The work of a mission trip doesn’t end when you return home. In fact, some of the most important work you do will be in the lives of the participants when they return.
The mission trip may energize your team, inspiring them to make a difference, but without proper support, this enthusiasm may dwindle.
Technology can help you make the most of that energy—funneling it toward spiritual growth and ministry involvement back home. And it can help you do so much easier (and more effectively) than you could do it using old-school methods.
The Challenges of Traditional Mission Trip Follow-Up
The traditional model of mission trip follow-up (when follow-up even happens) is a minefield for many churches. It’s a lot of work. Depending on how many people took part in the trip, you could have a couple dozen people to stay connected with. You need to keep track of contact information, remember to follow up, and hope you didn’t write down contact information incorrectly.
That administrative burden has a cost —most notably lost opportunities to continue a person’s momentum toward ministry involvement in your community and future mission projects abroad.
Practical Tech Tools for Effective Follow-Up
Technology can help bridge those gaps and make follow-up simpler so you won’t leave anyone out—and you won’t get overwhelmed with all the tasks flying around. Make sure you’re using these tools in particular (more on how later):
- Church Management Software (ChMS): An effective ChMS helps to ensure you never have to go looking for contacts in multiple places and you always have the most updated information at your fingertips. For example, with mission trip solutions from ACST, you’ll be able to put together groups for each mission trip your church planned so you can send out messages and not worry you’re missing people. Plus, you can access that contact information wherever you are, with your laptop, smartphone, or tablet.
- Email Campaign & Automation: Leverage automated email campaigns, readily available in a ChMS or dedicated email platforms, to send personalized messages, such as welcome emails and feedback surveys to your team. You can also leverage your ChMS to send out text messages to team members.
- Private Social Media Groups & Messaging Apps: Of course, good follow-up isn’t just a one-way street. You can also provide social platforms for team members to engage with one another, talk about their experience, and support one another. You can use Facebook groups or messaging apps like WhatsApp or GroupMe to do this for free.
The digital tools to help you with follow-up are out there. And they won’t break the bank either. But what do you do with them?
A Sample Follow-Up Plan Using Tech
Here’s a simple four-point plan to use technology to follow up with your mission trip participants.
- Set up a contact group in your ChMS: Create a group in your ChMS for mission trip participants to track your communication with them. This group will be the central hub for communications. Leverage features like relationship tags to identify specific roles on your team. For example, with these tags, you’ll be able to send specific messages to people who led individual teams on your trips if you need to do so.
- Schedule an automated email series for when you return. You can create these before you ever leave for the trip. Keep your follow-up short and focused. Welcome your team home. Invite them to your debriefing time. Send them an evaluation of the trip. Ask them to share their stories with your church family.
An automated email system gives you an opportunity to set some of your emails several months out. This will allow you to check in on team members and ask longer-term evaluation questions about how they’re getting connected to local mission projects once they returned. (And you won’t need to remember to do this. Your software will just do it.) - Create a private social media group: Build an ongoing sense of community through a social media group. Find a team member who seems adept at social media to manage the group. Monitor the group as a way to see how the trip impacted team members and the ways in which they are getting involved post-trip.
- Organize a follow-up meeting or video call with your team: Use your ChMS to invite people to a follow-up meeting or video call. During the call, allow everyone to speak. Take notes. Learn from the team’s experiences and note ways you can change future trips based on the feedback.
Thanks to technology, this four-part process won’t take much work on your part and will provide tons of insights that’ll help you next time you plan a mission trip.
Embrace Technology for Lasting Impact
No one goes through all the effort of putting together a mission trip unless they want to make a meaningful change in the lives of the people they are serving and those participating. Follow-up plays a big part in that process.
Start small. Pick one or two tools to incorporate into follow-up after your next mission trip. Then, add more the next time.
For more about how you can help your team members build on all God did in their lives on your next mission trip, check out our free guide, Mission Trip Follow-Up: Keeping the Momentum Going After the Trip.
ACS Technologies
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