One of the more interesting areas of missions growth in recent years is the influx of volunteers to assist in the international missions efforts. Volunteers have always been around, but the rise of the mega-church has precipitated a parallel increase in the number of people heading to the field on their own dimes.
The phrase “mixed blessing” comes to mind. On one hand, volunteers bring new skill sets and boundless enthusiasm for the task and can help break established missionaries out of a long-view rut. On the other, volunteers sometimes bring their agendas, ethnocentrism, and ignorance along for the ride; the missionary seems to spend more time fixing mistakes than accomplishing anything.
So, for your pleasure, here is a selection of points volunteers need to consider before heading to the field:
Missions vs. Ministry: Ministry is about loving people. Missions is about loving people so that His kingdom might expand into the hearts and minds of people. Mission teams usually need to be about missions, not ministry. There are a good many things that fall under ministry that are not necessarily missional. For example: puppet shows, some building projects, VBS programs. VBS and puppet shows are great, but you can’t start a church with 5 year olds. In order to understand the strategic decisions missionaries make, you need to learn the difference between ministry and missions. You need to realize that most of a missionary’s work is missions, not just ministry.
When in Rome, eat as the Romans eat. Eat what you are given, when you are given it. If the food is from a national, understand you are eating at least as well as they eat, if not better. Don’t ask “Is this safe?” If it doesn’t kill the national, then I think you’ll be fine. This means consider not going if you are diabetic. This means give up on your schedule-driven eating patterns and just eat when the food arrives. True story: Volunteer adamantly states that he cannot function without a hot breakfast, making his announcement in a country where breakfast is a roll with a hunk of cheese. Good luck with that.
Flexibility. Please, don’t make the process more stressful for the missionary by challenging every local standard. Accept that the locals will have a different sense of politeness, a unique view of time, an odd sense of logic, and more. Accept that this is the case without consistently saying, “Why this? Why can’t we that? That’s silly. Are you sure? I’ve never heard of a culture like that.” Plans will change without notice. Things will not work out like you expect. You duty is to live with it, gladly, and do the work you came to do.
Just accept it: Don’t critique the choices that the missionaries make: food, shopping, clothing, schooling, driving, how they spend their money, how they educate their children. They are making choices in places that are physically and conceptually so far removed from the North American environment that many times US residents cannot possibly understand the decision-making process. Trust your missionaries to be godly people and don’t worry too much about how they do personal things.
Don’t be high maintenance. Consider not going if you are diabetic or hypoglycemic. Consider not going if you are an extremely picky eater. Consider staying home if you must have air conditioning. Vegans, vegetarians, and gluten-free eaters should weigh their needs carefully. Dieters should eat normally while on the team. Asking for exceptions to everything just adds stress to the missionaries who are concerned for the volunteer’s well-being.
Minister to the missionary. This could mean bringing in needed items for the missionary or his family. It could mean saying, “Tell us what financial needs you have either personally or vocationally.” With IMB workers, you have to ask them. IMB folks can’t ask for money. Think about sending a volunteer whose sole job is to take care of missionary kids so both the missionary husband and missionary wife can participate in the work. Too often they do not get to work as a team simply due to the lack of childcare. Remember that you are there to make the work proceed better. If you can accomplish that in a short-term sense by doing the work, fine. If you can accomplish it in a long-term fashion by freeing up the missionaries, do that, too.
Practice your testimony. Learn to give a basic story of your coming to Christ in about 3-4 minutes. Know your story. Tell it in a straight-forward fashion. True Story: Volunteers board their flight for home while national Christians ask the missionary, “Have those people ever shared their faith before? They couldn’t even stammer out the basics of their salvation!”
Make an attempt to learn the basic of communication with nationals, whether through gestures common to the people or through some basics words, but do it without constantly asking the missionary, “What’s the word for….?” Show an interest in the local culture that goes beyond simply a one-time visit. That sets you up for…
Partner: Unless you possess a special set of skills that is needed in a variety of locations, find a missionary, a strategy, and a people group with whom you can partner for a few years. Too many volunteers move from place to place, tasting/working for a week before moving on to the next location. If you are working as a volunteer missionary, take a page from the full-time missionary’s handbook: focus on a people and a place. Return there over and over.
Think: Show a willingness to use creativity and the wealth of resources we have in the United States in order to present high quality work and projects. That means don’t fill your suitcases with Sunday School craft ideas that went out in 1967. Don’t bring the same old colored beads on a leather strap that everyone else brings. Don’t show up with things you couldn’t use in your church and expect locals to accept them.
Volunteers are great, and they can contribute wonderfully to the work. There just needs to be a few tweaks in the approach.
Thanks for your work and your support.
Excellent ….. just a great read with most practical advice. I think it was Billy Graham who said the goal is not to “Americanize” them. That might seem simplistic but it doesn’t take into consideration the real spiritual need. Great article I will file and refer back to and share. God Bless!
Good council Jeremy,
I think the distinction between ministry and missions is very helpful.
Volunteers and their home churches must obviously prepare themselves. They must be prepared to never see each other again. It is my experience that most don’t go prepared for this. We don’t send anyone from our church without a clear understanding from all; ‘you may not come home and they may not return.’ We don’t do this to scare or strike fear into anyone, we do this to be as prepared as we can be because the gospel is at stake.
I also suggest a sending church prepare themselves for worst case scenarios, so if something happens, we can better follow a plan of action rather than trust feelings, emotions or opinions when pressure begins to squeeze.
*counsel
Mission trips can be both exhilarating and dangerous. I went on only one trip during my years as a pastor, and this was due to the fact that someone supplied the funds for that trip. I never pastored a church where they had money for such ventures. Individuals in the churches I pastored would pay their own way. In any case, that one trip which involved preaching a revival in Jamaica, one sermon in Port au Prince Haiti, and a side trip to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic was quite thrilling. The revival resulted in 21 professions of faith, the most I ever had in any meetings I held across the years of my ministry. It was a pleasure to meet and become acquainted with a Black Jamaican National pastor (who had three degrees and spoke English far better than I did) and his family and people in the church where I preached. Then i had the opportunity to meet our SBC missionaries in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Quite impressive individuals with a wide variety of responsibilities. One missionary in Haiti did well-drilling, the one in Santo Domingo had served in Central America and was quite noted. A native pastor of Haiti translated for me, when I preached one service in his church. He was a graduate of one of our Baptist Colleges here in North Carolina.
The down side was in Haiti I got Haitian happiness which is like Montezuma’s revenge in Mexico. With help from the group leader and others I made it back without undue trouble, but it could have been otherwise. Would I go again. Absolutely! Any and all for Christ and His kingdom. Pastoring Baptist churches in the US can be hazardous to one’s health, strength, and well-being. One does a lot of suffering in such service, sometime, sooner or later. But life is like that, and, to a clodhopper from Arkansas, Long, hard rows of cotton to be chopped can be chopped only by sticking with it until you finish the job. So is it with pastoring and with mission work. Not all is pleasant and light, easy, full of fun and joy. Now and then, however, God brings His servants great joy to cheer them on their way in difficult circumstances. So mission volunteers go to it, along with everyone else involved in the process of taking the Lord’s message to the nations. A work of God’s Sovereignty, if ever there was one.
Great post. Having been there on the other side, i concur wholeheartedly.
Great article. I’d like to say more, but no time right now. Thanks.
Les
Concerning food:
“If it doesn’t kill the national, then I think you’ll be fine. ”
From one who knows:
depending on where you are at, in some cases, certain types of excrement may be used as fertilizer for growing produce, and may contaminate the produce with bacteria that you don’t want to ingest
. . . washing fruits and vegetables for a while in clean, clear boiled water to which you have added a few tablespoons of bleach, then thoroughly rinsing the produce, may save some fierce stomach troubles . . .
think ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’, and you will get my meaning
Yes. You might think twice about salads or fresh vegetables that could have been rinsed in the local water. The odd exception that I’ve seen is India. Either the infrastructure improvements have gone far to purifying the potable water better or they knew they had westerners who weren’t immune to the pollutants and they used filtered water.
But I would encourage anyone to eat as much of what the locals eat without complaint. Our pastor went to Saudi Arabia and one fellow took to him such that they invited him out to a camping retreat where they offered him some camel’s milk. This is a great honor and not one to turn down. The milk was nice and fresh, warm and frothy. Floating there on top was even a little camel hair. Gratefully he drank it.
In Venezuela, we had some ball caps to give children who came to play games with the team on the streets. A couple of us were posted as a line of security. The presence of strong men dissuades petty thieves. A couple of adult passersby nevertheless accosted one of the team for a ball cap. We explained that these were for the children and they retreated a bit miffed. But they repented and came and said they were sorry. They brought some iced fruit drinks to those they accosted from a vendor right there on the street. Our team tentatively drank the iced fruit drinks not knowing where the water came from, but being unwilling to break the peace that had come. Thankfully, the water that was used was untainted and no illness came on them.
When my wife and kids have gone for more than a couple of weeks to Venezuela, they always end up sick for a little while. It seems inevitable. You just accept that it’s going to happen and prepare for it.
Jeremy,
This is good generally good advice but do you really believe this statement regarding food: “If it doesn’t kill the national, then I think you’ll be fine?”
Yes, actually, I do. Perhaps there’s a bit of hyperbole there, and if that bothers you – sorry. However, it seems a bit odd to me that so many volunteers ask that question (in a variety of ways). The nationals are not going to serve anything dangerous. They are usually serving what they eat or better, and they usually look pretty healthy.
I’ve eaten a lot of odd foods and a lot of normal foods from odd sources, but I’ve never put anything in my mouth that made me sick in a way that reflected poor food quality or sloppy preparation. Eventually, everyone who stays on the field long enough will end up consuming a germ or a bug or something that makes them sick, but those moments are by far the exception, not the rule.
You don’t believe a person needs to cautious about water, wet fresh vegetables or cooked food that one cannot verify when it was prepared?
As a general rule, caution is a good thing. However…
My point is not that you should never wonder what you are eating, or that volunteers should never prefer Safe Item A over Dubious Item B. Instead, I’m trying to point out that there are larger issues at stake. We’ve answered these questions while sitting in private homes, with our hosts standing there attempting to hand over a plate of carefully prepared food, anxiously wondering why these respected visitors won’t gratefully accept the food. We’ve fielded these queries while sitting in nice restaurants with the volunteers looking skeptically at a plate of professionally prepared food that reflects national heritage while nationals wonder why everyone has such a nasty facial expression.
And then, we get to share to love of Jesus with these insulted people!
I’ve yet to encounter any national anywhere I’ve been – Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Israel, Gaza, Barbados, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador – who was casual about food cleanliness or quality. Some of those places require more caution than others, to be sure, but in the end we came out just fine.
So many volunteers are so overly cautious, wiping every surface and cleaning every utensil, conveniently forgetting that locals live here just fine…without bottles of water-free scented hand sterilizer.
I would worry more about Taco Bell. Experience speaking.
It’s wise to be cautious with food. But, as a missionary serving in Guatemala, I always want to say to people: “Do you think I would take you somewhere to eat if I thought you would get sick from the food?” Come on. Trust the local missionary–you’re not a tourist eating street food (though I know some places this is safe, and can safely take teams there to try typical food). It’s a matter of respect and our “superior” attitude- Jeremy, I cringed at your reference to nasty facial expressions as a “appetizer” to sharing the gospel. Have seen it too often. . .been guilty of it myself at times and have had to repent. Wise counsel to those contemplating a short-term trip.
Thanks, Pat…
We are on the same page here.
Over the past 5 1/2 years with teams here here to minister with us in theDR there have only been a couple “problems” with food…..and who knows, maybe it wasn’t the food at all.
Good article, good advice .
AMEN! Preach it brother J!
I think as missionaries, we also need to learn as we go. We share what we know, but we also receive wisdom from our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. Maybe they have a better way of doing things, and we might learn a thing or two.
Dan, so true. Two books that have greatly benefited me and our org are When Helping Hurts and Toxic Charity. I highly recommend both when going to another culture, especially third world countries like Haiti where work.
Les
I have never read them, but heard about them and have some missionary friends who share with me the same things. The frustrations of short term missionaries trying to Americanize everything, trying to change and reshape everything, making a mess and then leaving. We need to get out of our heads that American Christianity is right. It won’t be long before these nations will be sending mission groups here (some of them already are).
Toxic Charity was excellent. I just recommended it to a pastor today regarding their church’s mission work as well.
This is all very good. I would just say about the food thing, I’ve been to Haiti leading groups now I think 13 times over the last two years. Just got back last week. Having taken about 200 different people on all those trips, we have had only a couple of stomach issues, and we eat only local food freshly prepared. It is customary Haitian food, and it is great. One should definitely respect the local custom and partake as they do. Demanding your own kinds of food is out of place. That guy should stay home.
We drink only purified water though. Haiti water is quite dangerous to Americans’ systems.
One other thing. We make every attempt in the orphan care we support to buy local and employ local, etc. The books I mentioned above talk about this. For every hammer one of us swings or every saw we operate or every wheelbarrow we push, a Haitian man (usually) is missing out on earning some dollars to feed himself and his family.
So mission teams, I think, in most cases need to disabuse themselves of the idea that we Americans are coming to the rescue to build for you and fix things for you and so on.
We can learn so much from the other culture if we just listen. Anyone interested in seeing what we try to do in the way of development instead of just giving can check it out at http://haitiorphanproject.org/
God bless.
Les
Thank you for this article! As a missionary who hosts teams this hit the nail on the head. I so appreciate the short term workers, but some are easier to appreciate than others. I plan on making this required reading for all future teams.