Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once said, “Sports doesn’t build character, it reveals it.” When it comes it comes to seeing the truth about a person’s heart, the same can be said of mission trips.
Not long ago, I worked for a short-term missions organization in one of the largest cities in the country—one in which I continue to invest in as a consultant. We essentially provide existing ministries with a volunteer base during the summer. We partner with soup kitchens, shelters, storehouses, churches, community gardens and more. The volunteers tend to be groups of students, families, churches, and organizations from across the country with a desire to serve in the inner city. They are mostly suburban and affluent.
Many who come on our trips are believers with genuine hearts to serve the city. Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone and in my experience, it is common to have more nonbelievers on a trip than you would think. We don’t require that people be believers in order to do a mission trip with us, but everyone knows who we are and what we are about, and thus know what they are signing up for.
Sadly, when it comes to perceptions of the poor, many of the churches that send teams to us tend to be the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” type with the “we worked hard and you should too” mindset. The teams they send are sincere in their desire to help—yet they do so with the simplistic assumption that poor people are where they are because of the choices they’ve made. There is no framework for taking into account the effects of years of systemic oppression, the struggles of being the only breadwinner and losing your job, or having a crippling illness change everything for your family. Everyone is surprised to learn the average age of a homeless person in New York City is just nine years old. No matter what your ideology, you can’t blame a nine-year-old for being poor.
The persistent judgements that so many of our STM visitors bring with them stand in stark contrast to grace and compassion that characterized Jesus’ life. The values framework by which they try to make sense of the poor seems to have less to do with the bibles they carry, and more to do with the capitalist system that makes sense to white middle class suburbanites who benefit from it.
In fact, the system doesn’t offer many benefits to those who are already poor—as Jesus knew well. Yet this is difficult for the mostly middle class STM visitors to understand, and as a result their attempts to offer any kind of relevant or relatable witness are hindered. Looking back, I am one of those they would come to “save.” I was (still am) one of the broken and needy in the city. If I were to come across some of these STM groups back then, I would have wanted nothing to do with their Jesus. My poor, immigrant, hard-working, black family would be appalled and offended by the ideologies and rhetoric that’s often spouted about our laziness and our need to “get it together.”
I have learned from painful experience the most destructive sorts of illusions that white, suburban short-termers bring with them stem from ingrained prejudices based on a person’s race or ethnicity. When such attitudes go unexamined, not only do STM visitors have no meaningful witness in the city—they actually end up dehumanizing those they come to serve in profoundly un-Christlike ways.
Once we had a group of students carve their phone numbers into a table with the message: “Call us, we’re white.” I suppose it is possible that the young people who had cut those words into the table might have rationalized their vandalism as a covert way to offer a rescue rope. Nevertheless, their actions indicated that on some deep level these were people whose hearts hadn’t yet been transformed by the power of the gospel. In that sense they were “nonbelievers”—and that made them, from a missions perspective, unqualified and unable to offer any sort meaningful witness
When my organization hosts STM teams, we do as much as we can to deconstruct some of the misconceptions and dishonoring beliefs that some team members might be carrying with them. In so doing, we understand that ultimately the only way that hearts are changed is through the work of the Spirit. At best, we can only help them to understand the ways they need to change and provide a context for what is essentially a kind of conversion. On the first night that groups arrive, our city hosts walk them through a review of basic gospel principles, helping to make direct connections to the realities of the urban context. During the week, we structure the prayer tours to remind people repeatedly about the transforming work of Jesus and the cross. And at the end of each week, we hold a worship night where we reiterate lessons that again place the focus on our hope in Christ’s redeeming power.
In our best weeks, we’ve seen clear examples of STM participants who have acknowledged their biases and had their hearts and minds renewed. In so many words, they’ll tell us: “I was blind but now I see.” They not only take with them the truths they’ve learned to share with their home community; some even commit to returning to serve in the city long term.
More often, though, our efforts haven’t had such impact—and that has everything to do with a lack of soul-level preparatory work that really should have happened long before they came to “save” our city. Most come with that outward-facing savior stance that works against the inward gaze that personal transformation requires.
My years of experience working with STMs have convinced me that, as long as short-term visitors hold on to the illusion that their only purpose is to bless others with their brief presence in the city, this “savior mentality” only serves to insulate them from seeing the ways in which they themselves are needy. And when they are blinded by biases about urban communities or jaded by stereotypes of the poor, there is no room for understanding the complexities of the problems of the city or the solutions that actually might make a difference.
For these reasons I would argue that, if any church endeavors to send short-term missionaries for the sake of the gospel, they need to make sure that the ones who are sent actually believe in the gospel to the point where their hearts and minds have been transformed—or at least aware of and open to the continual process of transformation that leads us ever closer to Christ-likeness. Only then will they be able to offer any sort of compelling witness to God’s work in their lives. In preparation for urban missions, those who would be part of the team need to do the necessary heart-work that seeks to identify and address the unhelpful beliefs and assumptions that, if left in the dark, will always keep people from being agents of God’s grace in the city.
CJ Quartlbaum
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