Short Term FAQs

Yes! Pioneers is happy to help you find a placement for your medical elective. We do not have medical elective placements prepared in advance. Rather, we will talk to you about where you feel called, how long your elective needs to be, when you can go, and what type of medical situation you’re looking for. We’ll then consult our database to see if any of our medical teams might match your requirements.

Because short-termers join long term field teams, the cost is dependent on the location of the team, the duration of the placement, and the team’s ministry activities. For instance, a 6-month placement in Tokyo will cost more than a 4-month placement in rural Kenya. The budget will be decided collectively by the field team, the Pioneers finance office, and the participant. Pioneers retains £50 per month on the field for each short-term mission participant. Other than that, the entirety of the participant’s budget will go to pre-field and on-field costs.

Short-term mission participants get to the field in varying amounts of time from first contact. Because our mobilisation efforts are very relational, it can take up to a year from the time you first contact us until the time you land on the field. This depends on the amount of time it takes to find a matching team, and on how quickly you choose to go through the training period. On the other hand, the process can take as little as three months.

We generally prefer to send people to the field for four months or longer. The purpose of going on short-term mission is for you to discover whether or not long term mission is for you. This is very difficult to do in one or two months because it takes some time to get settled and into ministry. If you only have a month or two to spare, we recommend that you consider joining one of our summer trips. However, if you have extenuating circumstances, we’ll be happy to talk with you to see what we can work out.

When you speak with one of our mobilisers, we’ll ask you a lot of questions about yourself and your sense of calling. With that information in hand, we will look at our database of teams and create a list of possibilities. We’ll then send that list to you so you can read over the team descriptions, and think and pray. When you’re ready, you can let us know what teams you find most interesting and we’ll get in touch with the teams to see if they might also be interested in you! We’re like mission matchmakers! If they’re interested in talking to you, we’ll put you in touch and see how you get on, and you can decide together whether this is the team for you.