So I know this is a long post, but I think it's one that really has some food for thought, so stick with me. Not every post can be filled with pictures of cute kids!
Just the other day we had some short-term (3-6 weeks) visitors that are working at the hospital over for lunch. At one point the conversation turned to how short-term teams can be harmful to a developing world society if their view of poverty and help is from a 1st world perspective.
Let me explain.
One of the visitors was given some "helpful" advice before coming to Honduras from another person in his life. She suggested he bring as many US pennies as he could to hand out to the kids he meets so that they could remember their encounter with him and have something from America that they otherwise may never see. Although, I can't see how this helps these kids, it's hard to see why it might hurt them, right?
Maybe I can illustrate it in a more obvious way. Many short-term mission trips I've been on before becoming a long-term missionary handed out candy to all the kids. We'd bring candy from the States so they could try something different, as if their life was so sheltered that this would bring them great joy . . . Anyway, shortly after that a dental team comes through and pulls a bunch of rotten teeth beyond repair and tries to hand out toothbrushes. Then another team comes through handing out candy then another dental team etc., etc..
After too many exposures to North Americans like this, people in impoverished countries come to realize that these visitors are good for handouts - some useful, some not. Sometimes even big ones like laptops, guitars, etc.
Now, I'm not saying short-term teams are bad. In fact, they're good for both sides (the visitors and visitees) IF the visitors understand what true poverty is and what "help" the people need. To quote from the article I've pasted below from Steve Saint, " . . .
poverty is more of an attitude and a mood than an actual state of having or not having something. In such contexts, contentment is the secret. Some people think 1 Timothy 6:6 says “Godliness is a means of gain,” but really it says “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” Where there is godliness with contentment there is no perceived “poverty” until discontentment has been stirred." and "
When we project poverty on people where it doesn’t exist, we also overlook the actual poverty with which they struggle."
His article is definitely worth the 5 minutes it will take to read it. The old adage "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." really rings true here. Who are we (North Americans) to come running into another culture and tell them what they need and what they're missing out on. They never missed out on these material things until they were introduced to them anyway. The true poverty is spiritual and is met with discipleship. Discipleship takes time and dedicated personal investment from long-term missionaries or other local committed Christians. Those pennies given out during a short-term trip from someone who spent an hour with them won't create a long lasting impact on their lives, or meet a need they have, and most importantly won't change their true impoverished spiritual state.
So then what's my advice to those going on a short-term mission trip?
1. Read "When Helping Hurts" or take a CHE (Community Health Evangelism) course about how to really help in a culture other than your own. Without this understanding short-term teams have the real potential to be a bull in a china shop rather than a blessing they really could be.
2. Short-term teams are a GREAT help to encourage and augment the work of an established missionary, local church or local believer. Understanding this will change the way you view your trip and pack your bags. Sustaining and encouraging a long-term missionary really does help them from burning out, keeps them on the field longer and makes them more efficient at their jobs. Augment the work a missionary is already doing and watch them have an exponential effect. It also makes the work you do that week have so much more of an impact than you could have done on your own in 1 week of just passing through. Long-term missionaries have spent years developing relationships with the local people and creating a good reputation for Christians in general. You have the opportunity to piggy back on that, use it!
3. Understand your missions trip and the people you serve during it will probably impact you and teach you more than you teach them in your short time there and that's OKAY! Again, short-term teams are good for the visitors AND the ones being visited! Sometimes God designs your trip to teach you and awaken you to something He has being trying to tell you. Maybe a trip away from work, materialism, and tv was what God was waiting for so you could finally hear Him.
http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/projecting-poverty-where-it-doesnt-exist#.T6anqQxD2et.facebook
Projecting Poverty Where It Doesn’t Exist
I have been in relationship with the Waodani since 1956, when they killed my dad Nate and four of his friends. My relationship continued through the time my aunt Rachel lived with them beginning in 1958 through her death in 1994. I most recently lived with the Waodani beginning just after Aunt Rachel’s death in 1994 until later in 1997, maintaining a house and spending about one quarter of my time with them until 2008.
When people visit the Waodani, they look around and think, “Wow, these people have nothing!” People from the outside think the Waodani are poor because they don’t have three-bedroom ramblers with wall-to-wall carpeting, double garages so full of stuff the cars never fit and, I guess, because they never take vacations to exotic places like Disney World.
So, on speaking tours I began describing these jungle dwellers as “People who all have water front property, multiple houses and spend most of their time hunting and fishing.” The most common response I have gotten when describing the Waodani this way is, “Wow, would I ever like to live like that!” I agree completely.
Mincaye, on the other hand, sees the way we “Outsiders” live here in “The foreigner’s place” and makes comments like; “Why, never sitting, do the foreigners run around and around in their car things speaking to each other on their talking things but never hunting or fishing or telling stories to each other?” After traveling and speaking with me in the U.S., Canada and Europe, Mincaye is always greatly relieved to get back to his thatched roof hut, with the open fire wafting smoke in his face, eating whatever happens to be in the cooking pot. He sits around in jungle-stained clothes and the look on his face tells it all. He would not live in North America for all the green paper and little pieces of plastic he could carry. He doesn’t understand how money and credit cards work but he knows foreigners can’t leave home without them.
Mincaye is a rich man. Or, he was until someone taught him to drive a golf cart and he started thinking how much fun it would be to take his 57 grandchildren for rides up and down the Nemompade airstrip where we used to live together. Now he wants his own golf cart (which means he would need a charging station, and a solar panel farm to power it, and a shop to maintain it, and spare parts to keep it running….)
From my life experiences with the Waodani—and other people groups in Africa, Asia and South America who live simply and materially contentedly—I have learned that it is unreasonable to evaluate their “lack” based on our distorted and exaggerated perception of need. When we try to meet phantom needs of people who live at a lower material standard than we have learned to consider “minimal,” we not only fall into a trap that keeps us from seeing their real needs but we also tempt them into a snare that can raise their perception of need beyond what their economy can support.
When we project poverty on people where it doesn’t exist, we also overlook the actual poverty with which they struggle. Solomon said it well, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase so do those who consume them” (Ecc 5:10–11).
Dangerous Charity
Often charity to help the poor attracts more people into poverty. One example I have noticed takes place when North Americans try to care for the needs of orphans in cultures different from our own. If you build really nice orphanages and provide good food and a great education, lots more children in those places become orphans. I see this happen all over. When we attempt to eradicate poverty through charity, we often attract more people into “needing” charity. It is possible to create need where it did not exist by projecting our standards, values and perception of need onto others.
So what is poverty? We in the “Wealthy West” have little understanding of “poverty.” As our standard of living has risen in developed countries, our perception of poverty has changed.
Consider how our definition of an orphan is different from most other cultures. In the U.S., you are an orphan if your mother and father have died. In South America (where I grew up), as in other contexts where extended family structures are intact, you are not really considered an orphan as long as you have a living grandparent, uncle, aunt or older brother or sister who is capable of helping take care of you. So when North Americans build an orphanage in South America, we “create” orphans by tempting family members to take advantage of our well-intentioned largess. This is seldom in the best interest of those children who are “orphaned” by our desire to meet what we perceive as their need.
Provoking Poverty
In the same way, proximity and exposure to wealth can provoke a sense of poverty. A group of North Americans going on a short-term mission—with our international cell phones, iPads, fancy clothes and fat wallets to buy curios and spend on hotels and restaurants—can create more comparative poverty than most of us can imagine.
But, all of that is not the issue. Do we have a responsibility to care for the poor? Yes. 1 Cor 8:11–15 hits the nail on the head. Let me summarize—“No Christ follower should have too much while anyone else has too little.” So, should we all become poor so that we are no longer responsible? No. Paul also points out that this teaching is not intended to put the poor at ease and to burden the wealthy (2 Th 3:6-12).
Among people living simply amidst abundant resources, poverty is not measured in annual income or net worth, but in “what I have in comparison to what those around me have.” In such contexts poverty is more of an attitude and a mood than an actual state of having or not having something. In such contexts, contentment is the secret. Some people think 1 Timothy 6:6 says “Godliness is a means of gain,” but really it says “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” Where there is godliness with contentment there is no perceived “poverty” until discontentment has been stirred.
Building Up Christ’s Body
Our goal in planting Christ’s church where it doesn’t exist must be to produce churches that are self-propagating, self-governing and self-supporting; especially where the members come from a background of hopelessness, powerlessness and inadequate resources. The most important aspect of church planting is whatever that fledgling congregation needs most. In a growing number of cases, the greatest need new churches have is to become self-supporting.
Giving handouts creates more problems than it solves. It is like casting out demons with long leases. Break the lease or they will come back and bring more roommates (Lk 11:24–26). Where the Church is being established among people that perceive themselves as powerless, there is a great need for deep discipleship, wrestling with the roots of poverty at the community level rather than concentrating on the individual.
Financial help that does not develop sustainable, local, financial self-sufficiency is much more likely to create poverty than it is to meet real needs. Until we realize that we can’t overcome poverty with handouts, we will never be much help in completing Christ’s Great Commission.
As followers of Christ we must fight poverty through discipleship rather than covering it with spiritual frosting. Either we do God’s will God’s way or we aren’t doing His will at all. Discipleship means teaching others what we have learned so they can teach others to care for their community’s physical, economic, emotional and spiritual needs on a sustainable basis! (2 Tim 2:2, Mt 28:19–20)
