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.

(Please note: An addendum/clarification to this post is available here.)

About ten years ago, my mom was a youth group leader at her church. The church was located in a very affluent community, and the kids in the group were very privileged indeed. The youth leaders decided that the kids needed to learn about the “less fortunate” and asked them if they would like to cook and serve a meal at an inner-city soup kitchen.

The kids were less than delighted at the prospect.

Finally, after a fair amount of cajoling, nagging (and probably tears on my mother’s part), the group decided to play along. They were serving a meal at the soup kitchen when a fight broke out between two of the diners. Things escalated when one of the combatants ran into the kitchen to find a knife. (The youth group girls huddled in a corner, crying hysterically, while all this commotion was taking place.)

After the day’s disastrous events, my mom asked my understandably-traumatized sister (who was in the youth group, and is now a very socially-conscious and kind-hearted adult) if she had learned anything that day. My sister nodded and said:

“I learned that I don’t like poor people.”

This story came to mind when I read a recent post by Pastor Pat Spelling over at Shades of Gray. She posted on well-intended “short term missions”, including a provocative article from the Washington Post entitled “Churches Retool Mission Trips“. The points that both Pastor Spelling and the Post article are good ones:

1. Short-term mission trips are often poorly conceived and executed by those organizing the trips. Youth groups are sent to “help” a community with no real understanding of that community’s needs or culture: In some cases the “help” offered is simply redundant (such as multiple groups painting and repainting a church over the course of the summer), but in other cases it is actually harmful to the community (i.e. putting local laborers out of work).

2. These trips are not cost effective: Participants are usually required to “raise funds” from church members, family and to cover their expenses, which can easy run from $1000-$3000. Thus a ten person youth group (plus chaperones) could easily spend $12 ,000-$30,000 to build a house or a hospital that, in the economy of many third-world countries, might only cost $2000-$10,000 if local labor was employed.

3. Most disturbing of all, however, is the attitude among many that even if such trips aren’t particularly cost-effective (or even necessary to those being “served”) they are justified because, after all, middle -class teenagers need to “learn” about their privilege and about the “less fortunate”. (Apparently the “less fortunate” are to endure these assaults upon their communities and local economies so that privileged youths can get an education. In other words, the poor get to be used as object lessons so that the privileged can engage in a course of self-improvement.)

Um, I don’t think so.

When it comes to serious, systemic poverty (and not just in the third world), “short-term” anything is pointless. Poverty, true poverty, is extremely complex, and people don’t “get it” just by going out and building a house or serving a meal at a homeless shelter. At best, kids on these trips are going to come back with “an appreciation of what they have” (but no real understanding of why they have it or how they got it or why other folks don’t have it), at worst, with attitudes like my sister’s after her visit to the soup kitchen.

If young people truly want to address poverty and its ills, they need to understand that going on an expensive working vacation is not the answer. Ironically, they would do best to take advantage of their privilege and the benefits that it affords them: They could use their social networks to raise cash, not for mission trips, but to send directly to long-standing aid agencies in third world countries. They could go to university to become doctors and nurses and engineers and agriculturalists and then visit a third world country to teach, train, solve problems, and generally do the sorts of specialist work that is actually needed. They could also work to transform social and foreign policy in their own countries or house and befriend students from third-world countries who are trying to bring new knowledge and skills back home.

But none of the above strategies sound as good as “My Johnny just went on a mission trip to help those poor people in South America!”. I just wonder what the “less fortunate” being “missioned” have to say to their friends after each group leaves for home.

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