A commenter has made some excellent points concerning my Mission Mess-Ups post, causing me to reconsider whether what I wrote truly reflected how I feel about short-term missions.
I should note that my post was made in response to Shades of Gray and a Washington Post article, both of which offered critical perspectives on short-term mission trips to third-world countries. I was agreeing with their criticisms, but I perhaps should have better clarified my own position.
There is a place for short-term mission work, but I think that these opportunities should be a response to the actual needs of communities, not a business in and of themselves. I am concerned that there is a “marketing-to-the-missionaries” aspect to these programs: Yes, some services/labor may be given to a community, but if the primary emphasis is put on the experience of the mission team (rather than meeting the needs of a community), this is a problem. I don’t question that many people who participate in these programs find them humbling and a real opportunity for growth, but if they aren’t meeting the needs of those who they are supposed to serve, they are being cheated out of fulfilling their desire to truly be of service.
Secondly, these trips may not be a cost effective way of getting work accomplished, and, in some cases, they may be responsible for driving down wages of local workers. Obviously this is not always going to be the case: In a disaster, such as a flood or an earthquake, people are desperately needed to rebuild infrastructure and stabilize the area. Well-organized short-term mission teams and individual volunteers are absolutely crucial to these efforts. In addition, there are many churches, aid agencies, and social service programs that have well-organized short-term mission and volunteer programs that do serve critical, and well-defined, community needs.
Thirdly, many aid agencies working in underprivileged communities (both domestically and overseas) desperately need both cash and specialist labor. If a community has few medical professionals or engineers, it makes sense to sponsor a medical or engineering team to that area. If there is a shortage of housing in that community, it makes sense to send cash to an agency and let them hire local workers to do the building. Just because a community is poor does not mean that it completely lacks human resources: It may well be that sending cash is far better stewardship than sending a team of unskilled workers.
The lack of cultural sensitivity displayed in some of these programs is problematic. Granted, problems of cultural sensitivity and disruption are inevitable, but I think that efforts ought to be made to minimize them.
In our desire to “do good” we should remember that we don’t get to define what “doing good” is. Neither do churches, parachurch ministries, or even aid agencies. Instead, we need to take the time to listen to those whom we seek to serve so that they can tell us what they need.
We might be surprised.
Or we might not.
But the point is that we need to listen.
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Lainie
came to this via FaceBook
involved in rather a lot of internet spaces, so not sure which but aware that somewhere else on the misison blogsphere this has also been a big topic.
and just wanting to affirm much of what you first posted.
the issue is what are missions for? and this is key to how they dhould be conducted. as you rightly say above aid relief is indeed a short term much needed intervention…but not a substitue for long term re-development work in cultural appropriate ways.
similalry in evangelistic work short term mission can be a great experience for the team and can be a good part of what a host church does as part of it’s ongoing mission programme, but it is a very bad stratergy as the mission programme! trouble is it is still too common for mission teams to be sent to ‘do the mission’ on a short term basis with no proper understanding of local culture and false expectations both in the recieiving church and the sedning group. the result is often a failure of mission and the discussion righlty points that up.