Why Your Mission Trip Might Be a Huge Waste of Money
And How Your Well-Intentioned Trip May Be Hurting More Than Helping
I have a friend who is currently on a short-term mission trip in a developing nation in Asia. I keep seeing her updates on Facebook, and it’s kinda getting on my nerves.
Why?
Well… I’m just not sold on the idea that mission trips are a good idea. It feels like sacrilege to make such a suggestion. After all, my parents were missionaries. So were my parents-in-law.
Back then, though, being a missionary meant selling everything you owned, going to another country, and living there… for a long, long time. It meant making that country your home. It meant learning the language, the culture, and the customs of the land. And, above all, it meant loving and serving those people until you had earned the right to speak about faith in God — as you understood it. I can respect that idea of missions.
But, fast forward to the modern day, and rather than doing all the things that real missionaries do, like learning the language and respecting the culture, evangelical young people breeze in for a holiday-like trip, where they visit a few orphanages, experience a few church services, tell a few people how wicked and depraved their native religions are, and then…
