Why go on a mission trip? Why go to help people other places when so many need help right here? Why waste so much money on airfare and luggage? Why, why, why? I am, of course, leading our youth on a mission trip starting this Saturday morning, so you may guess that I will find ways to answer these questions. But let me begin with my fist raised indignantly in the air about those questions. They are questions that need to be asked, and badly. The short-term mission trip industry is a broken and troublesome system. Churches across America spend millions of dollars each year sending unskilled teenagers to do menial labor in distant cities and countries. One example particularly sticks in my throat, of a church in Honduras that was painted three times in one year by three visiting “mission trips” who wanted to be “helpful” but didn’t really stop to ask how they could help. A lot of stupidity has been perpetuated in the name of God’s mission. When the youth got together to talk about our preparations for Memphis, I shared with them a quote from an Aboriginal Australian activist community:
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting our time.
If you have come here because your liberation is bound up with mine,
then let us work together.”
Some of the youth were under the impression that we are going to Memphis because we will find the neediest of the needy there. To some extent that is true, but there are lots of needy people here in Oakland too. No, we are going to Memphis because there they are doing great work that will captivate us and inspire us for the better. We are going so that we might have the privilege of joining in some of the most exciting world-changing work around. Ten years ago Memphis did not have a single farmer’s market, and these days the city is hopping with new food options, bringing vegetables into the “food deserts,” reclaiming the neighborhoods from blight to urban farms, and finding ways to turn small gardens from expensive hobbies into money-making endeavors. With farms as small as 1/4 acre, they are making a new food economy possible.
So whenever I plan a mission trip I ask — am I doing this out of a sense of guilt or am I really trying to seek the good? If we are feeling noble about ourselves rather than humble and inspired, that’s a clue that we might be on the wrong track. There is always the existential benefit that travel adds (particularly to youth) in that it gets us out of our comfort zones and ready to look, listen, and learn. That by itself is not sufficient however. We need to be honest about the fact that we are not going to dramatically change anyone else’s lives. But we may, with God’s grace, change our own.
Please wish us safe journeys and keep us in your prayers!
Every Blessing,
Talitha