To open this month, our host, Erica Zeiler, simply said “our mission here in Swaziland aims to ‘love people to death.'” In other words, to accompany the Swazi people through life, in all its joys and struggles, until the journey is complete. As I’ve contemplated this mantra while reading the book “To Repair the World” by Dr.Paul Farmer, I’ve come to notice clear distinctions as to what it means to be a long term missionary (LTM) vs a short term missionary (STM).
This year I like to think of myself as a “long-term short term missionary” – working a long time with multiple projects for a short period of time. In this process, our World Race teams have had the chance to work alongside numerous LTMs, ranging in ministries from street evangelism to sports ministry to English camps to incarnational living and the list goes on. But one thing I’ve noticed in the roles of all of these LTMs that differs from my role as an STM is that the LTM is ‘accompanying’ their people whilst I, the STM, can primarily ‘aid’ the people.
Let’s break down the contrast of these words. To aid someone is to provide a resource, need, or want, but it does not necessarily confer a requirement of relationship. Aiding can be a selfless and greatly appreciated act, but it does not always require great sacrifice. To accompany someone is to walk alongside another, to break bread together, to go on a journey with a beginning and an end. Accompanying means that your commitment lasts until the task or the journey is deemed completed – and that is not decided by the companion, but by the one being accompanied. Even when we break down the Latin origin of accompany [ad + cum + panis] we see that it simplifies to ‘together with bread.’
As a STM, my ability to accompany someone, to walk through a journey with another, is limited. Certainly there are instances when unexpected relationships are forged on the mission field that last for years to come. However, my role realistically lies as a supplement to the LTM. So far this year this has looked like aiding in manual labor, children’s ministry, a sermon on Sunday, a hand in the kitchen, holding a sleeping baby, prayer walking, encouraging the faith of an LTM, etc. I hope not to belittle these actions, because they are quite important! The LTMs we have worked with greatly appreciate the aid we have provided. I do want to stress that the role of STMs in long term mission projects is quite necessary.
But let us avoid being coy, whether one intends to or not, aid can be a perfect way to make oneself ‘feel good’ about doing good things, while maintaining quite a comfortable distance from some of the real and messy issues in each other’s lives. To quote a man dedicated to this concept, Professor Roberto Guitiero, “As a society, we are happy to help and serve the poor, as long as we don’t have to walk with them where they walk, that is, as long as we can minister to them from our safe enclosures. The poor can then remain the passive objects of our actions, rather than friends, with whom we interact. As long as we can be sure we will not have to live with them, and thus have interpersonal relationships with them…we will try to help ‘the poor,’ but, again, only from controllable, geographical distances.”
It’s so much simpler to maintain this distance, isn’t it? To know that in each short term trip, I’m only invested for one month. I don’t actually have to dig deep in discipleship with someone, or build a home with someone, or counsel someone through relationship issues, or comfort someone through a lifetime of AIDS, or walk a child through 12 grades of education. Because I’m only here for a month, I can’t realistically complete any of these journies with someone. I’m ‘safe’ from a lot of the mess and struggle that comes with an accompaniment journey.
So the question I’d like all of us to consider is this: At what point do we leave behind the comfortable distance proffered as an ‘aiding’ STM and walk into the unknown journey only travelled by an ‘accompanying’ LTM?
I really believe that too few of us leave the aid group and never arrive at the beginning of accompaniment, myself included. It’s been really easy to say “I’ve done my little part” and then proceed on with my life. But there comes a time when all of us feel that tug from the Holy Spirit to commit to an accompaniment journey. And that’s the prompt to which long term missionaries all over the world (America included!) have heeded. Will you?
