Short term Missions (thoughts inspired by Jamie, the Very World Missionary) | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

 

 See this thought-provoking post

And here is the comment I left on her post

Short term missions

Negatives
Churches and individuals spend money that could have gone a loooong way in the third and fourth world on airfare to fly half way across the world to build and paint when local professionals could have done it for a fraction of the cost.A big waste of money!!

Positives
Many career missionaries, whom one hopes are loving and investing in those whom nobody else can or will invest in, start as short-term missionaries.
For children in orphanages, being hugged by a stranger for two weeks is better than not being hugged at all.
I have never been on a short-term mission. If I did, I would like to work with Heidi Baker in Mozambique as much for what I might be able to learn from her as for any benefit her orphans might receive from the love I will undoubtedly lavish on them.

                               ~ ~ ~

There is a certain amount of absurdity to it. 

Middle-class Christians who have invested as much as they can to ensure their kids never have to live as those in Sudan or Chad, let’s say, send their children on mission trips to deprived areas of the world–trips on which they are not willing to accompany them, for the most part–hoping that by seeing poverty they will learn lessons of gratitude which the parents themselves have not learnt.

I have supported short-term missionaries if I have been wowed by their character–as an investment in them–but, on the whole, I believe investing in people who invest in communities for the long haul is far better.