza-infected environment and take them to places where they can experience the realities of the larger world. These realities include human suffering, real poverty, the hopelessness of lives without Christ, the joyful gratitude of those who are poor in things but rich in soul, and the sacrifice of Christlike servants. Once directly exposed to these realities, your students may experience the cure and respond as Abbey did upon her return from an ACSI Short-Term Missions trip:
Before going to Paraguay, my worldview was very limited... I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the future, but I was sure missions had nothing to do with it. In Paraguay, my eyes were opened for the first time. I began to feel a passion for God and other people that I had never experienced before. My heart had beencompletely changed. Jesus had given me a love for other people and a heart to share His love with the world. I’m glad that God changed me—His plan for me is so much better than mine for myself.
You can expose your students to this cure through ACSI Short-Term Missions (ASTM), which has mission adventures prepared for that purpose. As a service of ACSI International Ministries, ASTM exists to provide high-quality, cross-cultural mission trips designed for North American member schools.
ASTM trips bless three groups: your team, your school, and a sister school. Your team members, a group of senior-high students and adult leaders from your school, experience the mission together, learning to put hands and feet to their faith. Your school can involve every class in helping raise awareness and funds and can challenge every class to commission, pray for, and learn from your team upon the team’s return. Your team partners with a sister school in the destination country, ministering at that national Christian school. Your team does a work project on the school’s facilities, forms relationships with the students and the staff, and teaches Bible classes, English classes, or both. The goal is that your team and the host school will learn from and bless each other.
ASTM works with you in finding the best destination for your team in order to fit your desired trip dates as well as the number of team members and their gifts. In every destination country, an ASTM trip coordinator takes care of all the in-country logistics for your team. The coordinator prepares for transportation, lodging, meals, and translators; sets up the work and outreach projects; and makes sure everything is in place for your team’s safety and success. The trip coordinator meets the team members at the airport and accompanies them during their time in the country. This arrangement provides a high degree of security for the team and allows your adult team leaders to focus on what they do best—teaching and discipling your students.
ASTM trips usually last 10 days, but some trips that last up to three weeks are also available. The destinations for 2009 include Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, South Africa, Tanzania, Hungary, Ukraine, and Thailand. On some trips to China and Russia, students can interact with students from public schools and from secular camps. In addition, high school boys’ teams can take soccer trips to South Africa. You can view charts showing the current list of available trips dates and prices at www.acsi.org.
During all of these trips, your students will have the opportunity to get to know children and adults from your host culture by interacting with them where they live and study and play. The invaluable cultural understanding and spiritual training these relationships foster will almost certainly change your students’ lives forever. And the trips may save some students from a lifetime of affluenza.
International Ministries 12.3