Missions in the kitchen

Let me tell you a hypothetical story about Charlotte. Imagine, if you will, my sweet, adorable, precious Charlotte as a four year old. With her limited understanding of the world she lives in, she knows enough to see that her mommy is having a rough week. The kitchen is a mess. Actually, let's be real. The house is a mess. Her little brother is a few months old and absorbing all of mom's time. Charlotte, being the sweet, adorable, precious child that she is, decides that she is the one that needs to step in and "help" mommy. How does she do this? By picking up toys? No. That would be the obvious choice since that's the only real job she is capable of doing completely by herself at her age and size. However, in her mind, that is not nearly enough. She needs to do something GRAND. She decides that she is going to cook dinner while mommy is upstairs with the baby. Charlotte can't read, but she pulls down a cookbook. She drops it on the floor. Pages fall out. She drags a chair to the counter leaving marks on the floor. She starts pulling out random groceries from the refrigerator. The eggs crash. She tries to clean the slimy globs off the floor, but she essentially mixes them together and ends up leaving a paper towel on top of them. She will tell her older brother to clean it up later. She can't reach some of the ingredients she wants out of the pantry so she proceeds to get angry that her mother hasn't organized the kitchen in such a way to be helpful for her. After all, Charlotte obviously has a better handle on how the pantry should be organized with almost zero experience in the kitchen. A few dishes get smashed on the floor. The flour container tips sending up a flour cloud reminiscent of a nuclear bomb, and by the time her mom makes it downstairs, a piece of bread has made it to a plate. Charlotte is beaming over her "help", and her mother now has a solid hour of kitchen clean up ahead of her.

Now you tell me. Did Charlotte help? Did anything she did actually help? No. Nothing she did in this story is helpful. She saw a need. That's great, but that's where the greatness stopped. She wreaked havoc and rained down destruction on the kitchen. And now let's consider Charlotte's goal. If her goal truly was to help the person that needed it, she failed. She didn't find out what help was actually needed nor did she choose a job that she was truly capable of doing. If her goal was to give herself warm fuzzies about how much good she's doing in her little microcosm of a world, then she succeeded. She filtered out the disastrous mess she caused and focused on her little bit of good. Let's give Charlotte some grace and remember that she doesn't even know what she doesn't know at this point. She tried. She caused more damage, but she tried something. Her heart was in the right place at least even if her actions made things worse.

By the way, this is completely made up. Charlotte did not do these terrible things, but it's not out of the realm of possibility for her. Bless her.

And now. Deep breath. What if this is what most of our modern missions has become? What if we Americans are charging into someone else's kitchen without taking the time nor having the respect to find out what the real needs are? What if we're not considering whether or not the jobs we want to do match the skills that we have? What if we're walking into someone else's kitchen and telling them they've set everything up all wrong, but we can fix it in the two days we're available to serve? Only two because the other 3 are for adjusting to the new time/location and sightseeing.

Years ago, I remember hearing that if you're not doing what could be described as missions work where you are, then why in the world do you think you'd do it in a different location? If you're not telling people about Jesus here, why would you do it somewhere else when you can't even speak their language? If you're not building houses and wells here, why would you think you'll be any good at it somewhere else?

I desperately want to travel the world and try to make our world the tiniest bit better, but if the only reason I have to go somewhere is to gawk and stare at someone else's poverty and do a couple of good deeds for the ultimate purpose of making myself feel better, what good am I doing? It's all for me. And you know what? Maybe that's okay, but I must at the very least be honest about my purpose. If my purpose is to make myself feel the feelings, then okay. Fine. I'm going for myself. If I'm going because I think that my mere presence will benefit people living in extreme poverty on a garbage dump city, well, no. I'm not that special. If I'm going somewhere for the purpose of serving others, I'd better have something of value to offer, and I'd better be able to offer what I have with humility.

I can't know the need unless I see what the needs are and hear from the people that are living those struggles everyday. I get it. But let's call these trips what they are. They're not for others. They're for us. It's our opportunity to peruse the struggles of the less fortunate to find a place for us to jump in and offer actual help. Realistically, the help I can offer has nothing to do with painting walls or anything that involves brick and mortar. If you need someone to teach, I'm your girl. If you want someone to talk about studying the Bible, ministering to women, literature, writing, even math (but please, really. Don't ask me to teach above algebra for everyone's sake) send me. If you need counseling, call me. If you need school supplies, I'll hook you up. If you need a new building, I'll pray for you and give you some names of people that would do a great job. And I'll try to write you a check. That's what I can offer.

This summer I'm planning on going to Honduras. I've struggled with what to call this trip. In my circles, going to a country like Honduras equals mission trip, but that is absolutely not what I'm doing. I'm going to visit some of my best friends in the world. We'll get to see the work they do every day which absolutely does qualify as a work of service. They direct a school and a Bible institute. The school is connected to a children's home that cares for these precious children that cannot live with their families. I'll get to visit the school where I send school supplies every year. I'll get to take my oldest son on this trip and introduce him to another side of life apart from the sheltered life he's lived up to now. This trip is for us. And it's for our friends. And will we glorify God on this trip? Oh, I hope so. I pray that every single thing I do brings glory to God in some way, but it will not be by playing missionary for a week then going back to business as usual.

I think I've been a little harsh here. I don't mean to be harsh, but as we start to spool up for mission trip season, can we please consider our actual motives and just be honest about it? It's okay to go to a third world country. Let's just make sure we're doing more help than harm unlike my imagined story of Charlotte that destroyed the kitchen in the name of missions.

Here's a real life picture of my messy kitchen and my son who is oblivious to the disaster he is presently surrounded by. Maybe this will knock off that Cherish Every Moment pic that refuses to go away.