Several years ago I was sitting in a marketing meeting listening to a discussion about how to engage boomers.  The unanimous conclusion was boomer donors want to be “hands-on” and “engaged” with the work.  There was then a strategy session about how to give them that experience without the expense of the infrastructure it takes to actually make people “hands-on”.
While that was not the birth moment of the short term missions movement (which began in the 1950’s with Operation Mobilization and YWAM) it was about the same time progressive churches began to create week-long mission projects vacations with a purpose and other temporary assignments for amateurs.  Skip forward a generation and we now have an even more compressed experience based on focus groups telling us what Millennials want.  They want to “make a difference” and “change the world” but it has to be quick convenient and low cost.  In other words infrastructure is not an issue because “hands-on” is not necessary.  It is built on text donations of $5 that are collected by hundreds of “aggregators” who promise these donors are changing the world.  We are eased along this path with quotes from Mother Teresa Margaret Mead and others about the power of one small act of kindness having enormous impact.
This is not being cynical.  I just think this is promising more than we can deliver…and depriving them of the discovery that change is hard work.  Mother Teresa worked in India for 50 years with no intention of changing the world.  That is the story we are not telling…but should.  It is not about making a difference or changing the world.  It is about a long obedience in the same direction.