How many people did you mobilize for your last mission trip?
Before you answer how many airline tickets you purchased, consider that question again. Think beyond the team that traveled abroad. Think about those who you worked with on the mission field. How many pastors, leaders and laity participated in your efforts? Think about the people back home who prayed, gave, donated items or drove you to the airport.
All of these people—at home and abroad—are part of your mobilization effort. They are all people who in some way were touched by your trip. They were all exposed to missions and ministry on some level. They were all encouraged by the importance of the work that you did.
Taking teams on mission trips is all about mobilizing people into ministry. The more people mobilized, the more lives that are touched, and the greater the impact.
So before your next trip, consider setting a mobilization goal for the total number of people you want to participate in your outreach. Maybe you want to take the number of people going on the trip and multiply that by 10 to get your mobilization goal.
If you are taking 20 people, how can you use this event to mobilize 200 people into missions engagement? How many prayer partner commitments can you get? How many different people can you involve in trip logistics? What preparation tasks can a larger group help with? How can you maximize individual donors, including those who may only give very small amounts?
What about on the field—what can you do to connect with more leaders? How can you get more people to work side by side with you? What efforts are being made to recruit prayer partners from the nationals where you will serve?
By answering these questions we see how mobilizing by tenfold is not only possible but a minimum that should be expected. By understanding the definition of mobilization and throwing in a little extra effort, we can involve a lot more people and greatly expand the impact of our trips.