The Picture I Promised I'd Never Show

It was a stereotypical African missions scene...

Riding in a white SUV through a dusty impoverished village in sub-Saharan Africa...

Two white Americans, a black Xhosa, and a Coloured.

As soon as the SUV stopped, little kids came running towards from every direction, yelling, "Photo! Photo!"

So what did the white American pastor say? "Hey, let's get a picture!"

I caught the look on the face of the national pastor who was hosting us, whose truck we'd been riding in, and whose church plant leadership team we were about to meet.

Typical American missionaries.

Typical abuse.

Typical misuse.

Typical stereotypical [sic] approach to missions.

Find poverty, drama, need... Take pictures with the poor children... then go home and use them to raise money - for OUR projects, for OUR programs.

Go home and back to work... eat your food... sleep in your nice bed - never mind that you just embarrassed the heck out of an entire village, a new church plant in that village, and the very pastor who is hosting you.

So I promised our friend, the national pastor, that I would not use that photo.

We had no relationship with these kids.

No ministry took place with them.

We didn't know their names, their parents, their language, their needs - it was a total hit and run.

To use that photo would have been hypocrisy at it's finest.

I'm breaking my promise...

Here's the photo... with the proper caption:


Exploitation is not just for colonialists anymore.

American short term missions teams have perfected the art, to the detriment of the Name of Christ.

Not cool, dude.

Where do YOU draw the line?

Which is more important... Local or Global?

A few weeks ago, someone wrote in response to one of our missions newsletters: "I feel frustrated because it seems the entire focus of this mission newsletter is on missions to other places. Yet, we have such a HUGE need right here in our back yard."

To be honest, we hear this frustration a lot in missions – and it’s often the kickoff for some great discussions about what missions really is, and unveils the beauty of His Church as a transformational force in any community.

Most Western/American missions activities are focused on crossing cultural boundaries in order to EXPAND the global Church. This is indeed part of Christ's mission to the world ("Go into all the world and preach the gospel…").

But we also believe that every local church exists to be a positive TRANSFORMATIONAL force within it's own community. It is difficult for an "outsider" (a short term missions team) to address the deepest core problems in a community. We don't have the history or depth of understanding to treat both the cause and the effect, so we focus more on relief than development - on giving people fish instead of teaching them to fish.

In this tension we begin to see the beauty of God's design for the local church, and His Mission to the world. On one hand, He sends us to carry the Gospel across borders and cultural boundaries ("Go into all the world and preach the gospel…"), and on the other hand He calls His Church to address the unique needs and developmental problems within their own communities ("the essence of true religion is to minister to widows and orphans").

Christ has one Mission to the world - and we are coming to understand that modern, Western Christianity needs to embrace the fullness of that Mission. The bottom line is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, everywhere.

We believe that a single person who has deeply and passionately connected to what Christ wants them to do is much more fruitful in the long term than funneling people into our projects and our programs. We in the local church must be committed to investing in people through discipleship, and releasing them to do the ministry that God has called them to do.