Tag Archives: paternalism

Short-term missions and local Christian leadership

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short-term-hosts-001I started this series by recounting some of the positive experiences that I and my family have had with short-term missions. I still have some potential problem areas to look at, so I want to make sure that I make it clear that I am not in any way anti-short-term trips.

Harland did me a favor in the comments on yesterday’s post by broaching the topic of the impact on local church leaders. Part of what he said was:

I also wonder about the impact on the local leadership. Even though we coordinate through them, in effect they are placed in the role of operatives under our demands. And they are implementers of our materials and budgets. Does this convert them– in the eyes of the locals– into surrogates to our resources? Some locals have shown a tendency to think so, even years later. Even when no further assistance was ever promised, our words are not as impactful as our presence and our aid during that one tip. And our local leaders have the unfortunate role of not being able to satisfy local requests. Or they have to deal with a drop-out rate that is very high when, after several months, those hidden request-agendas can not be satisfied. Our actions spoke louder than our words and we inadvertently created expectations that only surfaced much later.

There is always the danger that we will “set the bar” on things at a level that the local leadership can’t maintain. It may be in terms of aid given or services rendered; the concept of “rice Christians” is famous in missions studies, describing how some come to Christianity only to get the goods missionaries have to offer. With short-term trips, those goods are only available when the foreigners are there; when they leave, there’s little motivation to stay around.

At times we raise the bar as far as church resources. We come in and do a V.B.S. complete with visual aids, talented teachers, and candy or toys for the kids. Then the next week the teacher is teaching on an old flannelgraph that someone donated, and the kids are quick to note the difference. Or we preach with a projector, videos, and slick PowerPoint, leaving the people expecting the same once we’re gone.

Sometimes trips are tailored to the needs of the local church; sometimes they are tailored to the needs of the participants. We forget that Christians in many cultures find it hard to express disagreement with us when discussing plans, even if they know we aren’t making the best decisions. I’ve discussed before the tendency of wealthier Christians to provide the things they want to provide rather than the things that are actually needed.

I could continue, but let me share with you a little more from Harland’s comment. It expresses what I’m wanting to say.

Of course, I am not tuning in on the unfortunate negatives. How might we encourage and strengthen local leaders in their role? How might we extend our ministry and thus grow spiritually alongside others?

Those, my friends, are the questions that need to be answered.

They don’t need what you say they need

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Hand_holding_a_red_fundraising_boxI’ve probably been guilty of the same. I’ll say that up front. But I’m tired of reading where ministries are raising money for what they say people in Cuba are asking for. No, they’re not asking for sewing machines. No, they’re not asking for solar-powered listening devices. No, they’re not asking for baptismal garments.

Of course, if you ask them if they could use those things or just about anything else, they’ll say yes. People who lack many basic goods will accept almost anything offered to them for free. But that’s not grounds for saying that they are asking for those things.

And this isn’t just Cuba. Cuba is merely the situation that I know best. It’s also a unique situation, with there not having been U.S. missionaries living there for over 50 years. I can speak to their situation. Others can describe what goes on in other places.

Here’s a thought: what if we asked people what they need? Asked them to prioritize the most important things? Maybe if we let them come up with the ideas, we’d be able to provide things they really need. Instead of the things we want to provide.

Money as power in missions

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3quarter_globeIt happened in Rosario, Argentina. It was 1986 or 1987. One of the Christians came to speak with the missionaries, telling a tale of having been approached by an ex-member that wanted to recruit him for a new congregation.

The ex-member and some of his friends had been in touch with a man who planted churches in South America. Explaining their discontent with the missionaries, they asked for help. The church planter jumped at the chance, offering to send money on a regular basis. The ex-member and his disgruntled friends were to recruit others; those who wanted to be join the new congregation would be expected to sign their agreement with a list of rules, including:

  • Church services would begin on the hour and end on the hour.
  • No one would leave services to go to the bathroom.
  • No prayers would be addressed to “the Lord”; Jesus is the Lord, and prayers are to be addressed to God.
  • And so on. The church planter had many doctrinal differences with the missionaries in Rosario, but the list didn’t focus on those things. It was mainly about church organization.

Naturally the Christians who had written this church planter didn’t mention their struggles with addiction, their open practice of homosexuality and promiscuity, nor other such matters. And he didn’t ask. His interest was to find someone who would accept money for preaching the things that he wanted preached.

How many times have similar scenarios been played out? There is a church in Georgia that prides itself on troubling churches throughout Latin America on the question of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. Others have gone out on a mission to promote this doctrine or that. The tool of choice? Money. Pay a preacher and you can tell him what to preach. Or so many seem to think. (To hear another voice on this subject, read “Dollars, doctrine and division inflict more damage on churches than Sandinistas“)

It’s the opposite of what we were talking about yesterday. It’s paternalism, not partnership. Or to put it plainly, it’s sin.

It takes courage to enter into partnership and let local Christians work out their own faith; faith based on Scripture and not on our principles and practices.

Partnering with churches in other countries

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3quarter_globePedro Villa made a very good comment on yesterday’s post; I hope you’ll take the time to look at what he had to say.

I’ve talked some about the concept of partnership in terms of local outreach, but it’s a concept that I think needs to be expanded internationally. There is an undeniable shift in today’s world, as belief in Christ shifts southward. We can fight that tendency, or we can work with it. I think a shift in our world perspective can help us see this trend as a very good thing.

Churches in the north (particularly Europe, Canada, and the United States) tend to have more material goods. Churches in the south, at the moment, seem to be showing a greater evangelistic fervor and a better concept of community building within the church. If we let each group provide what it has, both talents and resources, the resulting work can be far greater than either can do alone.

The problem is, our world tends to associate money with power. If you are paying the bills, you feel that you have the right to decide how things will be done. And decide who will get your money. There is a fine line between showing good stewardship and using money to manipulate people.

That’s where partnerships come in. Churches in wealthy areas need to look for churches in less privileged areas that would be willing to work with them. Not be controlled by them. Not be dictated to. Churches to partner with.

This is a healthier model than funding an individual. Our support of preachers has hindered the development of other leaders in many situations. The preachers are beholden to their supporting congregations; they feel no need to listen to the local church. One preacher told a group of us that he had no desire to see elders named in his church; elders, he explained, would want to know about his finances and question how he used his money. That attitude is exactly what has weakened the church in many areas.

The key, as all good leadership, is to find people you can trust, then trust the decisions they make. In missions, that means an acceptance of the fact that they will at times do things differently than we would. Sometimes they’ll be right; sometimes they’ll be wrong. But they are the ones “on the ground,” the ones living out their faith in that context. We can offer advice and guidance, but it must be seen as exactly that. It must never be, “Here’s what you’re going to do or you won’t get any more money from us.”

More thoughts coming on this. I’ll take a breath and listen to your reactions.

Sharing our faith or imposing our beliefs

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Bible studyI recently read a very interesting article by Dyron Daughrity in Missio Dei, a missions journal from the Stone-Campbell Movement. Here’s the abstract of the article:

This paper looks at problems that have occurred in Church of Christ missions by focusing on a case study in India called the Arise Shine Church of Christ Mission. The paper argues that paternalism in a cappella church missions has led to a “time capsule effect” wherein churches in India have become stultified. Indian Church of Christ members have developed a hybrid identity. They try to be faithful to the sending churches—in this case Canada’s valiant missionary J. C. Bailey—but they have to balance it with faithfulness to their own culture. Several issues are brought forth such as Bible translations (especially the use of the King James Version), contextualization and indigenization, and the unfortunate dependency that often arises in Church of Christ missions efforts.

In the article itself, Daughrity says:

The Church of Christ in India, however, has not turned into the fused symbiosis that Walls witnessed in Africa. Rather, the time capsule would be a more fitting analogy. And major challenges loom because of this theological and cultural stagnation. Members remain deeply loyal to the form of Christianity brought to them decades earlier by stalwart missionaries.

I have seen the same thing throughout Latin America. I remember having a discussion about a controversial topic in the church in Córdoba, Argentina. We had discussed for nearly an hour, when one member who had been converted 20 years before said, “You can say what you want; I know what the missionaries taught me.” She then pronounced a stance on that issue. No appeal to Scripture or biblical principles. This was what the missionaries had taught, and that was good enough for her.

You don’t have to go overseas to see similar things, of course. People will hold to what granddad taught or what their favorite teacher taught, even if they may not understand the reasoning behind the teaching.

I’m not sure how we avoid this. I have some ideas. One thing that I try to do in my ministry at Herald of Truth is focus on teaching people how to study the Bible rather than on the content of the Bible. That can be a scary thing, for you run the risk of people reaching different conclusions than you have. But if they reach those conclusions based on the Word of God, is that such a bad thing? Isn’t there a chance that they’ll reach right conclusions on subjects where we’ve missed the mark?

What are your thoughts? Is this sort of thing avoidable?