21 January 2012

Great White Savior

This is the second post in a series of thoughts about evangelical missions from a trip I (Jim) took into the valley to distribute food among the Maasai people.  If you haven't done so, you should definitely read the introduction here.

There has been a lot of discussion lately among our missionary friends about the usefulness of short-term missions.  I don't know if this is a new topic or whether we've simply fallen into a community for which this is a frequent point of discussion.  The discussion usually centers around this question: With all the damage short-term missions do, shouldn't we just stop organizing short-term mission trips?

Now you may be wondering what damage short-term trips cause.  There are a ton of examples of this damage. Here are just a couple:

They foster dependency.  My first short-term trip was to Tecate, Mexico.  We built a house for a poor family.  It seemed like almost everybody we met was hoping to be the next family to receive a house.  There was almost a culture present which enabled a "wait for the Gringo heros" mentality.  They weren't interested in our message.  They just wanted another handout.

They steal jobs.  When a short-term mission group travels overseas and 'serves', it's often doing menial labor such as painting church walls.  This looks bad.  Usually, there's almost as much paint on the floors, shirts and faces of the wealthy white kids as there is on the walls.  In developing countries, these jobs are at a premium.  Why not put a fraction of the cost of these plane tickets toward employing a local person who needs work?  They'd appreciate the work, and probably do a better job!

They mock poverty.  If you were living in a hut wondering not what to prepare your family for supper but if you'll eat anything for supper and some wealthy American with culturally inappropriate designer jeans, stylish shades, and flashy jewelry bounces up in a fancy new car, drapes their headphones around their neck, hands you a bag with a good day's meal, snaps a couple of pictures and says perkily, "God Bless!" before rushing off again, how would you feel?  Just imagine how much it cost that person to get to Africa to hand out that simple meal in the first place!

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When we arrived at the project in the valley, it was easy to feel like a rock-star.  Everybody was so excited to see us.  Faith, the mzungu kidogo (little white person), was a huge hit.  Everybody wanted to shake her hand and mine.  Each and every person wore a huge smile.  It's a thrill, to say the least.  The joy in the air was palpable and I think just about anybody would expect to get hooked on that feeling.

When handing out food, people are so grateful.  They're thrilled.  That gratitude is a subtle trap.  It's not long before you start to feel that you're really awesome.  That these people really need you.  That you're some sort of savior.  In fact, there are missionaries and people in charge of NGOs all over Kenya who have this aura about them.  It's not the presence of God.  It's a huge ego.

Feeding projects in Kenya are big business.  Some are done well, but others are just a job.  It's easy to raise money to feed starving people.  We're even given a Biblical mandate to feed the hungry.  But in projects like these, it's easy to see that the wealthy person is in authority.  They are not really empowering the poor, not enabling them to become self-sufficient.  In this setting, the poor are indebted to the wealthy, dependent upon them for just about everything.  These projects foster an endless cycle of inequality.  Eventually, the poor begin to view missionaries as some sort of great white savior.

So it seems pretty clear.  Short term missions need to stop.

But there are two reasons I believe short-term missions are essential.  The first is that most people who go on a short-term trip will leave feeling like anything but a 'great white savior.'

It's basically a given in Kenya that if you're an adult white male at any religious gathering, you'll be asked at some point to speak to or pray for the group.  I said some stuff about loving our brothers and that we hoped that our small gift would be a blessing to each of them, and that Christ would somehow multiply that blessing.  Then I finished with a loaded statement which I almost swallowed as it came out:

"But we know that Jesus Christ is the greater blessing."

True, no doubt.  But what if I were to look at that statement through the lens of poverty?  I made that statement out of my wealth.  It's an easy statement for me to make - I haven't been hungry in ages.  What if simply having food were a big-to-me blessing?  Would I still be able to make that same statement?

As we began handing out food I felt chastised by my own words.  Here I was giving 6 pounds of flour and 2 pounds of cooking oil to each family knowing that as soon as we were finished, they would be feeding us.  And not just cornmeal paste.  Rice, chapatis, carrots and peas, and beef.  They even gave us some oranges and bananas.  We were giving out of our wealth; They gave out of their poverty.  Any inkling of being the hero was gone and it was replaced with a healthy sense of humility.  If more people in the evangelical church could actually experience that sort of humiliation, a lot of our messed-up attitudes about poverty and wealth, the global church, our own personal needs and even our worship would be corrected.

The second reason I believe short-term missions are essential is this:  almost everyone I've met here in Kenya who is currently trying to help the hurting with long-term sustainable projects either grew up here or was drawn to long-term service by first experiencing a short-term mission trip.  Short-term missions create life-long servers.  I'm convinced.  Yes, there are a lot of messed up things about short-term missions.  Yes, a bunch of jobless Kenyans would really like to earn a little money by painting that classroom... and they'd do a better job than your youth group too.  Maybe if short-term trips were organized specifically to help us as westerners directly confront our material privilege and our spiritual bankruptcy, they'd be more effective.

Anybody going on a short-term trip or leading a short term trip should have to read the chapter on short term missions in the book "When Helping Hurts" which talks about some of these issues.  Reading it might make you never want to go on a mission trip to Mexico again, but short-term trips ARE useful.  If half the people sitting in the comfortable evangelical churches of the West did attend a good short-term missions outreach, the American church would be fundamentally changed for the better.



13 comments:

  1. Wow...much to digest here. Jim, you've served as an interim youth pastor; If you led a youth ministry in an American church, what would be your approach to teaching about missions, and under what conditions would you take a group on a short-term international mission trip?

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    1. That's a really tough question, Benjer! I really think that youth need to be exposed to developing nations, poverty, and the lost. Three things immediately come to mind: 1) The leader should understand the spiritual and physical needs of the people students will be in contact with before-hand. Any short-term contact should be planned within that cultural context. 2) The focus of the trip should not be so much on completing a specific task (painting, giving food, etc...) but instead on developing an understanding of how the majority of the world works. Give kids plenty of time to sit, listen, watch and meditate. The Holy Spirit should be doing most of the work. 3) I'm realizing that most of the work for the leader of a short-term mission trip may actually come AFTER the trip. Students are going to need help processing what they've seen and how it makes them feel as Christians and as wealthy Americans. But all this is just theory... I've never led a short-term missions trip.

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  2. WOW! AWESOME! AMEN! you put into words MANY of our frustrations the past few years! You guys are doing AMAZING work! Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Thanks, Jen... it's tough to really put into words. I think on most levels, we can't truly understand problems missionaries face until having been there. I've got a lot to learn. Enjoy some snow for us!

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  3. Awesome post! you are on the right track. keep posting.

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  4. I love this blog :) I read it whenever I have time which is usually right before I go to bed. I love all the pictures and the ideas that you have about worship and missions and life and just in general all the possitive things that you have to say. It's great being able to come to this site and see that there are people out there who aren't there just to say they went but to really help and learn at the same time. I think it is fabulous. Thanks for making it possible for me to follow your journey in this strange place called Kenya. I'll try to comment more often.

    Your old Bio student,
    CeCe

    PS. These pictures totally remind me of everything that I have ever found on the internet but it is so much more real when I see it from people that I know and trust. It's just interesting to me because normally the internet pictures don't accurately represent the reality. Anyway those are my thoughts. Have a fabulous day :)

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    1. CeCe! Thanks for commenting - I miss WP, it's fun to hear from some old students! Again, it's awesome to get your comments. Sometimes I wonder exactly WHO is actually reading the blog - it's fun to know. Thanks!

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  5. Haha, that's so funny; I'm the second old bio student to comment...

    I totally agree with you. Most youth groups in America do more harm than good on short term missions. Kids just don't put heart into the goal. When I go to Arizona every summer on a mission trip, maybe less than 10% of the kids go because they actually want to serve people and don't care about something being inconvenient for them. I hate to place that judgement on them but it is the truth!

    I'm definitely looking forward to fulfilling my call to missions by hopefully being a career missionary when I'm older. I completely agree that long term missions are so much more effective and meaningful.

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    1. It's an old student reunion!! As far as American youth groups doing more harm than good on short-term trips: I think it's hard to actually get in the way of what God is doing. That said, it sure is easy to understand how non-Christians would have plenty of 'hypocrite' ammunition after watching a bunch of spoiled Americans breeze through a slum in the name of service.

      I think you nailed the biggest part of the issue when you addressed the motives or attitudes of a lot of short-term missionaries. I'm guilty of having a bad attitude myself. When we go to serve 'poor people' with the expectation of receiving their thanks and gratitude as well as personal satisfaction, it's a recipe for disaster on BOTH ends. I'm working on approaching these things with an attitude of humility.

      Lastly, a career missionary?!? That's awesome! Praying for God's continued leading in your life.

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  6. Jim, I really appreciated all that you had to say. I am a little confused though because you said that short term missions had to stop, but then you said they were useful. So do they need to change or do they need to stop? Also, I agree with you that it would be much better to send the money used for airfare to the working poor who could do a better job, but do you think it can work that way? Will people be motivated the same way to raise and send money? For example, I used to give my cash to homeless beggars when I saw them. But then I read an article about how much money they get and if we were to donate that money to the Denver Rescue Mission they could really make big changes. So I stopped giving the cash to homeless beggars...and ashamedly never gave the money to the Denver Rescue Mission. It wasn't that I didn't believe in the DRM or want to help it change Denver homelessness. I just never got around to putting that same cash in the bank and then writing a check to the DRM. So, how could we make that work? I am not being antagonistic here; I am really wanting to know your suggestions on how that can work. Also, I have read that often when we just send money (we being the Church or the government) without people it can create more problems and corruption. The money does not go to the man who wants to work hard painting the said house for money. Am I misinformed? If I am not misinformed, what do you think is a better solution? Thank you for putting this discussion up here! I can't wait to learn more from you. I am also going to pass this post along to our Missions Pastor at our church (Jimi).

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    1. Hey, Jennifer. Sorry about the confusing tongue-in-cheek statement. What I meant was short term missions have the potential to cause a lot of damage but they CERTAINLY have the potential to be an excellent tool, especially for teaching American students about what life is like on the mission field and in developing nations in general. This perspective is important for the spiritual health of churches in the west. There are some great short-term trips out there. Two of the people who posted on this article work for Push International - http://www.pushinternational.org/ a group focused on a very specific (and real) need in impoverished areas around the world. Most of their projects involve short-term trips. Basically, I think short term mission trips need special planning and maybe a shift in focus. We're often so service-focused in our short term trips we forget to actually pay attention to the real needs: relationships, prayer, understanding, advocates...

      Considering giving money... well, that's complicated. I think I'l adress that in a post in the next couple of days.

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  7. For several years I worked for Eternal Perspective Ministries, an organization founded by Randy Alcorn who is a well-known Christian author. 100% of the royalties from Randy’s books are donated to ministries around the world—missions, relief, prolife, the persecuted church, and so on. Randy has developed a list of 19 questions to ask before donating to a charitable organization. This list might be of interest to some who have commented on Jim’s blog.

    http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Mar/26/nineteen-questions-ask-you-give-any-organization/

    Learning about how organizations actually use the money has helped my husband and me determine how to give most strategically—getting the most money into the places it will be best used. When a local church or Christian organization is already in place working with the people on a daily basis, with evangelism and discipleship in mind while helping people help themselves (addressing physical needs), the most is accomplished from a Christian perspective.

    As Jim mentioned, the most long-lasting value of short-term teams is to give participants a heart for missions and for people. We have viewed this first-hand through our church, which sends out several teams every year. They always work with a local ministry so that there is follow-up after the team leaves. Every team member must participate in meetings once a week for a couple of months ahead of time. Preparation includes preparing a personal testimony, role playing to learn how to start a meaningful conversation, and learning how to share the gospel when appropriate. Work teams help with projects at orphanages but also conduct a vacation Bible school. They work within the culture. The system used by our church seems to address many of the concerns that have been expressed in response to Jim’s blog. Team members know they are expected to approach their “mission” with purpose and commitment. During a two-week mission trip to wherever it might be in the world, team members are given only two days off for sightseeing and relaxing. For the most part, this system ensures that team members’ hearts are in the right place—to both give and gain the most benefit.

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