Shane Claiborne of the Simple Way in Philadelphia thinks most North 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.”[87] 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.
To Give or Not to Give?
If we think of people as “poor,” we demean them. If we ignore the fact that two billion people live on less than two dollars a day, we’re selfish consumers. Is there any way out of this?
This is precisely the dilemma Boone, from Richard Dooling’s White Man’s Grave, was feeling as he continued to experience life as an American in the world of Sierra Leone. Boone refused to be the rich North American who had African servants working for him while he looked for his Peace Corps friend Michael. Boone turned down six kids who wanted to be his servants. His African host says, “You’re a millionaire. Share the wealth. For 25 cents, someone will clean your room. For a dime, someone will walk 2 miles for you to get a bucket of water for you to bathe in. Nobody here is going to admire you for not hiring servants. You’ll just be thought of as unbelievably stingy.”[88]
This example brings up the same kind of dissonance I feel when I’m told I shouldn’t give money to homeless people because they’ll just spend it on more alcohol. But the alternative, avoiding eye contact and ignoring a person in need, doesn’t sit right. There is a clear ethical responsibility that comes with encountering poverty.[89]
Terence Linhart talks about how encountering poverty challenged the high school students from Indiana who traveled to Ecuador. Eighteen-year-old Amy looked over the town from her hotel and said, “It’s just amazing, the poverty. Like, it breaks my heart, but it makes me feel so spoiled, and like I’m such an evil person.”[90] Another student said, “Living in America is a blessing and a curse at the same time. There’s a blessing because you have all this stuff, but all the stuff is a curse, you know?”[91]
Adults report the same kind of dilemma when returning from short-term missions trips. Typical comments made by adult participants include: “We’re so blessed. I realize it when I see how little they have.” “I’m so encouraged by how much they do with so little.” “I have it so good and I never want to take it for granted after seeing the joy in these people’s faces even though they have so little.” My fear is that this kind of observation makes it too easy to jump on a plane in Ecuador or Ethiopia and go home convinced that “those people are so happy just the way they are!”
On the other hand, many people living in poverty possess amazing wealth in other areas. Rather than demeaning them as tragic objects to be rescued, we need to see them as our equals so we can walk with them and learn from them, each benefiting from one another’s “wealth” and sacrifice.[92]
Concluding Thoughts
The realities that come with money cause me a great deal of personal dissonance. Even as I write, I’m doing so from the cozy Starbucks a few blocks from my home. I’m well aware of the many whose weekly wage is equal to the cost of the latte I’m sipping. That’s problematic, but how might our sympathy for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in majority world places lead us to treat them in demeaning ways? Our wealth creates all kinds of power issues, and as much as we want to talk about collaborative relationships between churches in different cultures, a majority world church leader who feels safe to be really honest with you may well confess that he realizes the need to keep the “partnering” church in the West happy so that funds keep flowing.
On the other hand, we must not ease our consciences by thinking they’re happy enough without our money. Maybe I need to sip a few less lattes every week and invest those same dollars to help free a couple young girls in Bangkok from prostitution. What if we committed to spend at least as much money supporting the projects we visit on our short-term trips as we do on getting us there? What if our building projects included hiring local labor and only buying local materials?
The road forward requires us to look at some of these tensions. As we look honestly at the complexity of the issues related to money, our perspective begins to widen, which allows us to serve more effectively. All this perspective widening will translate into action. Changed perspective equals changed practice. We’ll look at that more in part 3, but first we need to look at one more reality in North American short-term missions. This one overrides all the others.
8
Simplicity
“You’re Either for Us or against Us!”
Through the eyes of North Americans . . . Through the eyes of majority world Christians . . .
It was unbelievable. They treated us like rock stars. The Brazilians were like storming the stage, asking for our autographs, and chasing our buses. I don’t think they get to see Americans very often. This was all a big joke one of our Brazilian friends started. We pretended they were famous by storming the stage and asking for their autographs. But we live in Sao Paulo—one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. We’ve seen plenty of Americans.
President George W. Bush will be chronicled in history books for his frequently repeated mantra to the world, “You’re either with us or you’re for the terrorists.”[93]
Many of my friends from other parts of the world were confused by his statement and, even more, the thinking behind it. Shortly after 9/11, one of my Asian friends said to me, “I don’t for a second condone what the terrorists did to you on 9/11. It was a horrifying time for all of us to see you attacked that way. So I’m not for the terrorists. But neither can I support the way the US so quickly moved into Iraq and Afghanistan without more global input. Why does it have to be an either/or?”
Filmmaker Michael Moore appears to exercise the same kind of either/or oversimplification for which he so brutally attacks Bush in his documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore asked Pete Townshend, British rock star of The Who, for permission to use his anthem “Won’t Get Fooled Again” as part of the soundtrack for Fahrenheit 9/11. Townshend refused because he felt that Moore’s previous works demonstrated bullying and a lack of critical engagement with key issues. In response, Moore accused Townshend of being a war supporter. Townshend said Moore’s attitude seemed like the very credo he was criticizing in Bush: “If you’re not with me, you’re against me.”[94]
I’m not after a political debate right now. I’m more interested in looking at the very American-like simplicity demonstrated by Bush and Moore alike. The simplicity conflict cuts across all the other factors we’ve considered. Our conclusions about why we should go, our sense of urgency, and our use of Scripture and money all flow from our tendency to oversimplify complex issues. In particular, the quest to find common ground is seamlessly related to the simplicity conflict.
Simplistic categories have been central to our US ethos. An American is either Republican or Democrat, blue collar or white collar, liberal or conservative, modern or postmodern, environmentalist or industrialist. Of course, one of the things that’s happened in our twenty-first-century world is an exposure of the fallacy of these clear-cut categories. Life isn’t that neatly ordered. There is a place for simplicity. A few things in life are clear-cut, but most of life is not. In particular, most cross-cultural issues are far too complex to be placed in one category or another. The simplicity factor shows up in short-term missions through an overuse of the K.I.S.S. principle, the rock-star complex, and the ways short-term missionaries describe the lessons they learned.
The K.I.S.S. Principle
North American Christians have often embraced the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle for many purposes. K.I.S.S. is a familiar mantra in short-term missions too, whether it’s the importance of simplicity in planning our itinerary, our testimony, or our plans for follow-up. “Keep it simple,” we’re told.
There is a place for the K.I.S.S. principle. I spend a great deal of time in univers
ity settings, where we often make things unnecessarily complicated. Overcomplexity can paralyze us and keep us from getting anywhere. But many times K.I.S.S. becomes a hindrance to cultural intelligence. If we overemphasize the K.I.S.S. principle and never ask the deeper questions, we’re at risk of missing some core issues, particularly in cross-cultural work. We’ll keep it simple but remain stupid.
We already looked at how easily we inaccurately interpret familiar behaviors. Short-termers assume smiling, nodding, and silence mean the same things for all people. Likewise, the way we too quickly apply the behavior of one person to everyone in a culture is another demonstration of the K.I.S.S. principle negatively at work.
I first became aware of the prevalence of the K.I.S.S. principle in short-term work when I began asking short-term participants what they observed about the new context they visited. When I asked, “What’s the number one thing that stands out in your mind from what you experienced in this new cultural context?” I most often heard these kinds of responses, from both adults and youth:
“People were driving on the wrong side of the road. That was the first thing I noticed, as well as the foreign language of course, and having to figure out their money.”
“I always notice the children most. I never get used to seeing these young kids have to beg for food. It’s so unfair that kids have to grow up there.”
“It’s not as modern as things here. They don’t have jetways at the airports, and they aren’t very organized.”
“The buildings and cars are different. . . . They don’t have standards for that kind of stuff like we do.”
“The poverty is what I notice the most. It’s hard to believe people live in conditions like that. And they have chain-link fences everywhere.”
“I just notice how happy everyone is. They have so little but they’re so happy.”
By now, you probably recognize many of these kinds of statements from the last several chapters. One of the things I’m striving for in this book is to help us move away from using the K.I.S.S. principle as our guiding protocol for short-term work. Lumping everything into simplistic categories or looking at only surface-level issues is not helpful in bringing about effective ministry across cultures. You don’t need a graduate course in intercultural studies to do short-term missions well. However, we have to open our eyes to some of the things happening below the surface. We’ll look at some suggestions on how to get there in the next section. Before we get there, though, let’s look at a couple of the other ways we tend to oversimplify our thinking in short-term missions.
The Rock-Star Complex
Another way the simplicity factor frequently shows up is through the presence of a rock-star complex when we serve cross-culturally for a few days. This is another way to describe ethnocentrism—the tendency to define what’s normal and best based on our own cultural perspective. It’s the assumption that the world revolves around us. Here are a couple ways I’ve seen ethnocentrism or the rock-star complex get played out on short-term trips.
A few years ago, I attended a church service in the Chicago area in which a youth group was reporting on its recent two-week trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil. The youth group had done a number of musical and dramatic presentations in public schools, churches, and shopping centers throughout Sao Paulo. The team of students and adults described the typical things heard from a group like this, including the ways their hearts were stretched by the generosity and contentment of the people, the challenge to consider missions as a vocation, and the need for us to pray for the struggling, small Brazilian churches.
In addition, nearly every student described how strange it was to be treated like rock stars whenever they completed one of their performances. One student said, “It was unbelievable. They treated us like rock stars. The Brazilians were like storming the stage, asking for our autographs, and chasing our buses as we drove away. I don’t think they get to see Americans very often.”
That same night, I met a couple Brazilian teenagers who had been with this youth group in Sao Paulo and were now in the US for a year as exchange students. Given my interest in comparing North American perceptions of short-term missions with those of the people who receive them, I asked them what they observed about the North American group while they were there. The Brazilian teenagers spoke warmly of the friendships they developed, particularly since they themselves were now on the other side of cross-cultural travel. They talked about the joy they experienced as they heard the testimonies and music from these American students.
After the Brazilian students spent a lot of time affirming the Chicago students, I jumped in and said, “So tell me about this whole thing of being treated like rock stars.” The Brazilian students immediately started laughing and blushing. After I insisted they tell me what was so funny, they said, “Okay—this is so bad. But this was all a big joke one of our Brazilian friends started. He decided we’d make them think they were famous and everything by storming the stage, asking for their autographs, getting their pictures, and that kind of stuff. I mean, we live in Sao Paulo—one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. We’ve seen plenty of Americans. Don’t get me wrong. We enjoyed their music and drama and stuff, but they weren’t exactly ‘rock stars’ in our eyes.”
You certainly can’t fault the North American students for being confused. They were duped. But the problem was when they jumped to a conclusion about what this all meant. And before we’re too quick to explain this away as youthful naïveté, I haven’t seen a significant difference among adults who go overseas on short-term trips. The rock-star complex is the same tendency that drove the North American pastors to confidently claim, “They’re so hungry for our training” and “We have a biblical model that applies to everyone.”
Some people have said to me, “C’mon. This rock-star syndrome isn’t unique to cross-cultural ministry. This is just arrogance. That’s why these kids think everyone wants their autographs. That’s why pastors assume everyone wants their training.”
I’m not so sure! Certainly, all of us struggle with wanting to prove ourselves. So I’m sure some of that weaves through our cross-cultural behaviors. But I think this is more than pride.
One of the things that surprised me most in my study of North American pastors’ cross-cultural training was the difference between what they said before they went on their trips and how they behaved when they got there. In my conversations with them prior to their trips, they espoused and demonstrated a strong spirit of humility. They weren’t the self-absorbed people they may appear to be when we read their arrogant, insensitive comments written on a page. Likewise, most of the high school students I talk to about their mission trips are conscious of wanting to be learners. So why do they still end up being so ethnocentric and colonialist in their cross-cultural work? Why do they develop a rock-star complex? In part, it comes back to the issue of simplicity.
On the whole, North Americans are not inclined to reflective thinking beyond surface-level observations. The K.I.S.S. principle drives much of how we approach cross-cultural work, so the rock-star syndrome is an inevitable result. By failing to look at the deeper issues, we come to false conclusions. My concern is not so much that a group of teenagers didn’t catch on to what was happening. My concern is that the rock-star complex reveals another way that our perspective influences the ways we engage with people as we relate and serve.
Takeaways
One more way the simplicity factor is blatantly evident in a lot of short-term missions work is that we repeat, with amazing regularity, the same takeaways from these trips. It’s as if we’ve been scripted with the right answers for what we learned from a trip. We parrot one another with statements such as these:
“We have it so good here.”
“We’re so caught up in materialism.”
“We need to pray more.”
“I felt so close to God there. He’s doing amazing things there.”
With little variation, these are the things reported i
n follow-up letters and given in testimonials. When I asked Rhonda, a thirty-year-old woman, how her experience in Africa changed her, she said, “We have so much, and they have so little. That’s a plus for us because we’re so blessed. I mean, we all have running water, electricity, telephones, computers, and cars that go down the street with no problem. And the power doesn’t go out. . . . But our material possessions can be a hindrance because they keep us from really focusing on God.”
Bill, a fifty-two-year-old pastor from Southern California, said, “I was really encouraged to see how they deal with so little and how strong their faith is. That makes my needs in life and ministry seem so small comparatively, or at least different.”
Shannon, a twenty-seven-year-old woman, said, “I never want to forget some of the things I’ve seen this last week. These people do so much with so little. I have it so good.”
Ken, a thirty-year-old man, said, “The biggest thing I learned was the power of prayer.”
These adults’ reflections are largely reminiscent of what teenagers have to say about their experiences. Remember Amy’s comment: “It’s just amazing, the poverty. Like, it breaks my heart, but it makes me feel so spoiled, and like I’m such an evil person.”[95] More than two-thirds of the high school students I surveyed about their mission trips said something like fifteen-year-old Ryan: “I just felt so close to God when I was there. I wish I could keep that feeling alive at home, but I know I won’t.”[96]
In many ways, these are rich, potentially life-changing conclusions. Exposure to what God is doing among other believers around the world, being conscious about our wealth and the trappings thereof, and suspending “life as normal” for a few days as a way to deepen intimacy with God—who can argue with that?
Serving with Eyes Wide Open Page 10
