A new way to mission
I have been on over two dozen mission trips. On some of those, I was a teenage participant. On others, I was the trip coordinator. On these trips, our teams did a variety of ministries including choir concerts, Backyard Bible Clubs, door-to-door surveys, medical aid, revival preaching and many others. All of us who lead or participate in mission trips assume we are doing good. We have resources and gifts to share. The people we go to visit have physical and spiritual needs that we are able to address. Leaving the mission site, we realize that we did not meet all the needs of that area, but we feel good that we did something for God and far-away neighbors. Everyone wins. Maybe. Maybe not. Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert have given the contemporary American church a soulsearching challenge in their book, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor… and Yourself. When we do not think strategically and theologically about why we are helping someone in need, we could actually be hurting by creating or continuing a cycle of dependence on “foreign aid” by neglecting opportunities to raise up local leadership and/or by ignoring cultural differences, assuming that our “home” culture is the standard by which other cultures should be judged. Recently, a team representing CBFNC traveled to Barcelona, Spain, to learn from fellow North Carolinians and CBF mission field personnel Matt and Michelle Norman about that culture and about their ministry. Our goals were to experience the disorientation of a different culture, to meet with local persons in that culture, to experiment with discovering community assets, and to bring our learnings back home to our churches and communities. Rather than a “mission trip,” this was an educational experience we are calling a Mission Learning Lab (MLL). A highlight of the trip was visiting with the locals. We 4 • The Gathering – July/August 2014
by Rick Jordan, CBFNC Church Resources Coordinator
spoke with Marta who was raised an atheist, about her coming to faith in Christ. She is in her year of discipleship with Michelle before the church will baptize her. She was raised in a culture in which church and government persecuted non-Catholics for 400 years, and then was under a dictatorship for more than 40 years in which the church again united with the state in persecuting her region of Spain, Catalonia. As far as her parents are concerned, by becoming a Christian Marta has joined the enemy. We met with Daniel, pastor of the Baptist church in Cerdanyola. He was raised in this church, went off to school, and returned to pastor this 50-year-old church. He and his wife have led the church for 20 years. Daniel preaches only once or twice a month. “My job is to equip the saints for ministry. If there is someone in the church that can preach well, I should equip them and give them opportunities to preach. It is not clever for a pastor to preach every week and not give other gifted persons this opportunity.” Part of our orientation included a scavenger hunt of the community surrounding the church. We were to discover the Spanish and Catalonian words for foods such as strawberries, chicken and milk. To do this, we went into markets and stores, meeting persons and asking for their help. They also needed to help us with such questions as: “You are told you may find an item at the Chinese store. What is that? What is the Pakistani store?” Normally, a mission team comes into a community to help alleviate needs. We, however, began our trip by walking the neighborhood looking for assets. What schools, medical facilities, businesses, etc. were present that demonstrated the community’s strengths and were possible partners for ministry? It was an hour of thinking in a new way about the community that surrounds a church. Of course, we did some sight seeing, which is also