Are Short Term Workers Worth It?
Over the last few days I have found myself in some interesting conversations about the upcoming world missions summit, and about short term (one year or less) volunteers on the mission field in general. The extremely short summery is, perhaps instead of encouraging them to come, we should be discouraging them from coming.
Over the years we have never actually had a short term worker assigned directly to us; most of the time we weren’t working in a type of ministry that suited itself to short term workers, and at the times we were, we helped to oversee short term people who were actually assigned to another missionary. But we have had ring side seat for many an interesting short term experience. We have seen times when short term workers were uncooperative, judgmental, undisciplined, and divisive. We have had other missionaries on our field spend the majority of their time dealing with problems created by short term workers, and we have seen more than one short term worker sent home early (some almost immediately) because of the problems they have caused.
Now don’t misunderstand; there have also been those that have been a blessing, and I know MANY career missionaries that first went overseas as short term volunteers (including Lisa and I). But unfortunately many missionaries short term volunteers as more trouble than they are worth. And it was in this context that a recent discussion led to the comment that this upcoming world missions summit, designed to encourage college age young people to volunteer for short term missions work (up to one year), might be better off discouraging them from going on short term missions trips.
I don’t necessarily agree with this. I would say that I thing the primary beneficiary of short term volunteer missions is NOT the missions work on the field, but rather the person going on the trip themselves. Realistically, how much impact is a person going to have in a couple months when they don’t really speak the language, know the culture, or stay long enough to form any close relationships? I know it does sometimes happen, but the majority of the time it doesn’t. What happens more often is that God works on the heart of the short term volunteer themselves. Part of it is being exposed to a new culture and the world at large. Part of it is getting a more realistic view of life around the world. And part of it is being out of your comfort zone and in a place where God can deal with areas of your life that may never come to the surface in your home town.
But whether short term missions are good or bad is irrelevant; the fact is it is becoming more and more common, and it is the missions method of choice for many post-modern Christians. Young people in churches (as well as young churches) are becoming less likely to sign on to monthly long term support for career missionaries. Personally I think this is short sighted on there part, but I also think it is understandable.
Why is it short sighted? Because Jesus said “go and make disciples.” You don’t make a disciple during a six week short term missions trip. You might lead them into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, but making them a disciple? Not likely. That takes time. It takes walking with them day by day and standing, laughing, crying and praying with them as they “work out their salvation with fear and trembling.” That takes long term commitment, and so long term missionaries. That is one of the reasons that the Assemblies of God does well with Bible schools and leadership development; because we have had missionaries over the years who have been on the field for the long haul.
Why is it understandable? Because, at least in the Assemblies of God, missionaries have dug themselves into a hole by not being very good with discipling their supporters in the USA. We work on five year cycles; for every four years we spend on the field we spend a year visiting churches and raising support. Usually, we do that whole year all at once, so during that time we are speaking two or three times a week in churches and calling everyone we can think of to get our money raised to return to the field. Often missionaries feel that this year spent raising support is an intrusion on what God has called them to do, and they resent spending an entire year away from the ministry they spent the last four years developing. Then there is the added pressure that if you don’t raise the required budget you could have to stay longer in the USA visiting churches, and if the problem persists, you may even have to resign. So by the time they are done raising their budget and actually get back on the field, the last thing they want to think about is all those churches in the States; after all, they just spent the last year or more doing nothing but thinking about them and trying to communicate with them. So they tend to forget about regular contact (out of sight, out of mind), and the churches end up feeling disconnected from the missionary. Then the church gets frustrated. They didn’t spend a year with that missionary, they only saw them for a couple hours when the missionary spoke at their church. So when they don’t hear from the missionary they start to wonder what is happening to the money they are sending in to support the missionary. So they start to look for options where they can see an immediate return or get immediate feedback from their missions work. How do they do that? Short term volunteers and teams and committing to support one time projects instead of regular long term monthly general missions support.
It’s really kind of sad. It’s just poor communication. But it’s the growing reality.
Ironically, one of the solutions to this misunderstanding is short term volunteers. If they come to the field and have an accurate experience of missions life and work, they then return to their churches understanding the need for long term career missionaries as well. It’s about the long term effect that short term workers will have on the countey they are from, not the country they go to. I find this especially ironic in my current circumstances of preparing this promo video for the world missions summit because the theme for the summit is “It’s not about me.” The implication being that they want these college student to stop thinking about themselves and instead think about the need in these countries and the people there. But in reality, they probably won’t have a huge impact themselves on the field they go to (unless they transition into career missions work and end up there for the long haul), but the experience will have a huge impact on them, and through their changed lives they will impact their home churches and the church as a whole in the USA and eventually in world. So it IS all about them.
Anyway, as much of a hassle as it can be to have short term workers, I am for it; after all, I was one once too.
Inside The Global Culture, But Outside The Box
The way that a “world culture” is increasingly emerging never ceases to amaze me.
I am writing from Manila in the Philippines. Having had such a close relationship with the United States, English is widely used. So despite not speaking the local dialect of Taglog, I am still able to easily get around and do pretty much anything I need to do. So yesterday and today (Saturday and Sunday), I pretty much spent my time walking around different areas of the city, going through malls and stores and things.
A few weeks ago I was doing something very similar in New York City. And aside from the make of cars and the type of plants around, things weren’t that terribly different. Many of the store chains are identical, the product brands are mostly the same, and what is popular, especially with young people is pretty much the same.
I grabbed a taxi back to the guest house I am staying at, and the taxi driver and I started talking. His daughter is in the process of moving to New Jersey to work as a nurse. People move from country to country almost as easily as they once moved from state to state.
I got back to the guest house and turned on the TV. Along with the BBC, CNN, ESPN, MTV, and HBO, they also have various Chinese, Japanese, German and Korean language channels. But I turned on a Hong Kong based channel that features programs from the major TV networks in the USA and Great Britain.
Conversely, with so much of culture spreading beyond borders to create a unified world culture of sorts, this has also led to people who would have been considered “fringe” linking together to form numerous niche’ cultures. There is the computer geek culture, the various music cultures (grunge, goth, heavy metal, alternative, country, etc.), and the various sports cultures (soccer, baseball, basketball, etc.), just to name a few. And members of each of these groups can be found in almost any country across the world.
So, how does an emerging global culture impact world missions? Really it’s more about how these world changes affect the church as a whole. It’s about change, and how we deal with it. The real key to being able to ride the waves of change, rather than being swamped and buried by them, is to be willing to think outside the box in terms of method, while holding to content that is firmly grounded in the good news of salvation and new life in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I know; it sounds like I am just regurgitating the latest spiritual catch phrases. But no matter how much lip service we give to these concepts, putting them into practice is a very difficult thing. I hear our leadership talking about having a vision for transformation, yet, by the time the various initiatives and ideas get through the various processes to implement them, they move from being outside the box to being indistinguishable from the box itself. Bureaucracy sucks the life out of these new ideas until they are still born as some new program that is sneered at from the rank and file and derided as another meaningless program or name change.
So how do we keep from being a part of the problem, and instead become a part of the solution? I don’t have all the answers. I wish I did. But what we are doing is trying to niche’ our ministry and our support base.
In terms of our ministry, we are helping to provide a very specialized skills and resources to the church and the missionary body. Specifically that means producing audio and video tools that help with evangelism, discipleship, fund raising and recruiting. In addition we work with the niche’ sub culture of creative people involved in audio and video production in Cambodia, to give leadership and personal discipleship to them.
In terms of our support base, we are trying to tie in more specifically with those who are at home with computers, iPods, and those who want a hands on, day to day connection with missionaries over seas. We are trying new things, like this blog, and will soon be adding podcasting and V-blogs to an redesigned web-page.
Ultimately we play inside the rules of Assemblies of God World Missions, but instead of sitting back and relying on those things that they have done for ministry and support over the years, we are looking for new opportunities for ministry and new ways to connect with our supporters in the States.
But we don’t have all the answers. Not even close. All these things are just IDEAS at this point. Will they work? I don’t know. Ultimately, it’s not about any of these ideas, it’s about God moving by His Spirit. We do what we can, but we trust God to supply for our needs, and to it is God who moves on peoples hearts and changes their lives, not because of what we do, but in spite of what we do.
If you have any outside the box ideas for ministry to the Cambodian people, or for connecting to our supporters, we would love to hear them!
A Speed Trap By Any Other Name
Lisa had a fun driving experience the other day.
She was going down the main business street in town and came to a traffic light. Traffic lights are where all the police hang out. Typically they will wave a motorcycle over for no real reason and then demand money for payment of a fine for some infraction. Sometimes the person really did do something wrong, but sometimes they didn’t. Whatever money is given is split up between the policemen present, and doesn’t actually go to any government department.
Well, this particular day, li9sa came up to the light as it was green and traffic was going along, but just as she entered the intersection the light changed to red. Please notice carefully what I said, and what I didn’t say. I made no mention of yellow in there; it changed from green straight to red. This is the latest game the police have taken up. They set the light to change directly from green to red so people don’t have time to stop, and then they pull you over for running a red light.
So as Lisa enters the intersection the light changes to red, she doesn’t have time to stop, and a line of policeman quickly block her way and pull her over.
No question about it, this is very annoying. But sometimes you just pay up and get it over with. Now for me, I tend to talk my way out off it, but Lisa usually can’t do it, partly because her Khmer isn’t as good as mine, partly because she isn’t as assertive, but mostly because she is a woman. But on this particular day, paying up and moving on isn’t so easy.
A few days before I had noticed that our drivers licenses were about to expire, so I gave both of our licenses to our office staff to renew. Basically it involves paying $40 and bringing in new ID pictures, but it takes about a week or two. So Lisa was still without her license.
The police were pretty happy to find she didn’t have a license, and figuring they had hit the jackpot they told her she would have to pay $30 (an outrageously high amount). Although she tried to explain, Lisa’s language skills weren’t up to the task and she found herself at a bit of an impasse. So she called our office on our cell phone and had them explain it to the police.
Our office secretary’s father is a somewhat high ranking government official, so she spent a few minutes yelling at the police, after witch the police dropped their demands to just $6 to “buy Coke” for the police officers (funny how even the pretense of a legitimate fine kind of falls away when someone stands up to them). Lisa took over from there. She knew this was still too high a “fine” for what had happened, and she offered to give him about 50 cents for a Coke. The officer pointed out that there were six of them, so Lisa agreed to $3.
All in all it was another day in Cambodia and just par for the course.
On The Road Again
Well, once again I find myself sitting in an airport terminal, but so far everything is running on time. I am on my way to Bangkok again, and then next week I am off again to the Philippines. Hopefully, my recent travel problems have filled my bad travel experience quota for the next few decades and everything will stay on time. Of course as I sit working on this complimentary computer in the Bangkok Airlines lounge, I can see CNN on the TV mounted on the wall carrying footage of a major plane crash near Athens, Greece. Always interesting to see the way reality coments on itself in a somewhat surealistic way.
I have been listening to teaching books by both Anthony Campolo (A Reasonable Faith) and Philip Yancey (What's So Amazing About Grace?). Surprisingly, these two books, written about 20 years apart, tend to touch on two sides of the same coin. One is all about grace (obviously) and one is (at least partly) about the dicotamy between love and power. It has really struck me how grace and love really work together in a way that is impossible to seperate.
I will eventially be writing more about that later, but this has been a big part of my thinking over the last few days, especially as I drive down the road and try to imagine what is happening in the lives of the Cambodian people I pass. I must admitt, the more I do that, the more I realize that no matter how long I have been here I am still a foriegner, and only understand a portion, a small portion, of what the thoughts and dreams of the average Cambodian are.
Well, they are boarding my flight now, so I will write more later.
Angelina Jolie; Cambodia’s Newest Citizen (or Where Does The Buck Stop?)
Today I pulled up the news on the Fox News website and found a picture of Angelina Jolie on their frontpage with the headline “Angelina Jolie Awarded Cambodian Citizenship”.
Let me say that Angelina Jolie has had a bit of history here in Cambodia over the last few years. A few years ago, she filmed a part of here “Tomb Raider” movie here at Angkor Wat. While she was here, she was touched by the Cambodian people and their situation. So, she set about trying to help in some way. She gave a $1.5 million dollar donation to a local community development organization to help preserve Cambodia’s environment and also adopted a young child. So because of all this, the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, told her he would get her Cambodian citizenship, and now the king has signed a royal decree officially granting her that citizenship.
Now, despite the title of this posting, I am not really trying to say anything, or make any judgments about Angelina Jolie; I think she was acting in a way that she felt would best help the Cambodian people, and I’m glad that she has at least tried to do something (she isn’t the first major Hollywood star who has filmed in Cambodia, but most of them have portrayed in a negative way, and none of them (as far as I know) have done anything to help the country long term). I am more bothered by the system that allows these kind of things to go on.
What am I talking about? Well, for example, international adoptions to the USA are still pretty much illegal. But, like many things here, if you have enough money you can pretty much do whatever you want. International adoptions here are big money makers. Groups will pretty much buy children from their parents and essentially sell them to families overseas at a huge profit. How do they get around the legal issues? Typically, various amounts are paid to the right people, and the right papers get signed. Is this what happened with Angelina Jolie and here adopted Cambodian child? I have no idea; I am just telling you about a common problem here.
Another angle of the whole thing is something typified by this granting of citizenship. Things here just sort of work like that; if you know the right people, have enough money and have good connections, you can pretty much do anything and get anything you want. And I admit, that’s not all that different from anywhere else in the world, but it is still frustrating to see everyday people ignored and mistreated and unable to get some of their simplest rights respected while people who are “connected” operate above the law.
It’s no different from anyplace else, or any other time. Jesus dealt with the same thing when he was on Earth. And He addressed it directly in telling us that the Kingdom of Heaven wasn’t like that and that we should be no “respecter of persons”. Instead, we should be elevating those who are the least of society and reaching out to them with the love, compassion and respect that Jesus showed them.
Yet I find myself constantly struggling with this same issue. I tend to give preference to those who are “somebody”, and ignore those who are “nobody”. And maybe that’s what really bothers me about the whole Angelina Jolie situation here; it reminds me that not only does this system of special treatment exist, but I benefit regularly from it, and in some ways even help perpetuate it. I guess it hits a bit close to home.
So have I been granted citizenship and various special privileges for giving $1.5 million to some local development group. My knee jerk answer is “of course not.” But I do get special treatment because I work for a recognized “relief” agency that over the last 13 years has probably given close to that amount. It’s not something I actively pursue, But I still know it’s true. Just the simple fact of my skin color opens doors that elevate my treatment above everyday people in an unfair way. Let me give you a simple example. Three days ago I went to pay our electric bill. You can’t mail it in here, so everyone takes cash to the company office to pay. So at the office there is a large room with a long counter where you pay, and it is always jammed with a big crowd of pushing and shoving people trying to force their way to the front (people don’t get in orderly lines here to wait for their turn, it’s just a free for all mob kind of thing). But when I walk in, one of the employees will quickly see me and wave me to the front and skip everyone else, just because my skin color says “I’m a foreigner who has money or connections or both.” Do I say “no, I’ll wait my turn”? No, I go right up and pay. So yes, in some ways I am part of the problem.
I don’t know that some of those things will ever change, but our challenge is to live as a part of the solution; the Kingdom of God on Earth. So I guess the buck stops here, with me.
Doing the Dub
Today I am looking at two different projects that both involve bringing media programs from outside Cambodia into the country and re-doing them for use here.
The first is one that I am actively involved in; Dan and Louie. Dan and Louie is an audio program for kids featuring Dan Betzer telling Bible stories to his ventriloquist dummy, Louie. We have taken the stories, kept the basic themes and content, changed Louie from a dummy to a little boy, changed the context of the stories to and jokes to fit in Cambodia, and are now recording them with Cambodian voice talent for radio broadcast. I think this is going to work very well; Cambodia’s illiteracy rate and traditions use story telling to communicate, and this is basically an older man using stories to teach a young boy about how to know God and live for Him.
The other project is something I just heard about. A man who works with Billy Graham Films is coming to Cambodia next week to look at possibly dubbing some of their films into Khmer for use here. Now, we have done film dubs in the past, but that was awhile ago when there weren’t many alternatives. In addition, we were very particular about what films we would dub. We only looked at doing those that spoke to a particular need here in Cambodia. Doing anything in media simply because you can is the wrong approach.
Now I’m not saying that dubbing these films is the wrong thing to do, but I’m a bit skeptical about it. Like I said, we have done it in the past, and the result at that time was mixed at best. I’d be happy to listen to the man when he comes, but as it turns out I won’t be in country while he is here. So I’ll point him in the direction of some other groups and let them work it out. I already know that given my current level of commitment on various other projects there is no way I would be able to do this kind of film dubbing project even if I wanted to.
On the other hand, I just had a few people listen to the first rough edit of the Dan and Louie program and got some mixed response (we are planning to do some more field testing of the stories to see what works best before we start any broadcasts).
Bringing any media product from outside the country is less than ideal. And anything that you do bring in, the more you can re-work it to fit into the culture, the better off you are. Our goal is to develop a group of people here who are able to produce original media programs for Cambodia.
Technical Speed-bumps On The Information Ox-Cart Path
Yes, it’s been a while since my last post. It seems to be going in spurts lately, not due to a lack of intent on my part, but rather because of the oddities of technology.
As I traveled around the USA for the various meetings and conferences I was attending last month I found tech-friendliness of the various areas to be all over the board. At Lisa’s parents in North Dakota I could barely get on line if I tried, yet in Springfield Missouri entire sections of town are blanketed with free Wi-Fi. Then areas where you expect some level of understanding have absolutely none; at the Chicago airport I asked some of the employees if there was Wi-Fi access in the terminal and they looked at me as if I had a third leg growing out of my forehead and asked me what Wi-Fi was.
Now I am finally home in Cambodia. It is wonderful to be home! But having been gone for 6 weeks has left a number of loose threads that need to be fixed up for life to get back to normal. For example, our phone line was disconnected. So after three trips to the phone company, bringing various receipts and things to them, we finally got the line re-connected. And that’s just one technical area.
We are also trying to get back up to speed on various ongoing projects. That seems like a major battle at the moment (just because I find myself staring at an ever increasing “to-do” list). In addition, I am trying to get started on working myself along the learning curve for the new media tools I picked up during our trip. Again, this takes a bit of time.
Yes, technology has made many things easier, but only after it first makes them really difficult. But at least now we have our phone line and internet connection working again, so hopefully our communication with everyone will pick back up.
