This Is Not A Mission Trip: Part 2

An article I pose in contrast to the "voluntourism" style of missions is titled Staying for Tea: Five Principles for the Community Service Volunteer. Our MCC SALT coordinator shared this with all upcoming SALT and IVEP peers in our joint Facebook group. He introduced it as an article that "highlights the importance of building relationships on assignment and to ensure that we are empowering others, rather than forcing our own views and values onto others. It captures well the way MCC hopes all our workers will interact with those we serve alongside." With that preface, I take to heart the advice of this experienced MCC writer. Some highlights:

1. Stay for Tea: Mv title and position were being eroded; I was becoming real to them. At the same time, my simplistic stereotypes of them were melting away; they were becoming real to me... Staying for tea helped us to become mutually indebted. I call this operating at eye-level with the community, and this made all the difference in the quality and impact of our time together... It is not healthy or productive to allow yourself to be falsely perceived as a hero, or to perceive yourself as such.

2. Process Matters: When logic models forget to examine the behavioral .issumptions in the links between intervention and outcome, it amounts to forgretting that people are at the center of the development process. An outsider can totally miss the fact that the community has a unique set of cultural lenses, economic incentives, and social structures that may run orthogonal to one’s neat logic model.

3. Focus on Values: ...there may be a drawback to defining the situation in terms of needs, because it automatically frames the whole development issue in terms of the community having something wrong with it that needs fixing... Instead of mapping problems through needs to external solutions, you help the community identify its values and then map these through local resources to develop a vision and action plan.

4. Check Your Filter: If we fear that nothing will get done or improve without us, if we are the motor of initiative, if we are stressed-out that we might fail in out efforts, if we have trouble recognizing the names and faces and stories of those whom we serve, then it's likely our filter needs replacing. 'People as Function' how shockingly inhuman people can treat you when they filter out your humanity and see you as nothing more than a malfunction in their transaction rather than as a person with history, sensibilities, soul, and a piece of the Creator within. 'People as Backdrop' it's easier to set our mind's eye on wide angle at 10,000 feet and just take it all in from a safe distance, treating people as the background scenery to our life... this filter blurs individual people...it dehumanizes, stripping from view the essential elements of individuality and personal consciousness. 'Polarizing Lens' As a rule we should seek clarity to see people for who they are: unique expressions of God's creative proficiency, fellow human beings with a full range of emotive faculties and wholly enabled desires to belong, to have enough, to overcome, to create, to give, to enjoy life, to survive, and most of all, to have meaning.

5. Cultivate A Servant's Heart: First, since you don't have the power to steer a community, don't pretend you're at the helm (it doesn't depend on you). Second, since people with self-respect resist arrogant generosity, make sure to operate at eye-level. Third, since unlike us, God does have the power to transform a community, we should be interceding passionately on its behalf.

As history shows us, I am humbly reminded that good intentions do not always mean good outcomes, thinking especially of missions that have been done in the name of God (see Part 1 of this blog post). This article is not written to scare me away from the next chapter of my life, but rather, to remind myself (and those who ask 'why not someone else') to think critically about how I serve others. Remaining doubts, fears, worries aside, I want to pause this topic with two quotes...

The best journeys answer questions that, in the beginning, you didn't even think to ask.

Don't shine so that others can see you; Shine so that, through you, others can see Him. - C.S. Lewis

This Is Not A Mission Trip: Part 1

As my date to departure gets closer and closer, I've really been wrestling with where I stand on missions, and particularily, global missions. Why can't they do ___ for themselves? Some have asked me. Number one response of defense: Cool thanks, that's really (not) encouraging. Number two response of reason: I'm not being paid, I'm a volunteer. Would you volunteer this much of your own time for your own country? If yes, fantastic, however you manage to do so sustainably; we need more of you around. Admittedly, using a title like "This is not a mission trip" is intentionally snarky as I wrestle with my own doubts, the critiques of peers, and global media. Bear with me in grace.

One of my college roomies recently shared this article on Facebook and I can't stop thinking about it. It's titled Voluntourism: More Harm Than Good so you know why it got my attention. Yes, it is most definitely a negative critique on the traditional "mission trip" and yes, I absolutely got defensive while reading it. But I came out at the end of it thinking, Yes, this is/isn't what I've grown up to envision as missional work and these examples are what I want to avoid. This is what MCC wants to avoid and they do ___, ___, and ___ to ensure ___ doesn't happen.

I'm reminded why the program I signed up for is called Serving and Learning TOGETHER. Here I want to quote some of my favorite points of the article, but I do encourage you to read the whole thing.

The temptation to swoop in and fix a village’s hunger, poverty, and disease seems simple enough and personally fulfilling, but it presents Africa as “victims” and creates a feel-good spectacle for the volunteers. By sending out untrained volunteers, we are essentially saying that development work is “easy,” that our skills as middle-class twenty-somethings are so valuable that they can save a village, and that just because we are from the U.S., we are superior to the third-world countries that we aim to serve.

A reflex reaction to this critique may be, “At least they are doing something,” or “Wow, I guess we can’t really do anything,” but this would be lazy thinking. It’s not that our intention isn’t genuine, it’s that our analysis isn’t. As long as the West has the kind of economic, cultural and militaristic stronghold over places like Uganda, our hard work is still not targeting the root or causes of oppression. Our main goal should be evaluating foreign policies, which we play a direct role in electing, not short-term solutions that make us feel like we “done good.”

Let’s support vocational training and community-based initiatives. Let’s talk about this White Savior Complex and how to keep it out of ministry. Let’s match volunteers to their existing skill set and require them to be integrated with their host communities, learning and listening to real needs.

Thus begins the conversation of why I shudder at the words "mission trip." Makes you do some deep reflecting, right?

He must become greater, I must become less. John 3:30. Challenge accepted.