Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions | Part 4: Semper Gumby | Part 5: Dependence | Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II

We’re reviewing the ways a student’s thinking matures as he progresses through a short-term missions experience. I have a couple more to finish the series.

I’m Called to Be a Missionary to This Place!

Short-term mission trips are reliable producers of adrenaline. Everything is new and exciting, on multiple levels—physical, emotional, social, spiritual. For many students, this is the most exciting experience they’ve ever had. And riding that hormonal and emotional wave, they interpret the emotional high as a divine call to be a missionary, and of course to wherever in the world they’re visiting. They want the high to last a lifetime.

One of my objectives for my teams was to give the students as realistic a picture of missionary life as was possible. For that reason I much preferred trips that lasted as long as possible; my standard timespan was 8 weeks.

Now, that’s difficult. You need to find a missionary who’s willing to host a team for that long—or several missionaries who can host the team for two or three weeks each. That’s asking a lot. And of course the cost of a longer trip is proportionately higher.

But the longer experience changes the outcomes significantly.

Eight weeks is long enough for the adrenaline to wear off. It’s long enough to get really, really tired. And to miss your loved ones. And cheeseburgers. In many cases, it’s long enough to get just sick of the whole thing and to want to go home.

That’s an important part of the experience. Missionaries don’t run on adrenaline; they run on faithfulness, commitment, and the grace of God. And much of what they do isn’t at all glamorous; it’s trying to get the water pump working and standing in line for paperwork that seems completely unnecessary and killing snakes and driving over bumpy roads that make your back hurt.

Often God’s call doesn’t involve a life-changing experience or intense emotion. Often it’s a simple calculation of one’s gifting and a determination to use it in the most sensible way that presents itself.

My Friends Back Home Are So Shallow!

It’s fairly common for a student to return from a short-term experience still feeling the adrenaline rush of the new cultural experience, the spiritual high of being part of something bigger than himself, and the joy of seeing someone come to Christ. He wants to tell that story. And he should.

But the people back home haven’t had the cultural experience and the spiritual high and the joy first-hand. They’re interested in the story at first, but after a while their eyes start to glaze over, especially if the team member isn’t a particularly good storyteller, or if he keeps telling the same story over and over again.

Now that student is tempted to snap out a judgment about his friends.

They don’t care about missions. They’re not as spiritual as I am.

Well, that might be true. Though if he’s comparing his spiritual fervor with that of others, he’s got his own set of problems (2Co 10.12).

But it might not be true. This is normal human behavior; our personal experiences are more vivid, and more exciting to us, than the experiences of others that we’re hearing only second-hand. It’s hard to make the case biblically that someone’s reaction to, or fascination with, somebody else’s experience is a reliable measure of their love for God, others, or the Mission.

My friend Mark Vowels suggests that students coming back from a short-term experience have a 2-minute response ready for when they’re asked about the trip. If the questioner asks for more information, give it to him.

But no judgment.

Now, a closing thought to the closing thought.

Jesus commanded us to go. We should. And we should steward that opportunity, gleaning wisdom from those with more experience, and learning to love people who are different from us. We should nurture the character traits of wisdom, and patience, and love. And we should gather all the learning from the experience that we can.

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions | Part 4: Semper Gumby | Part 5: Dependence | Part 6: Closing Thoughts I

I’m Too Materialistic!

And maybe you are. Maybe waaaay too materialistic.

But there’s a trapdoor lurking in that thought.

Cultures are different, and many of those differences are evidences of the creativity that humans have because they’re in the image of God. Cultures ought to be different, and we ought to respect and celebrate those differences.

Now, we shouldn’t use culture to excuse sin, of course. But some people think a cultural difference is sinful when there is no biblical basis to say that.

An example. In shame-oriented cultures, people are often late to church—even more often, and later, than Americans are. Why are they so disrespectful toward the gathering of God’s people?

Well, they’re not. They almost certainly ran into someone as they were walking to church, and they stopped and greeted their friend and talked for several minutes—not because they disrespect the people waiting for them down the road, but because they respect the person they’re standing right next to. You inquire how all the relatives are doing, and you listen to and interact with the answers.

Americans can wave at a friend as they pass on the road, point to their watch, and mouth “I have a meeting,” and it’s all good.

But not in Tanzania, you can’t.

Different cultures, different ways.

Now. Maybe you ought to care less about physical things. Maybe you have more shoes than you need and care about them too much.

But then again, maybe not. There is no biblical number of shoes after which you have a sinful excess of shoes. If you’re living in America, you very likely have more clothes than someone in a developing country, and given the expectations of our culture—laundering, professionalism, and such—you need more clothes.

God hasn’t called you to live as a rural African, and he didn’t make a mistake by putting you where you are. No need to carry undeserved feelings of guilt.

These People Are So Godly! I’m a Lousy Christian!

Well, you’re making progress; you’re moving away from the “Great White Hope” syndrome.

But a couple of thoughts.

First, you’re not in a position to know if these people are more godly than you are; you don’t know their hearts. Many cultures have a more lively religious expression than Americans do, and I can assure you that some of the people making the most noise in services there are adulterers and thieves and loafers, just like here in the good old USA.

That said, I’ve always viewed an important part of the learning process in my student teams to be the realization that the African Christians (in this case) with which we’re working are our spiritual equals in every sense. They include outstanding Christians, leaders, as well as folks who want desperately to do better but are struggling along, and others who are just floating wherever the church stream takes them. The Africans are not better Christians than my students, and my students are not better Christians than their African peers. We’re walking this pathway together, and we need to help one another out through shared study, prayer, fellowship, and ministry, using our spiritual gifts to help one another along and pick up those who stumble, setting their broken spiritual bones and encouraging them with love.

And that leads to the second thought.

Maybe your particular group of African (or wherever) Christians is more godly than you are. What then?

Don’t beat yourself up. You are destined for spiritual growth (Ro 8.29; 2Co 3.18), and God has provided means to get you there. So keep plugging away, welcoming the help and care of your Christian friends from whatever culture, rejoicing in your victories and seeking care in your defeats.

This isn’t a competition. We’re all in this together.

Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions | Part 4: Semper Gumby | Part 5: Dependence

As I said at the beginning of this series, I know a lot of people who have more to say about this topic than I do, and who could say it better and give better illustrations, but for better or worse, these posts summarize some of the most important things I’ve learned in short-term mission work.

I’d like to close the series with one more thing I’ve learned, by seeing it happen over and over to different students on different teams in different countries, and even on different continents.

A short-term mission trip almost always changes the thinking of those who experience it, and those changes mature over time. By that I mean that the changes worth celebrating tend to be more likely the longer the trip lasts. You see a lot of changes immediately, but they tend to be immature, not well thought out, simply reactive.

Let me run through the list of what a team participant notices, in order of occurrence.

I’m Going to Go Help These People

This is usually the stated goal before the team leaves. The assumption, of course, is that I have something that “these people” need; I’m in a superior position by virtue of education or wealth or culture, and aren’t I a good person to have such altruistic motives?

I don’t mean to sound cynical; I know a lot of people genuinely want to take the gospel to those who have not heard, and a lot of people have skills—medical, linguistic, trades—that are genuinely needed on the field where they’re headed. But I’ll also observe that if you’re going on a short-term team, you’re probably not going where the gospel has never been preached, and you’re probably less effective at preaching the message than someone with some knowledge of the culture would be.

And the medical teams? God bless ‘em. They do important work, and may their tribe increase, along with the ministries of other skilled professionals. But those sorts of teams come with their own set of problems. Most obvious is that the locals come for the free medical care and say whatever they think they need to say to make the “visitors” happy. False professions of faith abound, and again, someone not familiar with the culture is not in a position to spot the insincerity.

I’m not trying to stop you from going, but it’s worth being reminded of Jesus’ admonition for his disciples to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Mt 10.16).

And watch out for your cultural snootiness.

Boy, Are These People Poor! I Should Give Them Stuff!

First, while there are certainly poor people in this world, it’s often the case that we think people are poor when they’re not. In the African bush, most of the tribal people I’ve worked with have food to eat, clothes to wear, and houses to live in. I wouldn’t be comfortable living in those houses, but they are, and the worst thing a “missionary” can do is tell them that they’re poor and start giving them stuff. They have what they need.

This is not lack of compassion; it’s respect for the culture and, more importantly, for the freedom of the person you’re naively trying to “help.” You don’t want to breed dependence. A great many people in developing areas will see any American as rich (which, comparatively, we are) and will immediately set out to get a piece of that action with a sad story. You’re not helping that situation when you give out of a misplaced desire to be generous and charitable.

In an earlier post I mentioned a couple of good books on this subject. It’s very difficult to walk the line between being charitable and being harmful. Again, someone well familiar with the culture is your best asset in dealing wisely and effectively with those situations. I made it a practice never to respond to an indigenous person’s request for a gift without first consulting with the missionary serving there.

I expected to cover all the changes in thinking in a single post. That is clearly not going to happen.

More next time.

Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions | Part 4: Semper Gumby

Short-term cross-cultural work is not for obsessive perfectionist control freaks.

First, you need to realize that there’s much about the target culture that you don’t know, and you’ll need to trust and depend on locals, or long-term missionaries, to correct your thinking, and you’ll need to do what they say. Further, if you believe that going is a call from God, and if you believe in providence, then you need to expect that God will do things with this experience that will surprise you and perhaps change your plans. You need to depend on him for direction and move confidently when he changes things.

Sometimes you’re going to be offensive—we’ve noted that fact repeatedly in this series—and you need to be prepared to be corrected, to take the correction gracefully, and to apologize. Once my team was going out into a neighborhood in Johannesburg to pass out fliers for a youth event that evening. I suggested that we go out in pairs, one American and one “African.” Without going into the long history of racial evil and distrust in South Africa, I’ll just say that calling these South African “Coloureds” (those of mixed race) “Africans” was highly offensive to them. I was mortified, and I apologized profusely. A deeply humbling moment.

On a more positive note, let me describe a delightful instance of a providential change of plans.

We were in Cape Town, working with an indigenous pastor, and he suggested that we go to a nearby suburb where a missionary was having a youth event at a high school. I had corresponded with this missionary during the planning stage, and I knew he had a team from a US church working with him that week, and I didn’t want to crash their party. But the pastor insisted, so off we went.

We walked into the school building and followed the sound to a chaotic, noisy group of elementary children in a courtyard, with two American teenaged girls who were clearly overwhelmed. I knew this event was supposed to be for teens, and I wondered what was going on. After a minute the missionary walked out of the gym into the courtyard, saw me, and said immediately, “Boy, am I glad to see you! We advertised a youth rally, and I’ve got 200 teens in the gym. But a hundred little children showed up too. We told them this event isn’t for them, but they won’t leave, and we’re not prepared to deal with them.”

I said, “Do you want us to take care of the children?”

“Boy, do I!”

The previous week we’d been running a children’s camp in Kenya, with teams and mascots and cheers and games and preaching. I turned to this well-experienced team and said, “OK, you two are the team leaders. Set up two teams and teach the kids some cheers. You two are in charge of games. And Jonny, you’re preaching in 45 minutes.”

We sent the greatly relieved American girls from the other team into the gym to help there, and in 5 minutes we had a smoothly running day camp. So smoothly, in fact, that I went into the gym to see if there was anything I could do there.

The preacher in the gym was the leader of the other American team. He introduced himself to me after the sermon, as if he knew me. His name was familiar, but I didn’t recognize his face at all. Turned out he had been one of my students in an online Systematic Theology course a couple of years earlier. So the name was familiar, but we’d never met in person.

What a great experience that was! What a joy to see my team providentially prepared for exactly the unexpected situation they were facing! And what an encouragement it was to both teams—and to the missionary—to see God not only meet the need but expand the ministry in ways unplanned by the organizers!

God is great, and God is good. If you’ll see all your ministry experiences, even (perhaps especially) the unexpected ones, as gracious gifts from a God who knows what he’s doing, you can find joy in intimidating circumstances.

Go.

Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions

Missions is for people who are flexible, in several specific ways.

When you’re ministering cross-culturally, you’re dealing with people who are different from you all day long. They think differently, they do things differently; they’re offended by different things, they laugh at different things. In that kind of environment, it’s possible for you to be highly offensive, even with the best of intentions. So you need to adjust your thinking.

Pay Attention

The first thing you need to do is notice things; actively think about what you’re seeing. You can’t expect to notice things accidentally; you have to just pay attention, and do things the way the locals do.

I was sitting in front of a group of people with my legs crossed, and I noticed that everyone else in the room had both feet on the floor. So I immediately uncrossed my legs and kept them that way. Afterwards I asked someone and was told that it is the prerogative of the oldest man to decide whether crossing the legs is OK. Since I was the oldest man in the room at that time, my action was not offensive. But again, in Muslim-influenced cultures, showing someone the bottom of your foot is a sign of disrespect. So no crossing of the legs. Sometimes.

Be Curious

Most people are happy to explain their cultural practices to you. I asked about leg-crossing, and no one was offended by my question, because I was genuinely curious and wanted to know how things were done. Your best asset in cross-cultural situations is someone who knows the culture well—preferably indigenous—and who speaks English. Ask about everything.

Be Respectful

Nothing at all wrong with asking questions, so long as there’s no tone of incredulity or snobbishness about it. People have reasons for what they do.

My favorite illustration of this concept is the question of whether you empty your plate. In our culture, we do, because emptying your plate communicates to the host that you liked what he served. In China, the same act communicates that the host didn’t give you enough—he’s stingy. So you must leave a little on your plate, or he’ll fill it again. With a smile.

Two cultures, who interpret the same act in completely opposite ways—and both of them make perfect sense.

I love that.

Similarly, Americans tend to think that chopsticks are clumsy and inefficient. But the Chinese think that butchering at the table is barbaric. When the food arrives at the table, it is consummately prepared, in bite-sized pieces, and all you need to eat it is a couple of sticks. Not clumsy; civilized.

Learn new ways of doing things, and thinking about things, and delight in the variety of ways that humans in the image of God create cultures.

Be Persistent

Working in an unfamiliar culture can be exhausting. You have to think about everything all the time, and you feel as though you’re the one making all the sacrifices and expending all the effort. (Let me assure you that you’re not; the locals are dealing with your cultural clumsiness and ineptitude all day long, and they’re being kind to you anyway.)

You have to just stick to it. If you’re there for just a few weeks, you’ll never get acclimated, and the relief at getting home will be significant. But it’s worth the effort in the meantime.

Again, an illustration of the importance of putting forth the effort. And thus another longer-than-usual post.

I was with a team at a church service in Africa. Afterwards we had a greeting line, a common practice. Everyone lines up single file, and the line doubles back on itself, so everybody shakes hands with everybody else. Often we’re all singing throughout the process.

Afterwards the pastor announced that we would now have communion.

I’m thinking, uh-oh. We’ve just shaken hands with a whole bunch of people, many of them small children, who have used the choo (latrine) outside at some point, where there’s no toilet paper. I’m all but certain that I have fecal material all over my right hand.

What do I do? I have hand sanitizer in my pocket, but everyone will be able to smell it—how would you feel if someone used hand sanitizer right after shaking hands with you? There’s no place to wash my hands. And we can’t abstain from the communion elements; that act sends a theological message that we must not send. We are one with these people.

I quietly went to each student and told them to be sure to take the bread with their left hand, for safety.

This was a Muslim area.

Very bad choice. In Muslim-influenced cultures, the left hand is the dirty hand. The entire team engaged in a very public act of disrespect toward the Lord’s Table. Even though we were in fact using the clean hand.

With the best of intentions.

What should I have done?

I should have told them to use their right hand, handle the bread as little as possible, and pray for divine protection.

Which brings me to the topic of the next post.

Part 5: Dependence | Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First …

Missions is for people who are prepared to do something that the locals cannot do for themselves.

Good intentions are not enough to justify going.

In the first place, there’s something fundamentally unbiblical about seeing a people group, one that God created and for whom his intentions have always been redemptive, as “those poor people” whom I, with my superior knowledge and cultural values, am going to go help. In many cases, that’s just plain racism, a holdover from the colonial era, where “western empires own their Lord, and savage tribes attend his word.” (Those are not the only two choices, you know.) One of the first things that students on my teams would learn is that the African Christians with whom they were working 1) were their spiritual superiors in nearly every way, and 2) were absolutely necessary to their ministry success. We weren’t there to “help the poor Africans”; we were there to labor alongside them and learn a lot in the process. In places like China and Africa, the Church has been doing just fine without our constant nursemaiding, thank you, and they frankly don’t need our help in the ways that we tend to think they do.

Second, sometimes “helping” is worse than not helping. This is a complex topic, one that has been developed well elsewhere; let me recommend a couple of books: Toxic Charity, by Robert Lupton, and When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett et al. Americans tend to react strongly against poverty when they see it, and they tend to think that throwing money at problems will solve them. Again, good intentions, but bad outcomes. A well-known case a few years ago was the generous offer by the manufacturers of Toms shoes to send a pair of shoes to Africa for every pair sold in the US. One unintended consequence was that they put a bunch of African shoemakers out of business.

That’s one reason why I always tried to have my student teams bring something to the table that their African colleagues didn’t. Why should my team build a fence or paint a church when the Africans could do that just as well as they could—and in fact probably better? What does a busload of American college students add to the work in the way of ministry effectiveness?

Perhaps an example will help illustrate. (And thus this post will be longer than usual.) Several summers we worked with West Africa Bible College in Wa, Ghana. This college, whose president is a Ghanaian former student of mine, graduates a handful of Bible students every year who then go out and plant churches in the surrounding villages. How can my students help with that? Out in the bush relatively few people speak English; what can we do that’s profitable?

Well, out there a busload of white folks will attract a crowd. We drove out to the village of Gbacha, pulled up at the football field (that’s “soccer” to you gringos) with a couple of footballs, and started kicking them around. Here came all the children in the village, and soon they’re all in the game. The younger children we organized into smaller, safer games. The parents showed up to see what all the excitement was about. Nasalas! Nasalas! (“White people! White people!”)

I walked over to speak to the adults who had gathered. One man told me, in broken English, “Thank you for doing this. The imams don’t play with our children.”

In the meantime the young people from the Wa church were translating my students’ Bible lessons into Waali so the children would understand. Equal partners, working together, doing what they were good at, to make a ministry.

Timothy, the college president, said, “Come with me.” We walked up a path to a small house with a large shade tree in front. Several men were sitting there. Timothy introduced me to the village chief. I greeted him and told him that Timothy had been my student, a good student, in university in America. The chief said simply, “You are welcome.”

I thought that was odd; I hadn’t thanked him for anything.

As we walked back to the field, Timothy said, “Let me explain what just happened. We need the chief’s permission to buy land in the village to build a church. Some in the village have been opposing that effort. Based on what happened here today, the chief has said that we are welcome here in the village.”

That was the summer of 2013, 10 years ago. This summer I was back in Wa, teaching at the college, without a team this time. Timothy and I drove out west of the town to see a new church building going up, and on the way back we drove right by Gbacha. I asked if we could stop.

We drove out to the field, and I took a picture to send to the 2013 team. Then Timothy said, “Let me show you something.” We drove a little further and pulled up at a church building. “This is the church we built here, on prime land the chief allowed us to purchase. The building is full every Sunday, and we’re planning to enlarge it; we have plenty of land to grow here. And when the enlargement is finished, we’re going to constitute this as an independent church, with their indigenous pastor.”

American teenagers, doing what they could, in partnership with their African brothers and sisters. Taking the good news to the end of the earth. With a couple of soccer balls on a weekday afternoon in the bush.

Part 4: Semper Gumby | Part 5: Dependence | Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash