How to debrief your mission team (part 1 – overview)
After reading the blog a few days ago on leading mission projects, Tony Sheng asked me to write something about debriefing them. Debriefing is a critical step in not only any good mission project, but in the discipleship process as well. It is a form of guided reflection. After you go and try new behaviors or new ministry, you have to work through and learn from where you saw God moving. One of AIM’s five objectives is that we regularly expect to engage participants in this kind of debriefing.
Why is that? It’s because most of what we humans learn in life, we learn experientially. We do stuff, we think about how we just did stuff, and then we draw conclusions about what we’ve done. There are a host of things that we’ve learned that fit in the category of “head knowledge.” But we live our lives according to experience. And if you look at Jesus’ ministry, he constantly used experience as a touchstone for learning.
Jesus taught by explaining concepts, modeling them, giving disciples opportunity to try stuff out for themselves, then debriefing the whole thing. All the question and answer sessions between Jesus and his disciples give us a picture into how they learned. To disciple as Jesus did, we must acquire his debriefing skills. When you look at the disciples returning from their Luke 10 short-term mission trip, Jesus debriefs them and helps them make sense of the experience.
This subject of debriefing will require some time – I’m going to devote two weeks to it – my longest blog series ever. I hope that it will be helpful to you.
The next blog is on a biblical perspective on debriefing.
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I love the idea of debriefing, I do it daily. I am in the mission field in the Dominican Republic. lots of Ephesians 6:12 your teaching has really helped, its very simple to understand. Sometimes as missionaries raising our support can be the hardest part of staying in the field,but we must press on to reach those whom mourn,are hungry,suffer pain and persecution,’IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO SHINE THE FACE OF JESUS IN US”
Ditto! I look forward to tapping into the experience both you and Mary Beth have to offer!
oh so cool!
im going to point my readers here when your series is done. thanks in advance for posting your ideas about this – i KNOW many mission teams will benefit for your experience!