Rethinking Mission Trips

Imagine someone from a foreign country coming to your home. Their culture, beliefs, and ways of life are strange and different from your own. But they insist that even though you live in a completely different place than they do that you must change your ways to be like them. They have little interest in learning and being changed by you, because they do not plan to stay for a long visit. But still they insist that you should be forever changed to be like them because of your encounter with them.

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This is the picture of a typical missionary trip. Our intentions are to go somewhere and change peoples lives to more closely resemble our own. Lets admit it. It is selfish to impose ourselves on another person in this manner.

We are always doing mission work with person X in mind. Person X is that person currently untouched by the message of Jesus. And boy is there a badge of honor associated with getting person X to join your team.

I want to propose a new take on mission trips. Yes I think we should do them but we should totally change our agenda. Instead of going to these far off strange places to serve others, let us go to these places so others can serve us. I know what your thinking.....'what? that sounds completely counter-intuitive to spreading the gospel.' Just relax.  It will be alright, I kind of offended myself when the thought first popped in my head.

When we show up in a strange and weird places to spread the gospel, we come across as foreign. In this situation we are the strangers who need to be welcomed in and shown mercy. We should go knowing that the only service we provide is the opportunity for others to show us God's grace. It is only when we accept this grace that we can find the freedom necessary to move past the trapping of our own present worlds. What hope could be found by seeing God's faithfulness to his people living in more desperate situations as they share his unconditional with us? Once we are changed by this type of interactions with other people, we will be open to showing the same love and mercy to those who we interact with daily. As we find ourselves in a healthy place with those God has already placed in our lives, we can naturally be more open to those that we might have before encountered as strange.