First, notice the word missionary in quotations. I don’t know the full meaning of this word or what makes you qualified to own this title. I typically don’t refer to myself as a missionary; not because I think it is a negative thing or has any negative connotations, I just don’t know what I think a missionary is or what kind of person typifies that word. I’m a teacher at a Christian school. I teach middle school history, technology, and P.E. I just happen to do so in a different country. Anyway, thats not what this post is about.
With a shortage of movie theaters, restaurants, coffee shops, bowling alleys, and cars to get to those kind of places, the group of teachers and friends I roll with (yeah, roll with) end up spending quite a few evenings sitting around talking. Every once in a while the topic will turn to short term missions. Most of us here are the product of a short-term mission trip; we wouldn’t be at this school if we hadn’t visited Haiti on a trip, fallen in love with the country, and felt called to return. But, just because our position here is the result of a short-term trip, we aren’t at all times in full, gung-ho favor of them.
I’m not going to post my exact thoughts in this blog, mostly because I don’t really know what they are. I am still desperately searching literature, minds of smarter people, and the scriptures to try and figure out where I stand (not that it really matters all that much except that I really want to figure out what I think and feel about them). In this post I just wanted to share a blog I had found in my search that has helped me begin to form my thoughts.
The title of the blog is “jamietheveryworstmissionary”. How can you not find gold in a blog with that title? A while back she wrote a satirical, and rather snarky, story about a fictional mission trip of people from “super duper rich church” to a middle class neighborhood. The post generated a lot of slap fighting arguments discussion that actually led to her writing a few follow-up posts which I think are really great.
I just wanted to share this for anyone reading who is thinking about short-term missions, is going or has been on a short term mission trip, or who is bored at work and needs more to read to pass the time.
In the link below is the initial snarky post (“Are we calling this a “win-win”?) and the 4 follow up posts addressing specific things raised in the discussion.
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