Mission Vacations

First let me explain what a "Mission Vacation" is. A Mission Vacation is a short-term Christian Missionary trip undertaken by a person who probably got very little preparation to work in a mission field. An example would be an upper-middle class American business man who decides to spend a week out of his summer in an African country doing "mission work."

I've always felt conflicted about mission vacations because it'll cost 2-3 grand to send a housewife, or a businessman or a retiree to a remote, and impoverished nation. And we'll put them to work entertaining children with crafts and stories about Jesus or doing light construction work. We could have paid a local person who desperately needs the money to do the same work and had money left over to buy cattle, import medicine or drill wells. Yet, for some reason, churches all over the country think its more important to put their own people on a plane and send them, qualified or not, into the mission field.

I was listening to a commentator on NPR talk about poverty tonight. I realized mission vacations do serve an important purpose. In fact, everyone should go at least once. Not because there's so much work to do out there. We have to take mission vacations because Americans live our lives disconnected from the rest of the world.

We need to go in order to learn compassion. The $2,000-3,000 investment in a mission vacation could inspire a lifetime of charitable work. The cultural impact of giving our people a global perspective is worth the cost of a plane ticket to South America. A heart broken and changed will return the investment many times over.