Should Churches Abandon Travel-Intensive Short-Term Missions in Favor of Local Projects?
Illustration by Amanda DuffyShould Churches Abandon Travel-Intensive Short-Term Missions in Favor of Local Projects?
Abandon Projects
Brian M. Howell is associate professor of anthropology at Wheaton College and author of Short-Term Mission: An Ethnography of Christian Travel Narrative and Experience (IVP Academic, forthcoming).
Churches should not abandon travel, but we should abandon most travel-intensive "projects."
It is good for American Christians to visit Christians in other places to witness what God is doing around the world. It is good for American Christians to visit missionaries, learning firsthand about their work and how to pray for them. The opportunity to learn from all our brothers and sisters living and working around the world is a gift many of us have received due to our relative wealth, access to technology, and leisure time. We should accept this blessing gratefully.
When it comes to projects, however, the good we do is often outweighed by the warped impressions left on both sides. For example, sending high-school students to do construction in front of poor, underemployed adults furthers the humiliation of the poor as they see wealthy North Americans casually doing jobs they would happily accept, while it reinforces the views of many American Christians that poor people cannot help themselves.
Our projects further promote views of poor people as lacking personal agency, as short-term mission teams often spend most of their time interacting with children conducting Vacation Bible School or teaching games. Teams often leave with the impression that the whole country is childlike, vulnerable, and in need of our care. When short-termers do interact with adults, it is often in unequal relationships—cooks, drivers, and other employees of the American missionaries—where true fellowship is difficult. Those ministries run by nationals who host short-term teams frequently adapt their ministry to meet the needs of visiting foreigners first and local residents second. These hosts are reluctant to ask too much of powerful guests or to confront their visitors' views and risk losing material benefits.
Unequal social relationships and a skewed view of poor communities can affect service in the United States too. However, there is a reason why many churches have little problem getting 25 youths to sign up for a project in South Africa, while the trip to a nearby urban community goes unfilled. The dynamics of international travel make it easier to imagine that we in the West have no responsibility for the problems "over there" beyond our occasional charity. We can feel good about our service without being confronted by our responsibility for the injustices we witness. In nearby urban centers, or a local apartment complex, we are more likely to be confronted with the reality that our lives are bound up with theirs, and we cannot so easily turn away from what is going on in front of us when it gets difficult or inconvenient.
We should not abandon international travel, nor should we be less generous with our resources. But if we would spend less time building walls, painting houses, or digging ditches, we could spend our time learning how the problems there are part of the problems here. These trips should serve to teach us how we are bound up together, in our economics, in our politics, and, most importantly, in Christ.
Set Objectives First
David Livermore is president of the Cultural Intelligence Center and author of several books on cultural intelligence and global leadership, including What Can I Do: Making a Global Difference Right Where You Are (Zondervan, 2011).
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Bill Snyder
In reading the article I felt the premise was not based upon evangelism but on helps. In other words, can short term trips because the teams really don't help third world status. This is only part of the reason for doing short term trips. Secondly, there wasn't much mention about the primary benefit of short term trips: participant's hearts. If the short termer is using church money to get a free round the world trip, cut it. But when people like myself visit friends working in a dicey country, God can speak and reveal His call for us because we were willing to go. Don't cut that. Today our family serves long-term in Asia and feel privileged to see the unreached...reached because we made friends with people we would NEVER have met because we went for a visit.
Dwight DeLong
We work in Romania, caring for children in the hospitals and working in poor villages. In our experience, these large groups of teens are of little benefit. Since 2003 we have seen at least 300 of these teens from America, and not one dollar has actually been spent on the children they show on their web sites. It is deceptive for them to post photos of the teens with poor and abandoned children but give nothing to actually provide help. They claim large numbers of converts, but I have not seen that either. And not one of the short term missionaries has ever come back to work long term, so if the point is to expose them to the need, it’s not working. They spend huge amounts of money on themselves to boast they have been to Romania. Yes, there are many groups we work with who provide true help and are a joy. But these large groups of teens are far too focused on themselves and what is in it for them to be of any true help.
Drew Brown
This is an excellent article that will give pastors and leaders many options as they consider their missions involvement this year. Having just returned from a short-term trip myself, this topic is fresh on my mind. I am on the pastoral staff at a church and have often wondered about the long-term effectiveness of short-term trips. One question on response: What about the gospel? This article leans heavily on the socio-cultural aspects of the short-term mission trip, and neglect the evangelistic aspect of it. Their thoughts cut both ways: yes, short-termers must be mindful of the socio-cultural, but what of the gospel that cuts across the socio-cultural (Gal 3:27-28)? A balanced perspective would not neglect one for the other. On a more personal note, I spent this past week praying and sharing the gospel with patients at a missionary hospital in Honduras. (Ours was partly a team of surgeons.) Each patient verbally expressed their gratitude to God and to us for our ministry.