An Invitation to Expanding Partnership in God’s Mission, the results of a consultation held in January 2008, and…

Doing Mission in Christ’s Way, created in a workshop held in October 2009.

I think you will find them both very thought provoking, especially helpful for local church mission committee’s and groups preparing to for an overseas mission trip.

October 2, 2008

‘An enormous phenomenon’

by Pat Cole
Associate, Mission Communications

LOUISVILLE — Short-term mission trips are “an enormous phenomenon” and “central to the ministry practices of a high proportion” of Christians in the United States, according to a seminary professor who studies the trend.

In a recent address to leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission networks, Robert Priest, professor of mission and intercultural studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL, said it is likely that more than 2 million U.S. Christians travel abroad each year on short-term mission trips. 

Participation in international mission trips is particularly high among younger people, he said. In a study of students in 60 U.S. seminaries, Priest found that 48 percent of seminarians had been on an international short-term mission trip and that 67 percent of PC(USA) seminarians had a short-term mission experience abroad. A survey of students in Christian liberal arts colleges revealed that 47 percent of them had traveled internationally on short-term mission trips.

A total of 44 leaders from 31 PC(USA) mission networks  gathered in Louisville Sept. 25–27 to share best practices and participate in training opportunities.  PC(USA) mission networks are composed of Presbyterians who come together around a particular country, region, or other mission interest.

Short-term mission experiences, Priest said, can potentially broaden the horizons of participants, deepen their faith, and contribute to the well-being of communities in developing countries. 

However, such positive outcomes from these trips, which usually last fewer than 14 days, are not automatic.  In fact, Priest noted, many participants fail to try to understand the cultures they visit, can cite little evidence of spiritual transformation as a result of their trips, and engage in giving practices that create unhealthy dependencies.

Nevertheless, in his research with pastors in Peru and Thailand, Priest has found that most pastors in those countries who worked with short-term groups had positive appraisals of them. On a trip to one Latin American city Priest witnessed a large short-term mission team help construct a Protestant church building and staff a medical clinic that offered a variety of services.

“I couldn’t find anybody in that town who thought it (the mission trip group) was anything but wonderful,” Priest said.  The economically poor townspeople appreciated their services and saw that the host congregation had connections with affluent foreigners. Those relationships, he said, raised the esteem of the congregation in the predominately Catholic town.

However, many mission pastors and youth pastors acknowledge that the strategic contributions of short-term mission trips to overseas communities are of limited value, Priest said.  They justify short-term mission, he explained, “in terms of how it positively benefits the sending congregation or youth program.”

As the short-term mission trips began to grow in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, Priest said some leaders justified the trips by hoping the experience would nudge participants toward long-term mission service or make them more likely to support long-term mission personnel  financially. Research has shown that has not been the case, he said.

“Today the results are clear that the explosion of short-term mission trips coincided with a plateauing and decline of career missions and that short-term mission expansion reflected a redirection of resources away from career missions rather than an increase in the amount given in support of career missions,” Priest said.

Priest, who has interviewed many short-term mission participants, said they experience spiritual transformation more often when they combine international service with work in economically poor communities near their homes.  Some short-term mission participants have built relationships with recent immigrants from countries they visited on mission trips.

Yet a deepened involvement with economically poor people and lifestyle changes are not likely to happen “if you come from a church that doesn’t put justice issues front and center,” he said.

In his interviews with mission trip participants, Priest has found that many people struggle to identify ways they have changed as a result of their mission experience.

Priest recounted the story of one short-term mission trip participant who was eager to be interviewed about his experience. When questioned how he had changed as a result of the trip, the man could only say that he is now a more grateful person.

“Is gratefulness an adequate response to human need?” Priest asked.

These are my reflections on Missiology, 34/4 (2006), a special issue devoted to Short-Term Missions (STM’s). The journal is published in Wilmore, Kentucky, and the guest editor of this issue is Robert J. Priest. I was sent a copy by the PCUSA in Louisville, and reflections were invited. I will share these reflections also with my Brazilian church and with Joe Small, both for reasons that will emerge in this paper.

The strong concerns about the all-too-vigorous STM movement did not exactly come out of the blue. Fairly recently I received, from María Arroyo, an eloquent paper (or grito) on the subject by Dennis Smith (By the way, Dennis has had significant professional contact with Leonildo Silveira Campos, a sociologist of religion who belongs to my Brazilian church). Brazil is blessed by distance and high air fares and has thus been spared the tidal wave of STM’s with which Central America and the Caribbean have had to deal. Nevertheless, we do have experience here with mission visits. Personally, I find these articles painful to read in places, because I was part tourist and part STM myself before, at the age of 45, I became a long-term missionary. This part of my history has made me a bit more patient with mission visitors, perhaps, than some of the other long-term missionaries are.

My first recommendation: I hope that, in addition to sending this issue of Missiology to PCUSA missionaries, you have sent it to partner churches or at least some of them. Certainly our Brazilian partners are partners in missiology as well as partners in mission. Also, the article by Edwin Zehner recommends a greater role for partner churches in supervising STM’s, and it seems pointless to debate this without input from partner churches. I will return to the issue below.

Second recommendation: Educate our people about the missionary churches. At my missionary orientation at Stony Point 20 years ago, Marcia Borgeson played a sort of group game with us, calling on each of us to describe our idea of a missionary. Is a missionary somebody wearing a pith helmet? Well, instead of having an idea of a missionary person, I had an idea of a missionary church. That was because, mostly on a lark, I had spent a year at the Waldensian seminary in Italy. To me, a missionary church is a church that sings certain hymns and where the preacher likes to preach on certain favorite texts. For the Waldensians, that seemed to be the missionary instruction in Matthew 10. And I was sent to a missionary church, the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil, which sings different missionary hymns and preaches different missionary texts, but which has a mission dynamic that is not always present in the PCUSA. What I’m thinking of is a lot to ask, since PCUSA people don’t learn much church history, let alone mission history. I wonder if 02% of our people know who Francis Mackemie was, and what proportion of them know that Mackemie was sent to our shores by the Presbytery of Donegal. A terribly small percentage of them must know about the Waldensians (Presbyterians under another name) who planted churches all over Italy without foreign personnel, or about the Brazilian Presbyterians who walked out of a Synod meeting in 1903, over one of the issues of the day on which they had taken a conservative position-and have kept up a missionary spirit ever since. Our people need to know more church history, and that includes mission history.

Our people are probably sensing inarticulately that the flame of Christian faith is burning brightly in some places in the world, and that their back yard isn’t one of them. Who wouldn’t want to be in touch with that? If people were clearer about wanting that, then they might start to open up to alternatives to the work camp as a way of achieving it. As for the receiving church as supervisor of STM’s, each church must speak for itself. What I can say is that (1) asking the receiving church for active supervision is to make a demand on the receiving church, and (2) once the receiving church calls the shots, the experience may not correspond to the visitor’s expectations. Living through that is part of what it’s all about, but there does need to be a Plan B for a very young person overseas who just can’t deal with it (We’ve had one).

The recommendation in one of the articles that people go for an experience rather than a mission looks good from receiving end of these visits, but it can’t fly without a good deal of baggage that just isn’t there in the U.S. church. But that’s where a long term goal has to be.

On the fund-raising matter, I am pessimistic. If there is to be funding in the future for anything other than STM’s and church planting, then education about the missionary churches will need to be part of the mix. Managing STM’s in a different way probably won’t cut it. Reason: there are people out there who would have liked to be missionaries but couldn’t, so they sent their money for missions. Now they can go themselves. Only the perception of missions as something bigger than the individual missionary, even the career missionary, can possibly do it.

Third, while taking seriously the alternative “models” of what these people are doing on a two-week trip, I wouldn’t take the word “mission” out of it. If my recommendation number two were successfully implemented, the two week trip would be understood as the privilege of participating in something bigger, which my 20 year career also is. Of all the mission visitors I have been aware of in São Paulo, the most demanding and least adaptable have been the ones who had the weakest identification with mission traditions.

Fourth, while local partnerships (Presbytery to Presbytery and church to church) present many of the same problems as the STM trips do and some more besides, they seem preferable to the two week visit that is complete in itself and has no follow-through in the subsequent life of its participants.

Fifth, the PCUSA does receive STM’s and there is room for more. The Mission to the U.S. program has been important. It helped to create a reciprocity of which my coming to Brazil was a part. It has been a setting for dialogue among Christians from different countries, and significant dialogue seems to be missing from the STM’s as described in the journal articles. At another level, a Brazilian seminarian once approached me after a STM group had just painted a wall at one of our seminaries. He wondered if he could go and paint something in the U.S. He is a mercurial young man, and I don’t know how serious he was. But I was serious in saying that it probably wouldn’t be terribly hard to arrange; we could probably find a PCUSA church that does Habitat for Humanity work and could receive a summer visitor. This particular young man, however, wound up making an STM within Brazil, to the Amazon region.

Sixth, the question of tourism calls for research and reflection in its own right. While Miriam Adeney’s recommendation seems superficial (Be considerate to the maid), the importance of the question is beyond question, and so is the resemblance of the STM and other forms of tourism. Two political magazines that Linnis and I receive, the Progressive and the Nation, have come down differently, although these two magazines carry many of the same authors and come down on the same side of most issues. The Progressive, more than once, has given voice to native Hawaiians who say, “Don’t come here on vacation and then try to show solidarity with us. Show your solidarity by staying home.” Hawaii, going by what they say, is saturated with outsiders, not to mention their golf courses. I ran that past a student from the Dominican Republic, who said, “Lógico” (“Of course”). Going by what she says, the Dominican Republic has a thoroughly toxic tourist industry that buys very little locally and impedes fishermen’s access to the ocean. The Nation said once that instead of burdening local populations with one’s search for an educational experience, one should just enjoy the beach and spend money, on which the local population may depend. Somebody, somewhere, must be working on this.

Seventh, David M. Johnstone’s views on follow-through after an STM look good to me, as far as I can tell without being a professional educator. Essential. I add, from my own life: Before I became a long-term missionary, I had significant cross-cultural experiences, but they were not in a mission context. They were in an educational context-and I got an education.

Eighth, none of the articles even mentioned music. Church visitors are sometimes asked to sing. You can say that’s old fashioned (but work camps go back a long time, too) and that it’s a superficial form of communication (but painting a wall is superficial communication, too). In Brazil, and probably in some other missionary countries, the singing is taken seriously. This gives some seriousness to the idea of young people sharing each other’s music. Also, if you have any rudiments at all of a language, the words to a praise chorus projected on a wall can often be followed. The next time STM’s are studied, the role of music in them might be worth a look.

Technorati: Short Term Mission Trips, Partnership in Mission, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), mission partnerships,

Frame the experience less on an emphasis on the “great commission” and more on Biblical texts which talk about servanthood. By engaging in projects of manual labor in such a manner that we are serving in a subordinate position, traditional roles can be reversed, stereotypes can be corrected, and humility can help overcome our ingrained spirit of triumphalism (Birth). We go and work as servants and followers, not as leaders.

I do not think it is necessary to de-emphasize the “great commission” since that is one of the greatest biblical motivations of many STMs. Rather, one simply needs to teach the “great commission” properly; in other words, remember that making disciples of Jesus (Matthew 28.19) and “teaching them all that I have commanded” (Matthew 28.20) entails being sent as Jesus himself was sent (John 20.21), above all, as a servant (John 12.26; Romans 1.1). Sherron and I are saying the same thing here. I’m simply clarifying that the “great commission” does not need to be emphasized any less in the process.

Sherron suggests two lists, one which presents problems or cautions and the other which offers ways to correct some of them. Here go Sherron’s reflections based on an article by Robert Priest in the periodical, Missiology, 34/4 (2006), a special issue devoted to Short-Term Missions (STM’s):

Yellow Lights for Reflection: Concerns and Cautions with STM groups and workers:
Questions for STM groups and workers to ask themselves in reflecting on their experience

“It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.”
Proverbs 19:2 (NIV)

1. Does (did) the experience increase our natural ethnocentrism or decrease it? “When individuals internalize the culturally contingent values of their own social group and develop a preferential loyalty to their own ‘in-group’ and its culture, along with negative opinions and attitudes towards out-groups-those from other ethnicities-this ethnocentrism is a contributor to inter-ethnic prejudice and conflict. Does the enormous phenomenon of STM help American Christians to become less ethnocentric?” (Priest, et al:443-444).
2. Do we follow touristic patterns and ethics in STMs? One important aspect of this is the way we support the local economy and community. What do we take with us? Adeney asks: Who gains and who loses? Another is the question of local ownership and sustainability of their future. Tourists aren’t concerned with these issues. Rodrigo Maslucan, a pastor from our partner church in Peru, has written a paper on STMs and questions them when the motive is more tourism than mission or service. Do we go to see and enjoy exotic places or to authentically and respectfully engage the local people? Are our motives altruistic or status-seeking? Travel gives status.
3. Do STMs contribute to the increase or decrease of long-term mission personnel and support for mission? “It is possible that more money is now supporting short-term missionaries than career missionaries” (Priest, et al:434). STMs divert resources from support of career missionaries. If we could calculate all the STM groups from the PC(USA), this is probably true. People lament that the number of our denominational mission workers continues to diminish. The grassroots movement of direct involvement and STMs is irreversible and not bad, but it probably does affect the total number of long-term missionaries we have. As Priest comments, the cure can become part of the cause of funding problems which displace long-term personnel. Obviously, the PC(USA) needs and wants both short-term and long-term mission workers.
4. Does (did) the experience decrease materialism and produce lives of simplicity and sacrificial stewardship in the STM participants or temporarily increase our “gratefulness”?
5. In terms of “status-bridging” (vertical connections across marked differentials of wealth and power), does STM “serve the interest of the privileged rather than the marginalized”? (Priest, et al:442). The poverty/wealth gap usually shocks U.S. Christians. How do we deal with this?
6. Does (did) the experience increase our interethnic social relationships at home? The majority of STMs come to Latin America. How does this affect our interaction and treatment of the Latinos/as in the U.S. (who number is greater than the total of 7 countries in Latin America.) How do our partnerships in Africa and Asia affect our relationships with Afro-Americans and Asian-Americans at home?
7. We usually say that our STM experiences are transformational for those who go. Is our learning or transformation long-lasting? “The problem comes when the ‘raising of awareness’ results in no action and people only feel connected to mission, or that they have performed their duty but continue in normal cultural patterns without a nod toward new directions for service and mission” (Linhart:454).
8. Do we truly get to know and understand the people we meet and see or do we simply construct stereotypes? Here the advantages of language skills and long-term church-to-church or presbytery-to-presbytery partnerships is obvious.
9. While STMers want to get close to people, “trying to achieve predefined goals quickly-ten houses built-can trample on culture. Individual drive can become more important than respect for local elders, courtesies, or time frames. Projects can become more important than people” (Adeney:468).
10. Were there missed opportunities to build stronger relationships through more contact and an attitude of openness and missed opportunities for authentic mutuality of experience? (Van Beek)
11. How do our hosts perceive and evaluate American spirituality? We may not be prepared to hear the answer to this provocative question. Birth suggests that it might change the focus of our work from evangelistic pretensions to humble service.
12. Have we heard and heeded the “the missing voices”? Have we heard the opinions, perspectives, evaluations, and suggestions of our host churches? Zehner records some of those voices which speak of “Americans’ rush to take action without considering the long-term effects on local churches” and say that “Americans seem unaware of the cultural influences in their own readings and perceptions of the Bible” (510). He further cites “the missing voices” which speak of cross-cultural insensitivity, arrogance, domineering attitudes, overstepping boundaries. “North Americans tend to ’step in and take control’” (511). Rodrigo Maslucan is one of the “the missing voices” who presented his paper on STMs to the Peru Mission Network. I know that the PC(USA) took intentional steps to hear the voices of leaders from our partner churches in the preparation of the “Gathering for God’s Future” approved by the General Assembly in 2003.

Conditions Which Foster Positive Outcomes and Help Do STM “The Right Way”

In his “Introduction to Theme Issue on Short-Term Missions,” Robert J. Priest mentions some of the problematic issues I (Sherron) have listed above, then he states that “positive outcomes are possible if done in the right way. By itself, for example, a short-term missions experience is as likely to increase ethnocentrism as decrease it. But when accompanied by appropriate coaching and culture learning exercises, then ethnocentrism decreases” (427). He goes on to say that in the first article he and others provide research on “the conditions which foster positive or negative outcomes.”

In my second list I (Sherron) would like to list some of the “the conditions which foster positive outcomes” which I gleaned from the articles in Missiology. However, I would like to preface it with some comments about the PC(USA). The policy statement “Presbyterians Do Mission in Partnership” which was adopted by the General Assembly in 2003 concisely points to “another way” of engaging in mission. If we follow this policy, I think we are on the way to avoiding most of the problems in my first list. The greater context for this policy resides in the fact that for over 150 years the PC(USA) has developed and nurtured long-term relationships which have become mutual church-to-church relationships with 163 churches around the world. World Mission Area Coordinators, Regional Liaisons, and long-term mission personnel cultivate and maintain these partnerships. Presbytery-to-presbytery and congregation-to-congregation partnerships and mission networks fit into and reenforce the denominational partnerships. A good number of long-term mission workers on the field are trained to orient and receive STMs. Mission to the U.S.A. brings the voices of our partner churches to the U.S. to teach us. Thanks to our partnership policy and practice, as well as our educational materials, such as When God’s People Travel Together, Vol. I, II, and III (available through Presbyterian Distribution Service) and my book Called as Partners in Christ’s Service: the Practice of God’s Mission (Geneva Press), the PC(USA) is able to help congregations understand and practice partnership, which mitigates many of the problematic aspects in my former list.

Conditions Which Foster Positive Outcomes and Help Do STM “The Right Way”

1. Frame the experience less on an emphasis on the “great commission” and more on Biblical texts which talk about servanthood. By engaging in projects of manual labor in such a manner that we are serving in a subordinate position, traditional roles can be reversed, stereotypes can be corrected, and humility can help overcome our ingrained spirit of triumphalism (Birth). We go and work as servants and followers, not as leaders.
2. This role reversal implies that the “receiving local church must be respected as a source of authority and as the key to any long-term ministry gains” (Priest on Zehner: 429). The initiative, invitation, and leadership of the “receiving local church” are essential.
3. Engage in profound and honest reflections, using questions like those I pose in my first list, which “call into question participants’ taken-for-granted assumptions and habits” and consequently “create dissonance” which Johnstone suggests is the path to learning and transformation (429). Leaders must not only evoke these reflections and dissonance, but also model new habits of thought and practice. Leadership is essential.
4. Be intentional concerning stewardship outcomes. I think we need to be open and define ways that STMs can help the overall denominational mission program rather than undercut it.
5. Hold training sessions to learn about culture, the national churches and members, and God’s perspective on race, differences, and world mission.
6. “Short-term teams do best when they work under long-term missionaries or locals, and when they are part of a multi-year series of exchanges” (Adeney:468). The World Mission program unit of PC(USA) tries to follow and facilitate this approach.
7. View short-term missionaries as “trainee” subordinates rather than as “helpers” and put their supervision and spiritual formation directly in the hands of the overseas churches they serve making the partner church the teacher. Here Zehner goes a step farther than Adeney. The interesting suggestion here is the image of “trainee.” I have suggested in an earlier article that we need to rethink our images and roles as mission workers, both short-term and long-term. Desire more “culturally egalitarian forms of work and relationships” (Zehner:512). Obviously, as Arch Woodruff suggests, we need to have these missiological discussions with our partner churches and negotiate with them the role they want to play. I would add to this the importance of having invitations from partner churches and that they should be the ones to define the nature of the “work” to be done. The national leadership Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil has asked to be included as the first ones who receive groups and give them orientation to the country and church and are accompanying groups who visit them. Their orientation includes a brief history of their denomination. The “trainee” image perhaps is not the best one for typical STM groups who stay 7-14 days. It works better with our Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program which takes youth to sites for a year and places them under local programs and churches. Perhaps the best image for groups is that of “learners.”
8. Take the time to acknowledge and articulate what you learned from the host culture in their presence, so they will not feel the learning is merely one-sided. You may have learned a lot from the host culture and church, but they may not know that.
9. Be intentional about reflection and internalization (processing) after a STM experience with a trained facilitator.

Technorati: Short Term Mission Trips, Partnership in Mission, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Great Commissionmission partnerships,

Do No Harm
A Contemporary Reflection on Missiology

Here’s the bottom line: These days most local churches have decided that mission is too important to be left to their denomination. Now, most churches keep the money that used to finance denominational mission efforts and send it directly to their mission partners, or they go and do mission themselves.

That means that your mission committees have become, in effect, Boards of Local, National and World Mission.

What does this mean on the ground? Maribel, my wife, and I are PC(USA) missionaries. That means we work for you. Our salary is paid by our denomination. If you don’t send mission money to the PC(USA), we’ve got a problem! I’ve been a PC(USA) missionary for 29 years. Our current term ended in October, 2006. Cedepca, the PC(USA) mission partner we work for, requested that we be reappointed for a new 5-year assignment. In August we heard from Louisville that we would only be reappointed for 20 months. The reason? Money.

And not just us: mission co-workers have been told that our denomination can’t in good faith guarantee our positions beyond June, 2008. This despite the fact that last year Presbyterians here in the U.S. gave more money to mission than ever before in history, more than 2 billion dollars; but not necessarily to the PC(USA) or, when they do, they designate their funds to their favorite projects instead of to supporting the general mission of the church.

So how we do and fund mission as Presbyterians has got my undivided attention. This morning, now that your have your very own Board of Local, National and Global Mission, my job is to share with you a few things I’ve learned in 29 years of mission service.

Most importantly, I’ve learned that mission, done in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, should do no harm. In the course of human history, untold millions have been brutalized and murdered in the name of religion. So “Do no harm” is a good place to start!

Every day 10 direct flights arrive in Guatemala City from the United States. Many of those flights bear at least one mission team from US churches. You’ll recognize them by their brightly colored, uniform T-shirts and energetic grins. These are good people that sincerely want to do good. Most of these good folks bring along invisible baggage they don’t even know they have. That invisible baggage is filled with power. It includes a credit card, health insurance, skills that are currently deemed marketable by the global economy, a retirement plan, and a pretty good idea where their next meal is coming from.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they are going to build an orphanage in a Mayan town like Santiago Atitlán. There, they will be surrounded by people whose cultural heritage is 10,000 years old. These people know things about corn and kindness and herbal remedies that our grandmothers may have known, but that most of us have long forgotten.

Over 500 years Mayans have learned to tell outsiders what they want to hear. You want to build an orphanage? Adelante. But the Mayans will wonder why so many Guatemalan babies are now available for adoption. It didn’t used to be that way. Not even in the worst years of the war. And they will wonder who benefits from the $25,000 or more paid to Guatemalan lawyers for the paperwork.

Do no harm.

You want horror stories. I’ll settle for three. Newspapers recently carried the story of a US minister who was retiring to work with a Mayan community in Guatemala. He is uniquely skilled, the story says, to work toward such noble ends as reconciliation and empowerment. But first, he will spend 3 months learning Spanish.

I know this community. A good friend, a PC(USA) missionary, before he died spent more than a decade working to earn the right to be trusted by this community and working to learn their language. Their language is not Spanish. Spanish is the language of commerce, of their oppressor, but not the language of their hearts.

Language is the house in which we live. The more languages one speaks, the more spaces one has in which to exercise hospitality, in which to create meaning in common with others.

Bottom line? 3 months of Spanish doesn’t cut it.

Do no harm.

Horror story number 2: US medical teams are driven from the airport directly to the hotel. They unpack and go directly to the hospital. They spend their 5 days shuttling between hospital and hotel and get in a round of golf before they return home. They are skilled and dedicated specialists; they do good work and we are grateful. But they never arrived in Guatemala.

This particular group found that they were running out of patients. So their leaders began to use their personal networks to find more people in need. They found friends in the Guatemalan Army. Medical teams could be flown by helicopter to a regional army base where they could treat people in need.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Guatemala’s army has yet to be held accountable for its role in the genocide committed against the Maya in 36 years of civil war. Today, important sectors of the officer corps are deeply involved in drug trafficking and operating renegade paramilitary forces. And why does the Guatemalan Army, in peace time, have resources to spend on transporting gringo doctors when the local government health clinic is unstocked and understaffed?

This particular medical mission was filmed and photographed by Army PR officers; they were given a half-page in the government’s monthly newspaper supplement.

Do no harm.

Horror story number 3? It’s about the big suburban church that began to work with a rural Mayan presbytery in Guatemala, a building was built, scholarships were sent, transparency was a problem, some people on both sides ended up being hurt. But the church decided that they needed to keep sending money because people in the pews were now excited about their mission in rural Guatemala.

The pastor decided the Guatemalans needed to be trained in Presbyterian polity. She invested significant resources in preparing lessons based on the Book of Order of the PC(USA). Her intuition was correct: the book of order of the Guatemalan Presbyterian Church doesn’t have much to do with life on the ground in a rural Mayan presbytery. She sent the lessons to a young adult volunteer working in the community, a fine, enthusiastic person, but with limited language skills, and no theological training, just getting to know the culture. Out of respect, people came to the classes. But nothing changed. And the money keeps coming. The pastor feels frustrated, the young adult volunteer feels frustrated, local folks feel bemused. Life goes on.

Do no harm.

Horror stories? Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, the Yucatán Peninsula, Honduras and so many other countries are littered with buildings built by mission groups, buildings that now stand empty or have been hijacked by individuals for their personal benefit.

Mission groups have become a growth industry in Guatemala. And why not? If Boards of Local, National and International Mission want to give God’s money away, why not stand in line?

Do no harm.

Whose mission is this we’re talking about? Not the mission of your local church. Not the mission of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Not even the mission of the Christian church. It is the mission of God.

Let’s run that by one more time.

It is the mission of God.

So where do we go from here. Do I propose paralysis? No, a pause perhaps, to evaluate, to reconsider, but paralysis is not an option in today’s world.

As Presbyterians we do mission in partnership. Let’s unpack that concept. For a long time mission groups have preferred to translate “partnership” using the Spanish word compañerismo, that is “companionship.” But “partnership” is a word from the world of business. Compañerismo doesn’t quite fit the bill. “Companionship” is about warm fuzzies. Lord knows in our brutal world we desperately need warm fuzzies, but in mission relationships, starting with warm fuzzies often leads to benign paternalism and dependency. Dependency always trumps dignity.

“We are partners – Somos socios” is not the same as “we are companions – Somos compañeros.” You might have lots of companions with whom you would never form a partnership. I suspect you wouldn’t form a partnership with someone who has nothing to bring to the table.

What do Guatemalans bring to the table? Under the right circumstances, if the space is cultivated with care, they can bring their way of being in this world; their sense of family; the immediacy of history; the immediacy of the Spirit of God in our midst.

What can Guatemalans bring to the table?

How clearly I remember an early experience of Guatemalan hospitality. This must have been in 1979 or 1980. I don’t remember now why I needed to be at this particular place at this particular time, but it was morning, chilly in the shade. I was in an immaculately swept dirt courtyard between the sleeping hut and the cooking hut, waiting for the man of the house to arrive from his cornfield. I sat and observed quietly, enriched and humbled by the harsh beauty of a daily existence very different from mine. In a little while, the woman of the house brought me a boiled egg. There weren’t many chickens around, but a few. It was clear to me that at this particular time in this particular place, this egg was the very best she had, given gladly and freely. It was a Eucharistic moment; I received the boiled egg with thanks

What Guatemalans can bring to the table is the Gospel: “The Son of Humankind came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

What Guatemalans can bring to the table is the presence of God. The palpable presence of God.

I have listened to your stories and to the stories of many groups that have traveled to Guatemala. I celebrate with you how your experiences in Guatemala and other parts of the world have been experiences of conversion and transformation.

Sometimes we earn the right to give as well as to receive. There is the story of a group of churches here in the U.S. that formed a partnership with a Presbytery in Guatemala; a part of Guatemala famous as our Wild West, with pistol-packing cowboys and deeply ingrained racism against Mayans. This has not been a partnership based on gringos building things or giving money.

Over time, as relationships developed, the gringos expressed the desire to have a series of retreats on Mayan spirituality; this was a part of Guatemala they did not know and that piqued their curiosity. For most of the Guatemalans, Mayan spirituality was no more than pagan witchcraft. But these Guatemalan church leaders understood that they had never sat down and talked to a Mayan Christian about their way of being in this world. Together the groups asked a Mayan Presbyterian pastor deeply rooted in the spiritual traditions of his own people to lead this time of sharing.

These retreats, I understand, have been a gift, a grace-filled space that has given birth to tolerance and understanding in those who have participated. It wouldn’t have happened without the gringos taking the time to build trust; it wouldn’t have happened without a group of Guatemalans who were willing to take a risk and challenge cultural barriers that have been in place for hundreds of years.

Then there’s the story of the U.S. Presbytery delegation that came to meet with the leadership of a Mayan Presbytery in Guatemala. Most of the U.S. delegation were women and several of the women were pastors. The men who run the Guatemalan church are still struggling with the issue of the ordination of women. Present in the room were the Executive Committee of the Guatemalan presbytery and the leaders of local Presbyterian women. The executive committee, all men, introduced themselves, they did not introduce the Guatemalan women. The U.S. delegation introduced themselves. Then the woman leading the U.S. delegation asked, “Can you please introduce us to our sisters.”

I am not saying that career missionaries working for the PC(USA) always get it right. Far from it. I am saying that we are better equipped than “Lone Rangers” to learn from our mistakes because we are accountable to both the PC(USA) and our local mission partners.

So, “Do no harm” applies to all of us. But the truth is that human relationships are always complicated. Add into the mix the issues of power and culture and money and gender and there will be harm. Both ways. Always. But there can also be the deep and transforming joy of reaching out to the other. Both ways. Always. Unless we reach out to the other, to those who are different, to those whose understanding of how and where God is present in this world differs from our own, we cannot be whole.

Bottom line: What’s broke in our part of the world you can’t fix. It’s been broken for at least 500 years. Little by little Guatemalans, empowered by the Spirit of God, are making it better. Sometimes we gringos are invited to accompany them on that journey.

That brings us to the last question this morning: The mission is God’s. But who is mission for?

Bottom line? Your mission to Guatemala is Guatemala’s gift to you. Yes, your resources are important. Yes, your technical skills are needed. But your mission is Guatemala’s gift to you.

Can you receive this gift?

The bottom line is how this gift has affected your ability to discern how and where God is present here at home? This is where you live. This is where God calls you to live out your faith every day.

As you approach the mission of God are you prepared to look into the mirror and embrace your own emptiness? Your own brokenness? Your own utter dependence on the mercy of God?

If so, come join us. The Spirit of God blows where she will. What does the Spirit require of us? To do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God.

So, now that you have your very own Board of Local, National and Global Mission, these are some things that you need to keep in mind.

Dennis A. Smith
daspascom@netzero.com

Technorati: mission partnerships, missions, Christianity

Are Short-Term Mission Trips Worth It?

by Dale Meador

Are short-term mission trips worth it? That question has again been much on my mind, inasmuch as I have just returned from one. Along with six other friends from our church, my brother Gil and son Stephen and I went for two weeks to Santarem, Brazil. In the heart of the Amazon River basin, Santarem is home to Project Amazon (PAZ), an effective church-planting ministry to which Bear Creek Church has enjoyed warm ties for five or six years. In support of PAZ’s diverse ministries (medical/dental boats, water filters, health education, Bible teaching, leadership development, and the planting of more than 300 churches, to name a few) we built 31 heavy wooden seats to be used in a leadership training facility (built by another, earlier team from BCC) in the small river village of Prainha, to which we sailed and where we assembled the seats.

Are short-term mission trips worth it? The question is reasonable and one I struggled with myself, before I had ever been on such a trip. After all, this trip was grueling and not inexpensive. Figured one way, it was 8 people x 64 hours of air travel (round-trip) each, including 18 take-offs or landings + 17 hours of boat travel (again, round-trip) to cover just 110 miles of ocean-like river. The total cost of the trip itself was about $16,000, a figure that includes the material used in the manufacture of the 31 benches (really, more like pews than benches).

I don’t think it wise to frame the worth of such a trip in monetary terms only, since the economics of the kingdom of God operate on a scale not recognized by the best secular economists. But this trip was a bargain any way you look at it, economically and for all the reasons cited below, listed in no particular order. It took me only one hour or so to come up with this list of reasons why I believe that such trips are well worth it. With reflection, more reasons might become clear. I’m not speaking here for all short-term mission trips, since some may not be well-conceived or may be little more than holidays for adults or teens. But of the trips with which I have had the privilege of being involved – I can say that they:

1. Stretch us relationally, helping us to experience the bond known only to brothers and sisters in Christ, even among people from vastly different backgrounds.
2. Help us to arrest our selfishness, as we go and meet and serve and bless others.
3. Retard our nearly insatiable appetite for material wealth, meeting people whose only possessions are the roof over their head and the pots in which they cook.
4. Underscore the worth of language study for the communication of the gospel, and for communication of any kind. Many people spend two or three years learning a language in school, and for what?
5. Dramatize the challenge of the Great Commission of Jesus, called “great” not for its quality but for its scope.
6. Improve the sending congregation’s sense of purpose.
7. Graphically compare the result of dollars spent on things that yield eternal results to dollars spent on things that don’t last.
8. Make possible long-term, intimate relationships with believers from other cultures, relationships unlikely without face-to-face interaction.
9. Plant the seeds of lifelong concern for world missions among participants.
10. Insure that monies given and projects undertaken are well spent or conceived.
11. Protect against small-mindedness; give us reason to recognize, challenge, and abandon prejudices and stereotypes.
12. Shrink our own challenges and problems down to size and putting our lives in global or kingdom perspective.
13. Build an appreciation for the work and calling of long-term missionaries.
14. Hard work and grueling travel allow us to experience a tiny bit of what it means to assume inconveniences for the sake of Christ.
15. Demonstrate our commitment to, and partnership with, the missionaries and their mission in a manner that is encouraging to them.
16. Give us an opportunity to put our lives and livelihood on the line in faith in God, in a way not possible at home, what with the risks inherent in international travel.
17. Lend perspective on what is most important for a disciple of Jesus as we learn and practice the conventions of other cultures, softening us and making us more flexible.
18. Provide sweet opportunity to worship alongside new friends, in an unknown tongue, but with renewed affection for God and zeal for His glorification.
19. Help us to pray for the missionaries and their mission with intelligence and enthusiasm.
20. Use God’s money wisely: in this case, those 31 benches were built and delivered to a remote village at a cost of just $500 each, a price unheard of in the US. The cost of the trip amounted to approximately $135 a day, per person. Many people spend that on their vacation, accomplish nothing eternal and come home only with sunburn.
21. Trips like this challenge us with hard work in difficult conditions.
22. Allow us the privilege of living out that scripture that challenges those of us with much to share with those who have little (II Cor. 8:13-15).
23. Show us how much can be accomplished in a short period of time when our effort is intentional and our aims holy.
24. Remind us of the universality of human need and reveal the sufficiency of Christ’s remedy.
25. Show our lives to be unnecessarily complicated and artificially encumbered, keeping us from service and hindering our obedience in going and serving.
26. Build our appreciation for creature comforts we otherwise take for granted.
27. Encourage our church’s development as an outreach-oriented congregation that sends more teams, involves more people and marshals greater resources.
28. Make a team of unlikely groups of people.
29. Press us to examine our theological boundaries, evaluate critical differences with brothers and sisters of different persuasions, and then demonstrate our unity in essential matters.
30. Encourage our sacrificial giving, reminding us that God blesses us to “raise our standard of giving, not our standard of living”.
31. Challenge people, especially younger ones, to consider the possibility of answering a high call and returning to the field, perhaps as full-time missionaries.
32. Provide an invaluable opportunity for purposeful travel and work by parents and their teens.
33. Allow for the accumulation of photos, video, and artifacts that help to make real the circumstances on the field to the sending congregation.
34. Multiply the joy of the church givers and supporters who enable those sent to go, both in their sending and in their reports upon return.
35. Encourage other believers and congregations to get involved globally, seeing what one congregation is doing.

It is possible to accomplish some of these results right here at home, where there are undeniably many needs and opportunities to serve, and it is important that we stay open to meeting those needs and filling those opportunities. As the Lord leads us to make wise decisions about where to serve, we want to work on both fronts: locally and internationally.

For best global results, we simply have to go. We can say, “We should just send the money to the field and not waste it sending a bunch of north Americans over” but experience shows that people who say that both do not go and do not send the money. The best results come when we give, we send, and when we go ourselves.

Years ago, my friend Tony Sargent, a pastor from the UK whose heart beats for the third-world pastor, told me that I just had to go to the field. Bruce Wilkinson, at last year’s Promise Keeper’s Pastor’s Conference, pled with those of us in the audience to go, especially to Africa, site of the AIDS epidemic. As he put it, there is no substitute for going. And for these 35 reasons and more, he was right.

From: www.evangelizing.us and Pastor Dale

Technorati: mission partnerships, missions, Christianity

Short Term Missions in Peru: Analysis and Proposals

Introduction

Five years ago, I had the desire to meet foreign missions groups that were coming to help our church. The Evangelical Reformed Presbyterian Church of Peru (IEPRP), of which I am a pastor, began to have a relationship through personal contacts with the PC(USA) in 1997, developing in the city of Iquitos and the church of Moyobamba.

As a result of a negative experience in Iquitos, the church felt the need to communicate with the PC(USA). It was regarding a problem that happened because of inadequate missiological principles, and the inadequate guidelines that were used by some short-term missionaries sent by an NGO independent of the PC(USA).

Thanks to the invitation from Dr. Paredes, director of the Andean Amazon Evangelic Center of Missiology, to participate in a case study on short-term missions under the direction of Dr. Robert Priest, director of the doctorate on missiology of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I was able to take an up-close look at what short-term missions are, and what impact they have in Peru.

In this paper I will present a simple analysis and proposal for the church regarding short-term missions, with the end of giving a detailed contribution about what is happening in Peru and what guidelines should be followed for the future, especially with regard to the IEPRP and the PC(USA), and churches from other countries. Short-term missions are a new phenomenon in the US, Canada, and European countries. How did short-term mission originate? Why did it originate? What are the positive and negative aspects that it poses for long-term career missionaries? What are the new mission ideologies and how do we understand them in the context of globalization and post-modernity? What are the challenges posed to the churches and Theological Institutions regarding missiology that are being investigated? Because of the length of such questions, I will not be able to cover all of this. May the Lord illuminate the missiologists to investigate these mission models to help the churches with the objective of improving short-term missions, and giving a challenge to the theological institutions.

Analysis

According to my observations and the long conversations I have had with pastors, I have found that churches are moved to send short-term missionaries because of love and service, but also because of tourism and desire to learn about Peruvians.

We find an example of love and service in mission groups that look for contact with Peruvians, requesting to stay with Peruvian families from the church, instead of being comfortable in a five star hotel, serving with humility.

As an example of tourist mentality missionaries are those who don’t reach out to learn about Peruvians, take photos, make films and give money and gifts.

On the receiving church’s side there is a tendency to establish relationships with the goal of receiving money and gifts, of getting a visa, or even giving up children for adoption to those who are visiting. But there are also churches that share their knowledge and spiritual riches, that learn from each other’s capabilities and capacities.

Love, serve, and establish permanent relationships should be the reasons that drive short-term mission groups to take action and that drive the receiving churches.

Love should be sought after as if it was the Love of God; a love so great that there is no greater love, because it became real in the offering of his only son, not to dominate, not to invest in white elephants, or to get rich in the world, but to serve and to die in the most horrible torment ever known.

The object of God’s love is the sinful, rebel, lost world (nations, towns, cultures, languages). Mission groups and receiving churches that have the objective to reach the “world without Christ” have to act with love as the love that God demonstrated when he sent his only son.

Pastor Percyn Chumbe said that the short-term missions to Iquitos lacked coordination. “They were bringing their own agenda, but when we gave our opinion they were not receptive, so what kind of love is this, and what kind of service are we talking about? They were coming to do what they themselves wanted.” (July 2005) It is possible that this is not the case for most short-term missions, but it was the case in this occasion. We ask ourselves, what are the reasons that these groups did not respect the leaders or the churches. Where is the love?

Initiatives

The idea in the beginning was that short-term mission work came from “outside,” but today it goes from both sides. Career missionaries from Peru or Peruvian pastors that travel abroad are the contacts that largely participate in short-term mission in local churches, not necessarily denomination specific. When the denomination does not take initiative, or if it takes initiatives but doesn’t develop the ideas, the local church takes its own initiative. We also found that local churches and other pastors from the same denomination get together so that they can discuss with the leaders of mission groups what they know, and that way serve other local churches.

Pastor Mario Perez of the Christian Missionary Alliance in Comas, Lima asserted that “A North American missionary took the initiative to come to Peru and see the church’s well-being.” Later Pastor Perez was invited to visit the churches in the United States to present plans and projects and coordinate visits for the late couple of years for one or two months period trips.

The person that takes the initiative should invite the other party. They can dialogue, get to know each other, see the reality of the church, and share the plans, the projects, the vision and mission. In the case of Pastor Perez, the churches from the US should listen first, get to know the plans and projects of the church in Peru, which is willing to receive the short-term missionaries.

They highlight “respect and mutual consideration.” Authoritarianism should not exist on either side, especially from foreign churches that want to support a local one. It should not happen like the case of the Evangelical Presbyterian church in Iquitos where they did not listen to local leaders, but brought a canned plan and no process to hear each other out, in the local or national church.

They highlight “unity and good relationships.” The initiatives lead mission groups to sit down together, in spite of cultural differences. The language of the Spirit forges unity and good relationships. From the beginning we should work as one, Peruvians and foreigners. When I heard the testimony of Pastor Perez, I said “Halleluiah.” He said, “The initiatives are marked by respect and consideration, of unity and good relationships that glorify God, building the church, for the world to see the good testimony.”

Through this experience, we learn the importance of the PC(USA)’s promise to the Evangelical Presbyterian and Reformed Church of Peru, “as local churches or as a national church, you take the initiative and we will help you.” Furthermore, the PC(USA) carries out the Peru Network Conference inviting delegates that represent the IEPRP.

In the network meeting of April 2005 in Burlington, NC, I shared a document entitled “missiological principles and strategies of the IEPRP” with the purpose that the future short-term missions that visit the IERP be conducted within these missiological principles and mission strategies, and in this way be able to avoid negative experiences like those that occurred in Iquitos.

The “beautiful” agreement was that the missionary groups would coordinate their work with the IEPRP, with the directive in Lima and with the local church. In practice, this agreement was not accomplished as agreed. On the other hand, the IEPRP did not take the initiative to get information about the short-term missionaries. I hope that this agreement will be reevaluated in the May conference in Chicago. This will ensure that local and national churches sending missionary groups will be healthy, it is necessary to establish a mechanism of coordination from both sides.

The Beneficiaries

The beneficiaries are on both sides, but we ask ourselves, who benefits more in short-missions?

The local church benefits with the direct work of those who visit because of their capabilities or professions in construction, finishing, hygienic services, evangelism, theatre, music, leadership training, and the gifts of clothes, shoes, medicines, etc.

There are ways that “help” can be harmful to the church. If the visitors do not value or consider their work as an opportunity to learn together, or when churches do not coordinate the incorporation of the local church members with the missionary groups. For example, doctors and nurses in medical campaigns, brick masons, electricians and handymen for construction sites.

There are also unnecessary benefits of short-term mission. For example, people in the local church could paint their walls, plant grass, distribute tracts and evangelize. Even though they receive the benefits from visiting churches the local churches could do these things themselves if they had the money. More local church members could get work in a context of lack of employment.

The other genuine benefit is that the short-term mission groups make personal contacts that can be permanent. I have found that young Peruvians were invited to the US for a few months, and that a love relationship and marriage was formed. This opened the opportunities for a family to immigrate to the USA.

Short-term missions

Short-term missions give the opportunity to get to know another country, another culture, do tourism. I say to myself, “How great an economic effect could this have for Peru – for hotels, restaurants, and tourist sites. The whole country turns out to be benefited. The adventure and excitement to get to know about other countries gives real people a real incentive to receive short-term missionaries.

There are also spiritual benefits. Young people give their life to God and want to be baptized in the Church, a Church to which they will return to help

(For interest of time and brevity, the rest of this document will be summarized)

Professional people from the sending churches get to practice their profession in missions.

The Cost

How much does it cost for each person to come to Peru on a short-term mission trip? Approximately US$1800-2000 (including travel, room and board, but not work trip costs)
Some mission trips work on planting grass and painting walls. I ask myself, couldn’t work like this be done by Peruvians? If trip groups incorporated local people/church members in work projects, it’d be beneficial.

Short term mission groups must coordinate with the local churches that have a short-term, middle-term, and long term vision of mission, as has been shown with the Presbyterian Church of Moyobamba.

Short-term missions

Humility is the key element of stewardship and generosity. There may be great investments by US churches, but what are the real results? Be sure to take care and be responsible with the resources the Lord has given the church, especially coming from a land of affluence.

Recommendations

For short-term mission teams:

• Avoid making money band-aids, for imposition or predomination, not giving further power to the empire of money
• Please be considerate by not smoking, drinking or dancing, as this is would reflect a respect for the local believers, so as not to create scandal for local believers.
• Avoid creating dependency.
• Reflect about the role that the church serves.

For local churches:

• Don’t feel incapable to participate in the work of short-term missionaries.
• Don’t try to meet your needs with only short-term missions.
• Ensure continuity in the unfinished work or unfulfilled promise of the past.
• Commune with the short-term missionaries so that they will be seen not as a fountain of dollars and cents.
• Give orientation to your members so that the congregation will not use the opportunity to try and take advantage over the general interest of the church

Proposals

The Peruvian church should plan short-term trips. It knows what the community needs. There should be a deep understanding of the mission ideology of the church before a short-term trip is realized. Before the trip takes place, detailed plans and schedules are in order. People should know about climate, etc. Short-term missions should be done within the long-term missions.

Technorati: mission partnerships, missions, Christianity