Church Mission Trips, or Vacations?

I am not an expert when it comes to mission trips,but I have been on several. They are lots of fun and do have some impact. But how much impact may be the real question. Recently an article was linked to on the Baptist Today website regarding the whole issue of church mission trips. If you would like to read it here is the link:

http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/1145515.html

Last year I went on a mission trip that cost me close to a thousand dollars. It covered flight tickets, meals and hotels. The meals and hotels were very high dollar places and honestly I felt guilty eating at such places while the people we ministered to were very poor. It is not the fault of the mission agency I went with, but honestly it did bother me some.

The place and agency I went with, had many, many groups coming in doing pretty much the same thing we had just been doing and the kids were gonna get the exact same mission type activities right after we finished. I gather the kids we ministered to had multiple groups come through all year round. It was as if we blew in and blew out of their lives and had little if any connectionality with them.

I too, much like the article linked says, think maybe the mission trips are really in essence mission vacations of sorts. Think of how much mission projects could be done here in the area where I serve with the same money raised to go on a mission trip.  The money I raised for my mission trip was double  what we spent on VBS!

Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not opposed to short term mission trips for churches. I am just wondering how much impact they really have. Are we really using them as an excuse for a vacation trip with a mission purpose?  I receive on occasion letters from friends raising funds for these very trips.  Is this a growing trend? Will I receive more and more such letters from friends going on so called mission trips? 

Could money be better spent reaching the lost in our own areas? America is becoming more and more unchurched and the fields are white unto harvest, but instead we go elsewhere with large chunks of money only to neglect our own neighbors. Some churches that go on mission trips are doing both foreign and local missions. For those churches I applaud. Honestly is it not more exotic to go overseas on a mission trip, than to a neighborhood near by and host a block party for them? 

On overseas mission trips, you can share the gospel and then pack up and come back home. But here on the home field, we gotta still act like a Christian while still sharing the gospel with our neighbors. The later is a much more difficult task.  Afterall on overseas mission trips, we can put  on our check list of accomplishments those many trips to far away places. Going to a neighborhood a few blocks away, why that’s not missions or is it?

Gotta admit I get a little frustrated with sending so much money from our church budget to missions and having little or nothing for our own outreach.  In my little church, we literally gotta raise money for outreach, cause it is all going to other missions giving.  In many churches we send it all into the cooperative program, that way we are doing missions. It is almost like “paying” our missions guilt machine and then saying, “We support and do missions”.

I guess I agree with the article by asking the following question: “Should we raise and spend thousands upon thousands to send a small group on a mission trip and yet can’t do missions in our own nieghborhood?”.

Jesus commands us to go. From Jerusalem and to the outer most parts of the world.  I think sometimes we skip our own “Jerusalem”.

It’s just my opinion.

Christians and Boycotting

I read an article recently about a group of Christians who were gonna boycott a particular establishment to make a statement regarding the sin of homosexuality. The article was linked from the Baptist Today website on it’s news portion. If you would like to read it I have it linked here:  http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2008/07/conservative_christians_launch.html

I worked for a fellow who was very much into boycotts. I was a new Christian and he had a strong influence on me. He wanted me to boycott a particular grocery store, because it was supposedly owned by the Mormons. He felt very strongly that Christian ought not spend money at that grocery store and thus put money in the pockets of the “evil” Mormon empire.

Being the inquiring mind that I was, I asked what impact it might have on anything. My little money spent there, would hardly be noticed, I argued. He insisted that it was the principle of the thing. Being new to the faith at the time, I was stupid enough to actually asks him what his scriptural basis for boycotting was. I really don’t recall what verses he said, but many have justified it with the the notion of “appearance of evil” mentioned in Scripture and other cherry picked verses.

Ever since I have tried to put myself in the position of a person who works at a place that might be boycotted. Say I work at the hotel that is mentioned in the article mentioned earlier. I have chosen to work there to support my family. Say I am a part-time pastor and working there is to support my ministry at the church. While there I strive to be a positive witness for my Savior. And then I hear about this boycott. Well this boycott directly affects me. Suppose I am a waiter, who depends upon those tips. My salary will be hurt drasticly. And I would be an innocent bystander.

And if I am not a Christian and am one who is being “witnessed” to by a fellow Christian employee, then it causes me to think twice about what they are doing. It does not present a pretty picture. It is a picture of hate to those whom Christians are suppose to love. It hurts the image of Christ and His church.

Boycotting in many cases hurts more than it helps. It does damage to innocent employees and employers. They are in need of the love of the Savior too. Do we boycott and damn to hell those whom it impacts? Do we boycott and let the chips fall where they may?  How did Jesus boycott? Should He have boycotted the homes of sinners? Should He have not gone to the home of sinners, like the pharisees said?  Isn’t boycotting a type of phariseeism?  Don’t we, by boycotting say, “To show you how spiritual and holy I am, I will boycott any establishment that is ungodly” and thus look like pumped up pharisees?

I say to those non-pharisaical Christians in Sacramento, go to that establishment and tip even more and smile while doing so. Let Christ shine forth in you while doing so.  By doing that you might be able to reverse the horrible damage done by those crazy boycotters. Tip for Jesus!

“How Many Members Ya Got?”

I was reading recently the blog Cottonheadconfessions.blogspot.com and Jan Cartledge had written in response to the question: “Do You Love Church?” at the recent CBF convention.  Her response was very good and eye opening. But one of the “reasons” she listed as why she did not love the church caught my attention.

“I don’t love church when people ask me how many people attend the church I pastor. Why is the success of a church based on the number of members the church can claim? I’ve taken to responding to such questions by saying, “we don’t base our success on numbers – we base our success on loving God and others.” In the minds of many today, if a church doesn’t include a large campus, mega-sanctuary, family life center, free coffee and a thousand in membership, it’s not a success.”

I too get really irritated with the question of numbers that attend my church. Really what is going on in peoples minds when they ask the question, “How many members ya got?”, is “Is my church bigger and better than that one?”.  We can easily get caught up in the numbers game. As soon as the associational report comes out, we jump to the page that list numbers for the past year. We start comparing our church to others and try to justify our existence.  “Why at least we are doing better than half a dozen of those sad, pitiful, ungodly churches.” Or we may even compare percentages. “My church gives more to missions that the huge downtown church, on a percentage basis.”

Let’s admit it, at the very least in Baptist circles we measure success on numbers.  Why we even reward churches for having “good” numbers.  In many associations we give out awards for most baptisms, most in Sunday School etc. So we are saying that numbers are important. The reality is that we live in a numbers driven denomination.  We measure the worth of a church in numbers. As a matter of fact, numbers determine participation in many levels. Such as amount of money given or number of members, determines number of “delegates” or voting members to local associations, state and national levels of Baptist work.

The larger the number, the more “votes” you can have and the greater influence at said Baptist meetings. So the smaller churches are pushed to the bottom rung of Baptist life. And yet the majority of churches in the USA are small churches with an attendance of less than 200. Is it any wonder small churches feel left out?

 Maybe we ought to ask a different question when we wanna know about a particular church. Anything but numbers, it is hard I admit, but how about asking, “How can I pray for your church today?”.  I would love for someone to ask me that. I buckle up when someone asks me “How many members ya got?”.  I have been tempted to respond with a smart remark such as, “How many times have you farted today?”. I know that sounds rude, but that is about how rude I feel the question of membership is.

It’s just my opinion.