Cross Church in Springdale, Ark., sent up to 600 people on 30-40 mission trips annually before COVID grounded those efforts in 2020. Missions pastor Doug Sarver spent that year coordinating future trips and maintaining communication with global partners. He also studied how an individual’s vaccination status and a country’s COVID-19 mandates could factor into plans.
“It depends on the individual’s medical status, their comfort level with international travel and their comfort level to exposure,” he said.
It began with identifying countries where COVID-related requirements had been communicated for entry and finding participants willing to adhere to those requirements. Last September the IMB updated its own policies in order for missionaries to meet COVID vaccination requirements in other countries.
Personally, Sarver viewed vaccination requirements as a call by those local governments that, if he wanted to be on-site to participate in missions, he had no choice but to follow. So, he received the required vaccinations in order to go.
“If I’m not vaccinated, then I can’t follow God’s call for me to go to those places,” he said. “I chose to submit and follow God. I’ve trusted Him for my health long before COVID vaccinations.”
Cross Church does not mandate medical decisions to members or staff. Many upcoming mission trip participants, he said, were already vaccinated when trips such as one to London had been determined. According to the most recent requirements, those participants must complete a passenger locator form within three days of arrival, but don’t need to quarantine or take any additional COVID-19 travel tests. The unvaccinated must be tested two days before travel, book and pay for another test after arrival and complete the passenger locator form.
Seven teams comprising 140 people will depart from Cross Church between now and April, Sarver said. Four will be in the United States with two going to London and one to Malawi.
A positive test once you arrive in that country can also affect the cost, as additional quarantine days before leaving means additional nights in a hotel and additional meals to pay for.
Prewett recommends planning a year before an international trip. COVID-19 has been the biggest variable to contend with, of course, as well as how the destination country is encountering it.
“It is a constant state of shifting rules,” he said, “and not all countries enforce their rules evenly across the board.”
It’s also tough to overstate COVID’s impact on the airline industry. Airlines are dealing with a pilot shortage spurred by both the pandemic and its recovery, which led many to be laid off, accept early retirement or decide to leave the vocation altogether.
“When the airlines rapidly increased flight schedules last summer to almost pre-pandemic levels, staffing levels never caught up,”’ Prewett said. “It has made for hectic operational tempos as they struggle to staff their planned flight schedules. It causes a lot of changes to flight schedules and itineraries.”
