Eric Swanson, Leadership Community Director at Leadership Network, recently put together a great article entitled “Eight Trends That Will Shape the Future of Global Missions.” You can read the entire article here, but here are some highlights using Swanson’s own words from his interviews with fifty leaders of larger churches engaged in global missions.
1) Mutuality: The future of missions will be shaped by mutuality between East and West, North and South, sending and receiving nations….We in the West shouldn’t think of ourselves as the saving force in world missions.
2) Partnering: Partnering is different than mutuality…partnering pertains to projects that require the assistance of skilled co-laborers…it begins with what indigenous leaders in the country are trying to accomplish.
3) Investing in leaders: Churches that are effective overseas have learned to leverage the passion of local leaders…The most obvious sign [to recognize good leaders who will make great partners] is they are already engaged in effective ministry without any outside help.
4) Combining good deeds and good news: Combining good deeds and good news is not novel in foreign missions. What is new is the level of problem solving in which externally focused, missional churches are engaged. Today, influential people are speaking out for global, holistic solutions.
5) Greater financial accountability: The days of cutting a check and hoping for the best are rapidly disappearing… Effective missional churches of the future support mission-critical projects that their global partners deem important…Churches are learning never to start initiatives that will require western dollars to continue.
6) Business as mission: An emerging funding model ties business and mission together. This is more than missionaries posing as businesspeople but rather missional entrepreneurs who are starting businesses and creating jobs in the countries in which they serve.
7) Focus: The often unstated missions goal was to place representatives from the church on every continent of the globe. Churches today are learning to do better by focusing on fewer places of engagement.
8) Technology: All around us are glimpses of churches that are discovering the power of today’s newest technology–to impact a country without ever physically visiting that country. Tech-savvy mission leaders are shrinking the world with technology.
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Matthew Erickson 
I especially like the concept of business as mission. I don’t necessarily want to export western economics across the world, but I do think it is possible to have missions that fund themselves and better the culture at the same time.
I agree, Brian. We should be able to come alongside of good partners in mission to get behind sustainable opportunities for kingdom impact through business.