Educators everywhere know about the “Three R’s”. The Three R’s represent the most basic fundamentals of schooling: “Reading, (w)Riting and (a)Rithmetic.” The Three Rs are the subjects that everyone in every school should have. Sure, science, history, geography, music, art and so on are important and neglected. But if you had a less than ideal education environment and had to limit the curriculum, you’d be sure to include the Three Rs. These three subjects are considered so vital that to fail to offer them is to fail the student.
For the last several posts, I have been responding to a set of articles posted at CT’s weblog that questioned the value of Short Term Mission trips. The authors, both professors of missiology and sociology have looked at some research that went beyond the self-report of mission trip participants (“It really, really changed my life.”) to measure what changes actually occurred in both their lives and the lives of those people who received their mission trip and ministry (Uh…not much.)
But neither professor is eager to abandon STMS as a whole, they instead want to see mission trips be better integrated into an ongoing process of discipleship that is focused even more on what happens after the trip than before. And to that end, I want to put forth the “three Rs” of Truly Transforming Mission Trips.
I want to suggest that even more than WHAT is done on the trip (evangelism, building project, medical mission) is the discipleship context for the doing. Even more important than meeting a need, responding to a crisis, experiencing a different culture or just “doing good” is maintaining a discipleship focus that actually transforms those who participate more and more in conformity with the character and mission of Jesus Christ.
Last post I touched on the first R: Relationships.
For Mission Trips to truly transform the lives of all the participants (both those who go on the trips and those who receive the “missionaries”) then a basic rule of thumb is that the greater the amount of ongoing relationship, reinforced relationship, deepened relationship, the better. (The article authors offer a nice discussion about the difference between bonding and bridging capital and how mission trips should encourage both.)
This should not be surprising, because we see it most demonstrably in the mission of Jesus. Jesus spent more time building a community of disciples than he actually did preaching the gospel or healing people. When he sent his disciples on their first “mission trip” (Matthew 10) the first instructions he gave them was to go where people welcomed them. If there was no desire for relationship, then there would be no mission.
In the same way, our church has begun to reevaluate its mission partnerships based on whether the missionaries offer us opportunities for ongoing mutual relationships. Is there a community of people in the mission field who will partner with our church? Would they be willing to come visit us? Can we keep in contact? Will there be ongoing communication between us? Can we send teams at least every year? Will this be a genuine partnership where we are mutually transformed by the partnership? We also have invited other churches where we have some ongoing relationship (like the churches pastured by my covenant group members) to join us in the partnership.
Our involvement in the Y-Malawi Partnership was based exactly on these criteria and on our trip to Africa we even spent considerable time and expense to build relationships with each other, other team members from partner churches and our mission partners in Africa. Indeed, we paid the expenses of the leaders of the African ministries to join us for two days at a game park where we deepened our friendships and talk and prayed together about our partnership.
Now to be sure, most every one who comes back from a mission trip says that they will maintain contact and friendship with the people they met. And by and large, most don’t. They mean to, but once they get home, “real life” gets in the way of these new “relationships.”
The same thing happens with members of mission teams. They might be eagerly spend time preparing to go on the trip, raising money or sacrificing vacation time to go, but the minute they get off of the plane, they find it difficult to get together to even share photos or remember stories over dinner. (This is exactly what happened to our Africa team. We had one dinner together when we returned and our second dinner will be next week, a good three months since our return.)
The research suggests that the less a mission trip is an isolated experience and instead an expression of a building relationship between the members of trips, the churches that send them and the people who receive them, the greater the long-term impact on both those who go and those who receive the mission team.
Relationships are also, in the end, easier to sustain than some emphemeral commitment to "missions". When I have a relationship with someone we work together to strengthen the bond, to mutually encourage each other and to grow in Christ. Just this past week I received pictures 
from one of our partners, Louise Laubscher of Fishers, Trainers, and Senders Ministry in Malawi. The people in the pictures are holding Bibles that I personally hauled all the way to Africa in one of my bags. Louise sent us the pictures to say thanks and to encourage us. (I got to tell you that one picture like that and I am ready to swim back to Africa carrying the Bible in my teeth.)
One last thing, it is this priority on relationships that has made me skeptical and cautious about encouraging of the ONE campaign. My skepticism is about any government run or widespread program that simply wants to add more money to the crisis of poverty and disease in Africa through bureaucracies. I would much rather see ongoing grassroots partnerships between communities of Christians both in Africa and the western world. But, it was because of my relationships with some Christian leaders (including those at World Vision) that convinced me that part (not all) of what our friends in Africa needed would only be met by larger governmental involvement. The ONE campaign raised awareness, brought the issues of Africa to the table of the G8 leaders and encouraged lively debate. Indeed, crippling economic debt, and widespread medication for Malaria and AIDS are solutions beyond what “relationships” can achieve.
But at the same time, wearing a wristband, watching a concert on TV or emailing the President is not the same as having a relationship with a family that is struggling to survive. Awareness and experience open the door to transformation, but only relationships truly transform.
Tomorrow the second R: Reflection
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