Now to answer the other question; why the world race? And for that matter, why missions? Although my walk with Jesus truly started during my second semester of college, God didn’t give me a heart for missions until my experiences at Red Lake and the many, somewhat unexpected, things that I learned there.
You see, during the summer I worked for an organization that hosts middle and high school mission trips within the United States called YouthWorks. My part in this whole thing was as a work projects coordinator at Red Lake MN, a closed Native American reservation of the Chippewa, or Ojibwa, people. It was my job to meet folks in the community and pin down places where the students could work, primarily painting houses. Needless to say I was excited and was sure I was in for an amazing summer.
It was without a doubt an amazing summer that deepened my walk with God in an awesome way. But I went in with too many expectations, most of which were thrown out the window. My eyes were opened to many of the realities of mission work, which is what gave me a heart for missions.
There’s no doubt in my mind that YouthWorks has nothing but good intentions with its ministry in Red Lake, but sometimes it’s not enough to just have good intentions. While I was there I could see first-hand the negative effects that short term missions were having on the community. The work projects were set up was very paternalistic. The students were highly motivated to “work their butts off” but they would end up doing things that members of the community could do for themselves. Trying to get them to focus on building relationships was difficult. Kids club is a great program for 5-10 year olds in the community, but in Red Lake 9 weeks of kids club couldn’t compete with parenting issues and intense gang pressures that go on 365 days a year. There’s obviously much, much more to be said, but YouthWorks presence in the community isn’t long enough or deep enough, and all of its good intentions don’t mean anything if the practices aren’t effective. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are many benefits to short term mission work, but we need to make sure that our visions fit the needs, and that they’re in line with God’s will.
Well when I got home from my YouthWorks experience I decided to check out Tony Campolo. I had heard about him before but just never found the time to look him up. But this was God’s perfect timing because the first video that came up was of Tony giving a talk about bad mission practices, many of which I had seen over the summer. Coincidence, I think not. God used that whole experience to give me a heart for mission work that I never thought I would have, and a whole new understanding to go along with it.
So why the World Race?
It seems somewhat contradictory being that I am very much in favor of long term missions within a single community. Now I am going on a trip that will take me to 11 countries in 11 months. A good friend of mine expressed the same concern that I had about it when he asked “Are you sure you’re not doing this just to get notches in your belt?” But what I discovered was that as much as I was on fire to go go go, I didn’t know where to go or what to do. That’s why the World Race stuck out at me. I’m praying fervently that God will use this trip to broaden my gaze and better understand where I might be needed in this world. I don’t know where God is going to lead me after the World Race, but I at least know that he wants to use it to get me there.
