The benefits of Mission trips
Categories : Africa, Missions |
slacktivist: Mission Trips & AmeriCorps
As part of a discussion on some new national community service plan that’s been proposed in the US, Fred makes some salient comments on the “cost-effectiveness” and the purpose of short term mission trips :
The question he raises is often asked of church mission trips. A local church youth group raises money for a weeklong trip to, say, Haiti, where they will be helping to build a school. This works OK. The school gets built. But it may not be the most cost-effective approach. A significant chunk of the funds raised winds up going to the group’s travel expenses, all so a bunch of kids with little or no construction experience can travel thousands of miles to help out. If the goal is to get the school built, it would seem to make more sense to raise the money and let the folks down in Haiti use it to hire local skilled laborers — people who are already there, who know what they’re doing and who may desperately need the paycheck.
But the point of these mission trips is not only to get the school built. That’s part of it, but it’s not the only goal. The mission trip is also designed to give the American youth group a tangible, visceral stake in the fate of the Haitian community. This is vital for the people in Haiti too. The problem with the calculus above is that it presumes that the total level of contribution is a constant. That assumption is probably not true. It’s unlikely that the youth group, the church, or any other given community here would raise the same amount of money without the personal stake of the trip itself.
The purpose of the mission trip is not exclusively to change the Haitian community where the school is to be built. Part of the purpose of the trip is also to change the young Americans who are going there, and to change the community that sends them. Part of the reason for such trips is to nurture a sense of empathy, of solidarity, and an ethos of service — to create and maintain the capacity to care whether or not children in Haiti have a decent place to go to school, and to create and maintain the desire to help.
I’ve had this dialogue within myself previously relating to our Africa trips (only 10 more sleeps until we head back to Uganda - yay!) and have come to the same conclusions as Fred. It’s easy to look at the costs associated with making such a trip and say that the money would be better spent if it were simply sent over for the locals to use - and this argument is not without merit. I agree that the bulk of our assistance to third world communities should still be in money donated and sent over for their use. But this argument ignores the other benefits of such trips - for the individuals who go, the communities which send them, and the communities to which they go. For the individuals going it should be an eye and heart-opening experience that will leave them forever changed, hopefully awakening an ongoing desire to help the needy and the poor of this world. This is perhaps one of the biggest benefits of such trips.
But it also benefits the community from which the people are leaving, helping give them a wider focus and by having people within their midst who have been to these places and can give an account of what it is like there. It gives the project more longevity and makes it seem more real to those back home than simply sending money to some place you’ve only seen pictures of in a pamphlet. It’s much better when you know someone and can talk to someone who has been there. I’m sure that this has been a big factor in the ongoing success of our church’s ministries in Thailand. So many people have made a trip over there that you don’t have to look far around the church before you find someone who can give a personal story of what’s going on there. Many people have been once or twice, some have been many times, and all up it creates a real sense of personal involvement in the ministry over there, even for those of us who haven’t been. There is a real strong physical link between Warnbro and Thailand, much more tangible than just sending cheques over to some unseen unknown missionaries. And I think this directly impacts on the amount of money raised for missions. As Fred says above, “it’s unlikely that the youth group, the church, or any other given community here would raise the same amount of money without the personal stake of the trip itself.” I’m proud to say that our church family has recently pledged over $105,000 for the next financial year for missions abroad and at home (more than double our previous amounts) and I believe a big reason for this is the tangible, physical involvement of so many of our people in different projects. It’s great.
Also if you get the chance to meet other people who have gone on such trips, it plants the idea in your head and makes you think “well why can’t I?” I don’t think we would have ever considered doing something like this ourselves (although we’ve always liked the idea in principle) if it weren’t for the fact that we were in a church community full of people travelling constantly over to Thailand and other places to do their bit. And I hope that maybe some other people might be similarly touched by our trips to Africa to maybe embark on their own project. Not only church people but maybe other doctors and health professionals as well. In fact I’m being interviewed tomorrow for an advertorial to go in some of our major national medical magazines and I’m hoping I can swing it in that direction (even though the purpose of the interview is unrelated) - not to make myself look good, but maybe just plant a seed is some other doctors’ minds “now maybe I could go do something like that….” (kinda like this guy)
Thirdly, I believe there is possibly a further benefit to the overseas communities beside the physical help and aid. To put it simply it shows them that people care - that there are people from Australia or America or New Zealand or wherever, who care enough to travel all this way to help them and to show them love. More specifically in the case of Christian missions, it is the love of Jesus demonstrated physically and tangibly to them by the visit of a Western Christian. When we were in Uganda last year, there were so many people who said over and over “Thankyou so much for coming to us” - not one said “why didn’t you save the money you spent on airfares and send it over to us?” (cf John 12:4-5
) More than just a missions or foreign aid donation, this is love up front, in the flesh. This is real.
