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.
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