A vision trip is not a work project. You are not going to build anything, and if the value of your week depends on a wall existing at the end of it, this is the wrong trip.
What a vision trip is for
You are going to see whether what we have told you is true.
That is the whole of it. A church considering a long partnership, or a family considering years of support, is being asked to trust a set of claims about people they have never met in a place they have never been. A week on the ground turns those claims into something you can weigh with your own eyes.
So the trip is built around meeting the people who do the work, sitting in the training, and asking hard questions of the men who run it. You will be a guest in someone else's ministry, and the useful posture is the one that goes with that.
We would rather you came and left unconvinced than gave for three years on the strength of a website.
Thailand — forming now
Thailand is our flagship field and the one furthest along. We host it with SLMIF, our founding partner in Chiang Mai, established in 2019 and led by Rev. Dr. Yupho Mathusonsawan.
This is the field where a trip is nearest to real, and where there is most to see: the leadership academy, the work among the Karen and the other highland peoples, the boarding schools up in Chiang Rai, and the frontline evangelists who go out into the hills.
It is also the field with the deepest history behind it, and we think that history is worth arriving already knowing. The churches in those hills have governed themselves longer than most American denominations have existed. You are not going to a blank map.
India — forming with our partner
India is forming with Mission Impact India, our partner in Kaikaram, Andhra Pradesh, established in 2017 and led by David Livingstone.
The word forming is doing real work in that sentence. There is a partner, there is a relationship, and there is a shape to what a trip would be. There is not yet the settled rhythm that Thailand has.
If you want India, the honest answer today is that we would talk with you and with our partner, and see what is possible, rather than hand you a brochure.
Pakistan — exploratory, and we want to be plain
Pakistan is exploratory. We do not have a partner confirmed, and there is no trip on the calendar.
We have listed it because it is genuinely on our map and we would rather show you the map than a curated part of it. But listing a field is not the same as having a field, and we are not going to blur that line to look larger than we are.
What you can do about Pakistan right now is pray. That is not a soft answer offered in place of a real one. It is the only honest thing on offer.
Africa — early
Africa is on our vision map and it is early. We are looking toward the Sahel and the Horn — hard, needy regions where the gospel has a long way to go.
Same caution as Pakistan, and for the same reason. No confirmed partner, nothing on a calendar, and no willingness to imply otherwise.
What gates a trip, every time
Two things, and neither is negotiable.
The first is a partner invitation. We do not take groups into a place because we would like to go there. We go where a church or a ministry that is already working has asked us to come. That is the same principle that governs everything else we do, and a trip is not an exception to it.
The second is a safety review. Some of the places our partners work are dangerous for the people who live there, and a visiting group can raise the temperature in a village long after the group has flown home. If a review says a visit puts local believers at risk, the visit does not happen. That decision belongs to the people on the ground, not to us and not to you.
You will also be asked to accept limits while you are there — on photographs, on names, on what gets posted. Those are not fussiness. In several of the regions we work, being publicly identified as a Christian leader has consequences that last.
How to ask
If Thailand interests you, the interest list is the place to start, and it commits you to nothing.
If it is one of the other three, write to us and say so plainly, and we will tell you plainly where that field actually stands. Sometimes the answer will be that there is nothing to join yet.
We publish the stages this way on purpose. A missions committee that has been told four fields are ready, and discovers on arrival that two of them are a hope and a prayer, has learned something about the organization rather than about the field.
James Bell is Founder and Director of ENDS, Lead Pastor of First Baptist Church of Fenton, Michigan, founder of the Pastors Connection Network, and author and creator of LiveWell by James Bell. He writes on world missions, national-pastor training, and the unfinished work of the Great Commission. More about the team.