Should short term mission be encouraged, re-defined or even, perhaps, abolished?
August 9, 2015 by John Hamilton
Ok, I’m being deliberately provocative in the title, but please read on.
“Dear Sir, I’d like to come and be a dentist for two weeks. I’ve been meeting once a month with a small group of others who also want to be short-term dentists. We have our t-shirts printed and we’re ready to come.
P.S. Can you drive us around, translate for us and help take cool photos for our Facebook pages?”
I’d like to be a fly on the wall when the dentist received that letter. We don’t have short-term social workers, or short-term bio-scientists. We don’t have short-term gastro-enterologists or short-term politicians. So why do we have short-term missionaries in ever-increasing numbers?
So writes Craig Greenfield at Relevant Magazine.
This appeared in the past few days (or perhaps it has re-appeared because I seem to remember reading it or something very similar before). It’s in your face; it’s radical; it’s though-provoking – or is it? Because Craig goes on to make several key statements which should not be unfamiliar with Christians who understand the Bible and what Jesus has called us to in the New Testament. Take a look at John 20:21 for example.
Let’s just agree right up front that there is no such thing as a part-time Christian. There is no such thing as a follower of Jesus who is not in full-time service to God. As followers of Jesus, we are all called to a vocation.
When we see that each of us has a unique and important vocation, we’ll develop a theology of work that works.
And later he suggests some re-defining or rather, re-naming of what have come to be known as short term mission trips. You can read his suggestions in the article.
When correctly framed, these trips can be important and even life-changing seasons of engagement with the poor.
At first reading I wondered why he emphasises “the poor”. Do all short term mission teams go to visit / help poor people? Short term mission in my experience can be life-changing in many ways, not least an awareness that so many people in the world don’t have the Bible in their heart language. But then I suppose that is a form of poverty too, isn’t it? Bible poverty!
So what do you think? Does short term mission need re-thinking in your church or in the mission organisation that you are involved with? I f so, let’s do it! So that we can obey Jesus better.
PS With reference to the dentist idea above… I tried Googling “short term dentist” and I found
opportunities for dentistry overseas at GapMedics UK. So dentists, there’s an option.
Or dentists and anybody elsewhere, get in touch with
Wycliffe Bible Translators about opportunities to explore the Bible poverty that I referred to above.
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Posted in Mission, Short term mission, Summer teams, Wycliffe Bible Translators | Tagged Bible translation, dentists, Mission, short term mission, Summer teams | 3 Comments
When Greenfield argues for a re-definition, he’s largely dwelling on semantics. However, these are rough seas over which to dive into semantics because ‘mission’ is difficult to properly define. If you define it too narrowly (as I believe Greenfield does) you wind up excluding a lot and skewing your theology.
“Truly, these short-term missions trips are generally not “mission”—they are not part of a vocation to serve cross-culturally, because a vocation does not take place in two weeks or two years.”
Greenfield ties mission to the exercise of a primary vocation, which he equates to a long term profession. If something does not fall within that box, it is not mission as he understands it. This is painfully narrow to me, and I think it could be theologically dangerous.
My issue is that I can’t make Greenfield’s model (every Christian having a long term, primary professional/occupational calling) work in my head, and I don’t see sufficient scriptural evidence to demand it. I certainly can’t fathom excluding productive work in God’s kingdom from being mission just because it doesn’t satisfy such a model. (I expect this model will also come under cultural pressure from a millenial generation who are accustomed to dabbling in many careers and who (for better or for worse) value variety and expanded perspective over longevity.)
Someone like Leo Tolstoy might have said that your only mission – your primary vocation – was to love the neighbour who was in front of you at that very moment. Such a calling does not fall along tidy professional lines, but a wise God is not always tidy. Then again, Tolstoy probably didn’t have “a theology of work that works.”
There’s an bizarre element in haggling over timeframes when we discuss what is right service of the great I AM, because it’s a tricky game to establish what timeframes he honours and uses.
Scott… Scott who? I think I know, but…
John
Sorry… Scott Peacock 🙂
Internet habits of leaving semi-anonymized names die hard…
While I’m here…
One side effect of Greenfield’s theology of work is that by defining mission in terms of each Christian’s assumed lifelong profession, mission becomes centered on the individual and is manifested primarily through individual calling.
Is mission only the sum of individuals pursuing their own vocations? If mission is rather an initiative of the church, can we not meaningfully participate in specific missions on a short term basis, should the church ask it of us (occupationally or non-occupationally)?
In my church, two members were visiting Uganda when a providential encounter with a local pastor led to a call to serve street children there.
They spent two years working with the pastor and the local organization there.
Their sense of call led a couple in the church to fund the building of group homes. It led others in the church to pray. Others financially supported.
Some of us also went on a trip to visit, which led our youth leader to plan a trip with the church youth, who subsequently went out and led summer camps there. Yes, they took selfies, and some of those selfies are now on our church walls, reminding us that we are not alone in this world.
This mission is most properly described as a church initiative – as a divine initiative. From my knowledge of the people involved, I also trust that the calls (however short term or non-occupational) were genuine.
Why would God ask me to go on a three week trip that was financially inefficient and horribly ineffective in terms of ‘getting the work done’? I didn’t want to go, but I did, and I’m glad I did, because the relationships that were established within our church body were well worth the cost. The instant ‘the work’ has a relational or spiritual quality to it, our efficiency calculations become quite tricky indeed.
Sure, it was a Vision Trip. Sure, it was a Learning Exchange. But was also the building up of the body of Christ – here and there – which for me will always have first class status within the mission of God.