The Trouble with Missions

I just read an article called “Short-Term Missions Can Create a Long-Term Mess” from the Chalmers Center (full text available online). In this article, the author writes about the problem when mission teams “do things to the people instead of with the people,” making people feel disenfranchised, rather than empowered. It’s a thought-provoking article, especially for those of us who are deeply involved in mission work. How do we make sure that we’re not hurting those we’re trying to help?

The author of this post argues that mission groups need to join with the people they are trying to serve, working with them instead of simply for them. That is an approach we are trying to take at Hospitals of Hope, in order to make our work truly beneficial and sustainable.

In Bolivia, nearly all of our staff members are Bolivians, with only a couple of American missionaries involved in the administration. Our volunteers work with our Bolivian staff, as well as with other organizations in the area, run both by Bolivians and Americans. We are training local police and firemen, as well as hospital staff, in emergency medicine, trying to ensure that we help them meet local needs in the long term. We are working to involve the local church in the coffee shop we plan to open, hoping eventually to turn over most of the control to Bolivian Christians.

In Liberia, we are working with the primary government hospital in the country to help improve care in their Emergency Department. Having lost a great deal of equipment in the decades-long civil war, the Emergency Department was in need of basic equipment, such as patient monitors. Having discussed the need with the hospital, we sent a container full of equipment earlier this year. A team from Hospitals of Hope is there right now, installing the equipment and working with the staff to ensure that they know how to use and care for it, while other members of the team treat patients. Our goal is to not only provide short-term relief, but to help the hospital to become self-sustaining in the long-term.

It’s often difficult to know the best way to work in an international context, how to truly help those we’re trying to serve. Ultimately, we have to just do our best and trust that God will use it. Fortunately for us, we serve a God whose “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9)—and that’s a promise that we can count on, whether we’re working in Bolivia, Liberia, or here at home.