You Gotta Read This BlogI’ve been reading this really awesome blog called Jamie the Very Worst Missionary. The first time I read it, I actually laughed out loud and I might have even snorted. Since then I’ve made sure to catch every post. See this Jamie woman is smart, insightful, funny, and she tells it like it is. She’s a missionary in Costa Rica, and like you and me, she’s trying to do this whole follow Jesus thing right.
About a month ago, she posted, Hugs for Jesus. In it she describes her encounter with a short-term mission group from the US of A. It was awkward like Michael Scott in The Office awkward. She describes it this way:
Eventually, one of them found her way over to where we were sitting to offer a Jesus hug. Being a non-toucher, in general, I quickly declined. “No, thank you. I’m… I’m good.” And when my sweet, affection-loving friend finally relented to the poor girl’s persistient (inisistent?) offer to give her a hug from Jesus, I knew immediately that I had made the right decision. That chick had my poor friend wrapped up like a cage-fighter when I saw how badly she was pitting-out. We’re talking pit-stains the size of Rhode Island… for real. Want a hug? And possibly a communicable disease?… *Shudder*
If that weren’t awkward enough, after further conversation with the hugger-girl, it became clear that the Hugs for/from Jesus strategy was pretty shallow. None of the short-termers seemed to know what they would do if someone they embraced actually decided they wanted to know this Jesus-who-hugs. They didn’t know the name of a local church that they could refer people to, and it seemed like the short-termers didn’t even think to ask Jamie or her friend if they were believers either. :-/
I’m not bringing this up to be critical of those short-termers. I’m writing because I’m pretty sure that most of us have been just as guilty with our own short-term teams. Creating an outreach that makes a difference is hard. It’s hard enough just to get a youth group to go somewhere. It’s hard enough to feed them, house them, and transport them. So I get it that it’s hard to create an experience for them that is meaningful and strategic.
See those two words, meaningful and strategic are the keys for us in Mission Adventures. I know that it sometimes we’re frantically looking for something, anything for your teams to do when they’re on outreach… But seriously, this is the whole point my friends! All the effort we put into recruiting teams, all the effort we put into training, heck all the effort I put into making the journals and the tee shirts and all that stuff is absolutely worthless… Unless we give our students meaningful and strategic things to do on outreach.
For those of us at YWAM San Diego/Baja, this is why the Homes of Hope thing is so important to us. There is a housing crisis in Baja. Small children literally die of exposure without adequate shelter. The homes we build are a meaningful response to this crisis. They’re even strategic in that building houses has become a gateway to share the gospel with entire communities. It’s opened doors to create new ministries like Circulo Andante. The kids who have a Mission Adventures outreach in Tijuana and Ensenada go home knowing they made a difference.
The question is, do your kids go home knowing they did something important? Or are their experiences kinda awkward? Let’s take a lesson from The Very Worst Missionary and reevaluate our outreaches.