Last night I attended my church in Seattle. Our senior pastor brought in a fellow who has been leading short-term missions trips all around the world. For 20 minutes he encouraged us to join him on his short term trips, convincing us with all enthusiasm how spectacular they are. how much we'll grow and how we can change the world, gain new perspective on the world, grow in God, etc. I've been fed the importance of short-term missions trips since I was in junior high.
Last night, one of my friends brought this up in casual conversation and expressed a viewpoint completely opposite and contradictory. Throughout this pastor's "sales pitch" for cookie cutter missions, she was becoming more and more enraged - well, maybe I shouldn't say enraged - she became very agitated and offended at what this pastor was trying to sell. God has given her a heart to bridge the gap between cultures through relationships and culture identification and so forth. She's entirely convinced this can't be pulled off in 10 days, and I agree with her. What really is the effect of a 10-day missions trip to S. Africa? Often times, the people who went to bless come back blessed themselves, but what actually happened to that culture? The group went down, performed a few dramas and handed out a few pamphlets or books, but did they change anyone's life? did they plant a church? did they raise up a leader. Of course not, they were only there for 10 days.
So what should we do? Perhaps there should be a call to long-term missions. Perhaps we should lay a hold of sending people to build churches and build leaders. Think about the culture into which we are going. How do they see us? My friend said short-term missions to her is like going to a people and spitting the gospel at them. I happen to think she's not too far off.
What should the church's response be to this? What's YOUR response? Is there a place for short-term missions or should we try to move away from them entirely?
4 comments:
I think the problem is that people try to come up with a formula for "winning souls," whatever that means.
If people simply trusted God to lead, there wouldn't be a need for a formula or a sales pitch.
I think you're right in saying that. It's somewhat the same conclusion my friends and I ended up coming to near the end.
But we also realize that Christ set an example through his own ministry (which was short-term, led by the Father) and Paul's ministry (which was in each case long-term, church building. We referenced many other cases in the Bible. Furthermore, we believe God gave us minds to use and we should use those to find the best possible way to witness, which we agree should be a genuine Spirit-led, personal witness.
Furthermore, we believe God gave us minds to use and we should use those to find the best possible way to witness...
You mean *testify*. To witness is to observe. To testify is to speak about what you have witnessed. And I think that changes the focus quite a bit -- people think that "witnessing" means to talk about Jesus, but the text specifically states to testify about what we have witnessed. So if we're going to preach Christ, what have you witnessed? What testimony can you give? I think that should be the focus of delivering the gospel message - we should only speak about that which we have personally seen. Otherwise our testimony is not true.
You're right. I get used to the way christian jargon gets misused and I usually keep misusing it without thinking about what the words really mean. But you get the idea.
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