million dollar question, Palmares pt. 2

Out of the 43 students in the LASP this semester, I’m the only one who’s actually been to Costa Rica before. The last time I was here was in 2002 with a group of students from my church. It was one of those trips where you learn some random drama to convey the story of Jesus and go around the country talking to people and what not—drive by evangelism.

In the short time that we’ve been here we’ve already come across one of these drive by evangelism groups—once in the streets of San José and then more recently at Palmares. They’re method is to go around handing out $1,000,000 dollar bill look-alikes with a track about the “million dollar question” printed on the back. And they don’t hold back—its fire, brimstone, and all.

As I’ve been seeing this groups and familiar places from six years ago, it’s been a bit weird to think that I was one of those groups who came to Costa Rica to do the same thing (minus the whole fire and brimstone threatening, hopefully). So lately I’ve been thinking about the North American church’s approach to missions. More specifically short term missions, since I’ve had the chance to go on many trips and especially since I will be leading short term missions trips for high school students this summer.

I don’t think I’ve ever been much of a fan of this type of drive by evangelism, even on the trips that I have been on with the church—it’s just made me uneasy. I remember going to an unnamed Christian conference for high school students about evangelism and walking out of several of the session. So this thought has been bouncing around in my head for a while. We’re going to these places on mission trips without trying to understand the culture or what would best serve the people. Rather we’re good at coming up with a quick’n’easy—you’re in, share the gospel, and are out—type of trip. We see it as our mission to share or even bring Jesus to these people—and it’s all going to happen in 3 days.

While these short term evangelistic mission trips bug me a bit, what has been more difficult to think about is that I know this exact type of trip has played a significant role in my life in setting me on the direction that I’m heading. I can’t say that they’re a bad thing. Then I remembered the most recent trip to Jordan. I wouldn’t really call it a mission trip. Yes, we had a mission, but it wasn’t so much to share Jesus, but rather to listen to the stories of refugees and how Jesus is at work in Jordan.

So as I’ve been thinking about my mission trip experiences, leading short term trips this summer, and writing a paper on globalization in missions, I think I’m starting to come to some half-thought conclusions. What if we started looking at our mission trips as listening trips? What if we began to acknowledge and be honest that in a two week trip, we are generally not going to convert the country (hey, not saying it couldn’t happen, but…)? I think there’s something special and important first about story and second about listening.

Maybe more people would be interested in us if we were to first listen to them.

But then again, that’s just a half-thought.