“It will Change Their Lives”

The book I recently read, Serving with Eyes Wide Open, discusses at length some of the shortcomings of short term missions (no pun intended), one of which is the false premise that our missions work will change the lives of the people we go to serve. The book highlights a lot of typical comments of short-termer’s expounding on the lofty benefits their work will be on the recipients. The comments consistently give the impression that without the help and service of the short-termer’s the people would be in utter despair, without God, poor and hopeless.

One example given is a study by Kurt VerBeek, one of the few researchers actually studying the impact of short-term missions upon the local communities. After Hurricane Mitch, a organization raised two million dollars to rebuild homes in Honduras. They used the money both by using Honduran partners who hired Honduran builders to rebuild the homes, and they mobilized 31 short-term teams from the USA. VerBeek studied and compared the impact of the Honduran builders and the short-term groups.

“Through the data collected, VerBeek found no lasting impact, positive or negative, on the Honduran families and communities whose homes were built by North Americans as compared to those who never saw a short-term mission team. In fact, in a moment of candidness, the Hondurans confided that if given the choice, they’d rather see the money raised by each team who traveled to Honduras channeled toward building twenty more homes and employing Hondurans.” -p. 57, Serving With Eyes Wide Open

The point here is not to try and make another case against Short-term missions, but rather to encourage us to again be honest and aware of both the motivation and impact of the work that we are doing. Speaking from a financial outlook, there is are far better ways to steward our resources for the good of the Body of Christ to meet the needs of people worldwide. From a gifts outlook, there are for more equipped followers of Christ (namely people indigenous to the culture) to spread the gospel, train leaders and plant churches.

God chose a stuttering Moses to lead God’s people out of Egypt, an old Abraham and Sarah to father the chosen people, and God used a carpenter to bring salvation to all people, so God might very well use a bunch of teenagers on an adventurous summer trip to further the kingdom. In the mean time, I think it would be wise for us to think long and hard about short term missions work and consider if there might be wiser options.

This is a quote from Serving with Eyes Wide Open:

Read the letters and listen to the reports before and after mission trips, and those who go on trips tend to emphasize the so-called spiritual things: the number of souls saved, the lessons learned about prayer and materialism, and the impact made up the church visited. However, sit down for coffee with a friend who has just returned from a trip or eavesdrop on the picture party from a returning group, and the adventure of life in a new place seems to be the emphasis. Such conversations are filled with stories about who got stopped going through customs, what it was like to eat the food, bartering the shopkeeper down to a ridiculous price, and experiencing the driving habits of the locals.
Let’s be honest. Along with the seemingly more noble reasons for going on a short-term mission trip, many of us love the adventure of it all.

Now do a reality check for yourself: If you’ve ever been on a mission trip before, how true is this of you? I remember hearing a speaker when I went to YWAM, who talked at length about how he had been to 53 different countries, etc. I found myself both envious, and starkly aware of how easy it would be for me to fulfill my desire for travel under the guise of ‘missionary.’

Obviously, just because we have ulterior motives doesn’t mean no trip should ever happen, but I think it does call us to question seriously both who goes on trips, and how the trips are advertised, discussed and attended.
For one, I think the ‘fun’ day at the end of the trip (every mission trip I’ve ever been on had something like this) should be completely done away with. This is just my opinion, but I find it to be a terrible idea for a church to take people, especially young people, who’ve just had an eye opening experience into the world, and then encourage (even require) them to suddenly become materialistic, shopping consumerist a moment later.

I’ll leave you with some of the examples given in the book from well known missions organizations. Teen Mania, who have sent tens of thousands of short-term ‘missionaries’ send out full page brochures and advertisements with

“Missions Should Be Fun!” Below it was a picture featuring a group of American youth pushing a really cool-looking canoe down a tropical-like river with a few “natives” in tow.

Or this church bulletin advertising a mission trip to Mexico, including this line:

And this trip isn’t a “rough-roach-in-your-bed” kind of experience either-we’ll be housed in nice clean hotel roomes, eat lots of salsa, and have plenty of time to shop!
…If you’re remotely interested in this adventure-or if you’re just in the mood for Mexico after all this winter weather-call for more details about this fantastic outreach opportunity.