About a month before leaving to go on the World Race, I was hit with thoughts that maybe this wasn’t what was best for me. Or for anyone.
Short term missions can be a touchy subject, both inside and outside the church. Everyone has an opinion, which range from the few people on two extremes, with everyone else somewhere in the middle trying to figure out exactly how to do these trips right. On one end, there are those who view us the white people as being called to the ends of the earth to spread our western culture and way of doing things to those who we view as not doing things correctly, with bits of the Gospel sprinkled in along the way for good measure. On the other end, there are those who hate those people, and use them to justify the blanket statement that short term missions are always a terrible idea.
To be honest, it’s hard for me to write from an unbiased perspective. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky, but I’ve never been with an organization that I felt was causing harm through the work they were doing. Granted, I also don’t have a very extensive history of traveling all over the world for missions, but the trips that I have gone on and the places that I have worked have been with organizations that I believe are actively doing everything in their power to avoid the negative stereotypes often associated with short term missions.
A majority of my field missions experience, prior to leaving on the Race, was with an orphanage in Mexico City that the church I grew up in has been supporting for years. This is where I fell in love with missions for the first time (if you want more in depth details about this, I’ve written about it here and here). For now, my point is that they do a great job of inviting short term mission teams into their long-term vision, and they heavily encourage partnerships that span far more than a week-long trip. They do this through ongoing relationship building with church partners, encouraging repeat visits, and with their child sponsorship program, through which you can continue building a relationship with one or more of the children through regular mail correspondence. During week-long trips, the focus is not only on the work being done, but on making sure that teams get to spend time getting to know the children and the staff there.
It’s important to keep in mind, though, that this solid foundation is only built for people that will lean in and embrace it. It means next to nothing to those that that have already closed their minds off with preconceived notions of what the trip is about, or have selfish motivations for going on the trip in the first place. Teenagers from a church’s youth group will go because it makes them feel good to say they are making such a big sacrifice out of their busy summer to go help needy children a world away. Adults will go because they think that developing countries need fixing, and that they alone hold the solution, or they go simply to tick another thing off of their good Christian checklist. This is not to say that someone who initially goes on a trip for one of those reasons can’t experience a heart change as a result, though. I was one of those people. God used my selfish and relatively apathetic motivations, because however bad they were, they got me on the plane, and that decision changed the direction of my life.
Just as one can’t go on a trip with selfish motivations with a reputable organization and expect positive results, the flip side is also true. One cannot go on a trip having pure motivations with an organization that is doing more harm than good in the culture they are working in, and expect there to be lasting positive impact. Though I have never had that experience, I have heard enough stories from people who have to know that it is a huge problem in the short-term missions world. It’s a big enough problem that, like I said earlier, there are those who make the assumption that all short-term trips are the same: damaging, culturally insensitive, and western-focused – in short, promoting the White Savior Complex. They would say that, whether you go with pure motives or not, you are perpetuating the problem simply by participating.
My opening statement was birthed from voices like these. I began to question whether asking friends and family to send me nearly twenty thousand dollars to go gallivanting around the world with a team of forty other young adults, spending less than a month at eleven different ministries and sharing the Gospel in cultures with which we had no experience, was a good idea. Would that really be helpful? Would there be a lasting impact? Could our efforts be sustainable? Moreover, I began asking myself if my reasons for wanting to go were even pure in the first place. I’d be visiting eleven brand new countries. I love travel. I love new cultural experiences. Was I being enticed by a colorful Instagram stream of tourist destinations I’d always wanted to visit, or was I being drawn in by an honest desire to bring God’s message of love to the people I would meet along the way?
As I started asking these questions, and as I started looking for answers, I realized that other people were making the same inquiries. In regard to the model of the Race itself, people wanted to know how helpful it was to send teams of young adults from America out in droves – several groups of thirty or more, four times a year – under the guise of spreading the Gospel when it looked like they were just on a gap-year vacation. (I’ve looked at Instagram streams from countless racers, and upon first glance one would often never know they were on a mission trip in the first place). People also wanted to know what the lasting impact was with the ministries that were being partnered with. Are projects that are started ever finished? What happens to relationships established by the team when the team leaves? Is there any follow-up, or are the converts just numbers to log in a database? For cases where a person was not converted, are they pursued further upon the team’s departure, or are they forgotten due to lack of permanent volunteers or other help?
Questions like these became very important for me to answer before I left, though they came a little late in my preparations. This was all happening in November and December, just months before I would leave for my own Race. Looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t start thinking about any of this sooner. I had spent the last three years working for a missions organization whose model was far different that many others in the same line of work. Their model is not to be a sending organization, but a partnering one. They partner with indigenous organizations that are already on the ground doing work in their own cultures, coming alongside them and asking what their needs are. They don’t send out short term mission teams. When employees from the states do go out, it is to provide training where the need is greatest, to collect stories and testimonies to send to the supporters of these ministries, to continue growing relationships, and to begin new relationships with other potential partners. (That is a very short summary, and if you want to check them out and learn more about what they do, head over here to their website).
My point is that, through my three years of working there, I saw what sustainable mission work looked like. I’ve also heard about what unstainable, damaging missions looks like, from people who have had those bad experiences. Again, I’m not sure if I’ve just gotten lucky, but I have yet to have an experience like that, and I pray that it stays that way. Obviously, my desire for the Race was, and still is, for it to be nothing but positive in regard to all of the questions that I had. I wanted the results of my inquiries to come back in all the right ways, and I wanted confirmation that going on this trip would not be adding to a problem that is already so prevalent in developing countries as a result of organizations following their own agendas and not being culturally sensitive. I wanted this year of my life that I was dedicating to the World Race to be synonymous with dedicating this year to sustainable and lasting positive impact on the ministries that we would be working with.
Unless you, for whatever reason, have not seen anything I’ve posted for the last few months, you know that I did in fact leave. I’m on the Race. And I have been for almost four months now. I left because what I found in my digging for answers during that two-month period leading up to my departure was incredibly encouraging to me. I had conversations with people that work for Adventures in Missions, and I read responses to many of these concerns that had been published by leadership, and what I saw was an organization that was learning from its past mistakes. I saw humility demonstrated from leadership as they recognized that they had not done the best job in some of these areas, but they were actively working on ways to remedy that and move forward in the best ways possible. Their courses of action were published as well, with promises of follow-up emails as each issue was addressed in further detail and implemented on the field. I heard first-hand from employees that I spoke with that what I read online was in no way just to appease the masses, but was in fact being taken very seriously by everyone within the organization. This is what I was hoping to find – not perfection, but awareness and progress.
The response to that information then fell onto my shoulders because, as I said earlier, a solid foundation set by an organization for its participants is by no means a guarantee that these problems will not be perpetuated by those who go on the trip with selfish motivations. From what I have seen of the screening process of potential racers, I know for a fact that many of these are caught before they ever enter the field. However, many of them are not. Just from following racers on social media, and even still seeing some of the marketing for the Race, I know that the appearance of this trip being just another ‘voluntourism’ opportunity is still prevalent. I also see posts and photos put online that continue to perpetuate the appearance of the White Savior Complex, whether truly in the hearts of those posting or not.
When I talked with my squad mentor about this before launch, she assured me that addressing these issues is in the works to be incorporated into the training for future routes. In that moment, however, she asked me what practical steps I could take to avoid falling into these traps myself. She asked me to truly examine my own heart and motivations for going on the Race, because out of the overflow of those comes the way I present the opportunity I’ve been given. Being aware of the potential problem is the first step, but actively avoiding being a part of the problem is a different beast altogether.
Although I didn’t have many concrete, well-thought out answers to give in that moment, the one idea I kept coming back to was this: I am going on the Race to tell a story. It’s my story, but I am not the hero. The second I present myself as a hero is the second I fail.The heroes of my story should be our ministry hosts – the people that invite us in with open arms, excited to share their work with us, and for us to learn from them. The heroes of my story should be the people I connect with during ministry, whether on the street, in their homes, at an orphanage, or on an off-day adventure. They are the widows and orphans and underprivileged. They are the pastors faithfully serving their congregations while still struggling to make ends meet. They are the children on the street who are trying to find love from anyone they can, because they aren’t getting it at home. They are the believers that haven’t been to church in weeks because their health is failing and they can’t get out of bed. They are the people whose story wouldn’t be told to a large audience if not for meeting us. I’m here to tell their stories. I’m here to come alongside them and celebrate their victories, and pray over their struggles. I’m here to show them the love of God in whatever way I know how, whether that be directly sharing the Gospel message with them, showing it through an opportunity to serve them, or just in a passing conversation.
Here’s the thing about all of that, though. It’s one thing to say it, especially before even leaving to the first country on the route. It’s quite another to put it into practice. In December when I had this conversation, I thought back to the way I had presented this trip to the people from whom I was asking for support. I realized it had been very much me-focused, and I realized I already needed to course correct. I mentioned that during our conversation, and she assured me that it would only get more difficult. It would be easy to get caught up in the moments once being on the field, and as a result let all of these thoughts and conversations slip away.
I’ve been on the field for four months now, in four different countries and on two different continents. I’ve done my best to hold onto these convictions and to keep them in the front of my mind as I do ministry, wherever and whatever it might be. I’ve tried my best to tell stories without me in the center of them, and to tell the stories of both the people who host us and the people we help minister to. I’ve tried my best to present an accurate depiction of what we do through the photos I post on social media – with every ministry photo I try to tell a short story or give a small glimpse into the work being done. I do post photos from our off days, but I am trying to be careful not to present that as the focus of the trip or what the majority of our time is spent doing. I don’t believe I need to hide the fact that we get to do fun stuff, but I do need to ensure that my priorities are straight, and that those priorities are obvious in what I post. When I post photos of locals, I am usually not in them. Members of my team often are, and when they are, I try to give as much context as possible. We aren’t here to take new profile pictures with children we barely know. There are real people inside these photos, and we truly do get to know them before the photos are taken.
Another difficulty in this area is one that we were warned about at training camp, and that is that our ministry hosts, and many of the people that we would come into contact with, would put us up on some sort of pedestal simply because we were white and American. That was the last thing I wanted to hear, especially while I was already wrestling with how to take myself out of the spotlight. However, whether we’ve wanted it or not, and however uncomfortable it has made us feel, it has been a reality that we have had to deal with pretty much every month so far, and I don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future. We were encouraged, in those situations, not to shy away from it, but to embrace it – embrace it not to take advantage, but to use the platform that we have been given to share the Gospel. During the short time we are with each ministry, we are not going to change the misconception some have that white people are somehow better than everyone else, because it has been embedded into these cultures for centuries. What we can do is show them, through our actions, that we are not there as saviors, but as servants pointing to the true Savior, and that we are just like them. We can show them that we are no different from anyone else, and that we are not special just because we decided to get on a plane and come speak to them.
(If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, and thank you. This is already far more than I intended to write when I sat down to work on this, and I’m not slowing down yet.)
So, what has that looked like in the places that we have gone so far? I can’t speak for all the ministries that each team has partnered with, but in regard to the four that my team has been with, my impressions have been overwhelmingly positive. Here’s a birds-eye view of what we’ve been up to and how my questions from earlier have been answered positively, over and over again.
In Colombia, we partnered with City of Refuge, which is a homeless shelter and a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. They do all sorts of other community outreach as well, but those initial pieces are at the heart of the organization. We got a full, two-hour tour of the place towards the beginning of our time there, and what I saw was a ministry whose every action was anticipated and planned out from the beginning. I saw a ministry that strives to be self-sustaining as much as possible, but cuts no corners to make that happen. I heard from the leadership the hearts that they had for the people they existed to serve, and I saw them live it out every moment of every day.
A major part of our ministry there was street evangelism to the drug and alcohol addicted community that the Refuge sought out to help. We went to share the Gospel, and to share about a place they could go to get clean, and to find a better community. Some people wanted that, and some didn’t. Those that did would often return with us immediately to get enrolled in the program, or they would show up the next day. Either way, there was follow-up right away, and we knew they were getting help. For those that were not interested, we got names when we were able, and connected them with one of the longer-term volunteers or employees so that a relationship could be pursued even after we had left. They wanted us to help them lay the groundwork and cover territory with our numbers, but they made it clear that whatever was developed while we were there would continue on. (Read a testimony from this ministry here.)
We did children’s ministry there as well, and I saw the same principal applied there. We went recruiting in the neighborhood for kids to participate in our VBS program, and we used it to begin relationships with them and their families. The kids that came loved it, and always wanted to come back. Their parents would often become interested as a result, and would ask questions about the ministry and about our team. We would always invite them to the church services that happened several times a week there, and some even showed up during the month we were there.
In Ecuador, the bulk of our ministry was home visits to people in the church congregations that we were partnering with for the month. We worked with a network of churches and their pastors to invest into their communities – into people that needed healing, or just needed someone to listen to their stories. We also had the opportunity to preach in their churches, both on Sunday mornings and at evening services at various times during the week. This was the first time that I was told that people would be very interested in what we had to say, simply because we were American. I hated hearing that, and maybe that played a little into my hesitation to preach and I’m just now realizing it, but either way, it was what we had to do, so we got it done.
During these home visits, and while I preached, I really tried to take to heart the idea that I was given this platform for a reason, and to use it not for my own glory, but for God’s. I used it to speak truth into everyone I came into contact with, and learned a lot in the process about listening to what God had to say to each one of these people. Through the process, I also got to know the pastors we were working with, and to see their hearts for their communities and congregations, especially the people we visited. I found out that, unlike most churches in America, home visits were a normal part of their ministry. They were not being done special because we were visiting. Hearing and seeing all of this, I had no doubts that whatever happened in each visit, there would be follow-up. There would be continued relationship building. We were just a small piece of it, here to help however we could in the time we were given. (Read more about those home visits here.)
The most uncomfortable part for me came at the end of each visit or service, when the people would herd us together to take about forty group photos in every combination of people possible. They all wanted their photo with the Americans, and it was really awkward, especially because I doubted they behaved that way on a normal Sunday, or when the pastor visited homes by himself. We were being treated like visiting dignitaries that everyone wanted to show off to their friends and families, and I hated it. I just wanted to share with them what God had placed on my heart, but to do that, I had to embrace the full experience.
In Peru, we worked primarily with the pastor of a new church in a poor area of Lima. We were there to help him grow his congregation through evangelism in the local markets, telling people that worked there about the services and encouraging them to attend by building relationships with them during the three weeks we were there. At the beginning of this, we were told again that the people we would meet and talk with would not care about the language barrier as much as we did. They would appreciate any attempt that we made to speak their language, and they would actually listen more intently to us than to the pastor we were working with, simply because, again, we were white and American. It honestly hurt me to hear this, because I saw how much the pastor cared for these people, and to hear him tell us that the people who would usually ignore him would pay attention to us for no other reason than that was difficult to swallow.
This is not to say that everyone paid attention to us. We were actually snubbed and ignored quite a bit, and he encouraged us through that, saying that the relationships worth investing in are the ones that are open to conversation. Otherwise, we would just be a nuisance to people. So that became our goal – find those that were interested, and visit them multiple times, getting to know them and sharing the Gospel with them through our words and our intentionality. Just as with the pastors in Ecuador, I knew that these relationships would continue to get attention far after we left. The pastor was intentional about getting to know them and invite them into his home, and I saw through our time with him how much he truly cared for this community. (I wrote a lot about him. His story is incredible, and I loved getting to learn and grow from him. Read more about our time with him here.)
I’m writing this from our temporary home in India, where ministry and pretty much everything else has been quite different from the way it’s looked for the last three months, but in spite of the differences, many of the same principals of healthy short-term missions are being lived out here. (I promise, a post on this is coming. Soon.) Just from these experiences over the last few months, I have full confidence I will continue to see these lived out in every other ministry that I have the privilege of partnering with for the rest of the Race. Every question I had at the beginning about the potential problems with the strategy employed by the World Race have been answered in the best possible way, and I have seen with my own eyes how many of the criticisms of both the Race and short-term missions as a whole are without a lot of merit. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But like I said earlier, I’m not looking for perfection. I’m looking for awareness, and progress.
A final thought to keep in mind: The Race brings teams to ministries where they are wanted. Never once do they force their way in against the will of the hosts. These are people who want ongoing relationships, not one-and-done events. Adventures in Missions wants to continue investing in the ministry hosts, and the hosts welcome this continued investment. A lot of criticisms of the Race that I have seen point to the high dollar amount that each racer needs to fundraise in order to participate, but I can promise that, were these hosts offered the choice between a cut of that money and a month-long visit from a team, they’d chose the team every time. Anyone can throw money at a problem, but what matters so much more to these people than financial investment is the relational investment that the teams bring to the table.
If you’ve made it this far, again, thank you. If you’ve ever had any of these questions or concerns about what I’m doing, or if you’ve ever questioned my heart behind bailing out of the USA for a year, I hope that this does a sufficient job of clarifying all of that. I would also love any follow-up questions, or follow-up suggestions, that this might bring up, so please, email me and let me know if you want to know more. I would be happy to keep the conversation going!
