Short-Term Mission Trips

When Helping Hurts has opened my eyes to some of the dangers of short-term mission trips. The authors are not against such trips, but realize that they can produce harm if improperly carried out. For many years I struggled with these experiences because of the vast amounts of money which they required. Generally speaking, I could not reconcile the cost with their effect. Stewardship is one of the issues the authors raise when it comes to these missions, but there are several other potential problems which they see.
For instance, they share a quote which reveals that it is possible for such teams to actually destroy the work which indigenous workers have been effectively carrying out: "Our indigenous staff tell me that the children stop coming [to weekly Bible studies] because we do not have all the fancy materials and crafts that the short-term teams have, and we do not give away things like these teams do. The children have also come to believe that our staff are not as interesting or as creative as the Americans that come on these teams." (p. 169). How sad to hear that our good intentions, hard work and creativity can lead to a decrease in kingdom activity - but they can.

Asset-Based Development

Corbett and Fikkert continue to get me thinking in When Helping Hurts. Many of us involved in some sort of relief and development type ministry begin by looking for needs and then we seek to meet those needs. We see hungry people on the street and so we buy them a sandwich or we find someone suffering with a medical condition and so we bandage their wound or provide them with adequate medication.
These two men suggest that there is a better way to begin: Asset Based Community Development (ABCD). They posit that rather than looking first for needs in a community, one should look for resources. There are different ways of doing this but what is essential is discovering what a community has to offer (eg. the ability to cook, the ability to repair a bike, small amounts of money, etc.) and then finding ways for that community to put those assets to work. This builds confidence in the people, teaches them that they have talents and gets them to work at changing their condition rather than turning them into dependents who look to outsiders for aid.