Mission's trips: meaningful, memorable, or malignant

Few things anger Kate Danahy '14 more than when people say they are going on a mission’s trip to love on children.

“No,” said Danahy, an English major who lead the Gordon missions trip to India twice, “you don’t love on people. You must offer respect. You’re supposed to learn from them.”

Many evangelicals seem unaware of the widespread criticism short-term missions trips have been under since the trips came into fashion in the 90s. For instance, this year the documentary God Loves Uganda, which claims that American missionaries have fed the hatred of the LGBT community in Uganda with often deadly consequences, played at 42 separate film festivals.

Director of Missions, Laura Carmer aims to use criticism like this to create a short-term missions program that is a positive agency in communities abroad and on campus.

Kate Danahy wearing a sari that was given to her in India. Photo by Rachel Grant

Carmer, like Danahy, finds problems in the language many Christians use when talking about missions trips, like the phrase “taking Jesus to people.”

“As if Jesus wasn’t already there,” she said. “We’re going in as learners as opposed to going in thinking we have the answers and are coming in to save you. Often our teams come back realizing that there is a spiritual and community strength that the people they met have that we are missing here.”

2013 India summer mission’s program team in Bapatla, India. Photo courtesy Kate Danahy

Before departing on a trip, Gordon students must participate in a training course where they are educated about the culture they are traveling to and read several articles that are critical of short-term missions. For Carmer, the main criticisms emerge from two different kinds of trips evangelicals engage in. They are, in her words, “team building” or “tourism-with-a-purpose” trips. 

The team-building scenario, she says, is a youth group descending on a town and perhaps engaging in street evangelism or building a house, but not spending time with anyone outside their group. The trip is about their group coming together, not about the community they are disrupting who has to cater to their needs.
Tourism trips are those where the participants spend most of the time sightseeing. They often will spend one day passing out tracts to people with whom they have no relationship.

To try to avoid those real stereotypes, Gordon partners with indigenous ministries that are “already interwoven into the community,” Carmer said. “Gordon students are there to support what they are already doing.”

For Carmer and Danahy, it is the relationships built with organizations abroad, and, most importantly, people who are the point of missions trips.

Laura Carmer at her desk in the chapel offices looking out onto Gordon’s campus. Photo by Rachel Grant

“If you come home without any relationship you want to continue then the trip has failed,” said Danahy, “Most people do keep in touch with at least one person. They are still involved and care.”

Carmer also hopes that students come back to campus with new perspectives on what they as a citizen can do, which could be shopping fair trade or changing the way they think about certain political issues.

Danahy gives one example of how her experiences changed the way she behaves on campus. While in India she made a number of Muslim friends which has given her a place to speak up from when people around her stereotype Muslims.

Megan Defranza, professor of theology at Gordon who is writing a chapter for a book on post-colonial theology, is critical of how the church has used missions to force indigenous peoples to adopt western culture. But she hopes that Christians can learn to travel more wisely and respectfully going forward.

To students thinking of going on a missions trip, she said, “Watch, listen, learn, share. Listen to the ways in which other Christians do theology and church. Share as a partner while you are there and with others when you come back.”