Serving with Eyes Wide Open - Part VII
We’re still rolling through the series on the book Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence by David A. Livermore. We’re in the section of the book titled “Conflicting Images: Americans’ vs. Nationals’ Perspectives on Short-Term Missions.” Today’s chapter is called “Money: They’re So Happy.” Money always gets people riled up, so let’s jump right in…
- - “Generosity brings with it subtle but important issues of power. We need to widen our perspective to think about how to respond to the poverty we often encounter when we travel to new cultural contexts.”
- “We must resist thinking everyone longs to live [in the United States]. There are privileges that come with being African and Chinese and Latin. There are blessing inherent to people living in places all over the world. Let’s bring perspective to realizing not everyone in the world longingly wishes they had been born American.”
- “…there are ways we’re poor and ways we’re rich. The same is true in the majority world.”
- “Shane Claiborne of the Simple Way in Philadelphia thinks most American Christians do care about the poor. He says, ‘I believe the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor, but that they do not know the poor.’ He believes we resort to charitable giving as a way to ease our consciences rather than really entering into mutually enriching relationships with people who are financially poor.”
- “We do have something to offer, but let’s discover what that is through dialogue with the majority world church.”
- “The presence and change for relationship together seemed to be the most pressing need for the Rwandan church beyond any menial tasks that were planned. Do the menial tasks; they teach us about serving, and we get to serve alongside our brothers and sisters. Be sure to remember, however, that painting a room…or putting in windows isn’t really what it’s about. It’s about meeting a deeper need in us and them.”
- “Rather than demeaning them as tragic objects to be rescued, what does it look like to see them as our equals so that we walk with them and learn from them, each benefiting from one another’s ‘wealth’ and ’sacrifice’?”
It’s so true, generosity does bring with it subtle issues of power…whether you’re aware of it or not! Short-term mission trip participants have to work extremely hard on this issue. The first impulse is to give…give…GIVE! And that impulse is not necessarily a bad one. But we have to think about what edifies and builds Christian brotherhood or sisterhood with the national (or majority world person).
What can we do to see the neighbors we meet on short-term mission trips as our equals and not as objects to be rescued?
