When Helping Hurts

(#AmazonAdLink) I recently finished reading a book called (#AmazonAdLink) When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. In it they write about the great damage that churches and missionaries can do at home and overseas when we try to “meet the needs of others” in our mission activity and outreach endeavors. It was a real eye-opener for me, to see that there might be a better way to do “missions.”

For example, they have a whole chapter on rethinking Short Term Missions.  In one part of the chapter, they write that in many “Majority World” countries (aka “Third World”), we could fund a full time national evangelist there for $1540 per year. The average Short Term Mission (STM) from the US to those same countries runs between $20,000 and $40,000 for ten people to go for two weeks. “The money spent on a single  STM team for a one- to two- week experience would be sufficient to support more than a dozen far more effective indigenous workers for an entire year. And we complain about wasteful government spending!” (p. 173).

This doesn’t mean there aren’t benefits to Short Term Missions, but they can and should be done in a much different way. Consider also that in 2006, US churches spent $1,600,000,000 on Short Term Missions (p. 161). Do you think this was a good use of that much money?

As another example, consider the following quote from a ministry leader in a Latin America:

The indigenous staff in my organization lead weekly Bible studies with children in low-income communities. These Bible studies are just one aspect of my organization’s overall attempts to bring long-lasting development to these broken communities. After a short-term team conducts a Bible study in one of these communities, the children stop attending the Bible studies of my organization. Our indigenous staff tell me that the children stop coming because we do not have all the fancy materials and crafts that 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 teh Americans that come on these teams (p. 169).

Sad, huh? But imagine the report that this team brought back to their home church about all the children they ministered to!

The book abounds with such information and ideas, so please, if you are involved in the mission board of your church, are helping plan a mission, have teenagers going on a mission, or are thinking of going on a mission trip yourself (even if it is just to the local homeless shelter), (#AmazonAdLink) you must read this book.