Short-Term Mission and the Vandal Horde

The 2020 pandemic has brought to a screeching halt tourism and short-term mission trips. While the economics of this are devastating, I wonder if this provides opportunity for a reset.

Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” I would like to believe that these trips produce broad-minded global citizens who take a kinder view of those who are different from themselves. But Mark Twain was never on a short-term mission trip, and I’ve seen those who “need it sorely” return with their “prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness” alive and kicking.

Actually, I’m not even sure Twain fully believed his own quote. In his book The Innocents Abroad he writes about the American Vandal. “A brazen, unapologetic visitor to foreign lands, generally unimpressed with the local ambiance—to say nothing of the local inhabitants—but ever ready to appropriate any religious or historical trinket he or she could carry off.”

The industry of tourism grew out of colonial soil, where British elites were promised exotic experiences within their vast empire. True, tourism has infused cash into some places, but it has also created ecological damage, objectified local people and their cultures, and has traditionally only been accessible to those with an excess of leisure and wealth.

Short-term mission trips, even ones that disabuse us of our messianic tendencies and encourage the mindset of a servant and a learner, can become a form of religiously infused tourism. As someone who has spent the better part of their working career helping people engage across geographic and cultural distances, I have had to ask myself, is it possible to do this without exploitation and objectification? Can we become short term travelers without becoming a vandal hoard?

Here are three things to consider:

Wealth Disparity: A Chinese friend once asked me, “Why are all short-term missionaries wealthy? Does God only send the rich to other countries?” When a trip is primarily available to those with wealth, we have already set up a dangerous power dynamic. Short-term mission already exaggerates the economic gap between traveler and host, but it can also become a class-based echo-chamber, robbing a team of the healthy perspective that comes when those from well resourced backgrounds and those from poorly resourced backgrounds learn and serve side-by-side. One way to keep from becoming a vandal horde is to draft the economics of a trip in a way that makes it accessible to those of all economic backgrounds who have something to give and something to learn.

Learning Disparity: A friend of mine in Mexico created an organization that regularly hosted large groups of foreigners on service-learning trips. His organization ran a number of guest houses to accommodate such groups. We set up a trip with the housekeeping staff from these guest houses. The Americans and Mexicans defined the co-learning outcomes we each wanted to experience. Local maids (along with their children) and foreign Americans mutually benefited from the experience. When learning is primarily about the education of the traveler, we have become vandals, exploiting our hosts for our own educational purposes. One way to encourage equality of learning is to have the same number of local participants and visitors, and then for visitors and hosts to co-create the learning outcomes. Both have something to offer and something to learn, so make sure that teacher and student have a chance to switch places regularly throughout a trip.

Benefit Disparity: When there is no plan for the benefits of our learning to ripple outward, we play into the personal aggrandizement so prevalent in hyper-individualistic cultures. We are consumers, checking off the list of countries we’ve been to, foods we’ve tried, or bucket-list items we’ve accomplished. Our photos and our souvenirs become the booty of our raid, inflating our egos and proving to others how cosmopolitan, well-learned, and generous we are. Egos are tyrants, demanding that all stories point to us. But there are ways to ensure that our travel has a centrifugal force, spinning benefits outward while still learning personally from the trip. Travel in such a way as to maintain ongoing relationships with those whom we meet. Sponsor your friends from abroad to visit you, and host them in your home. Or simply tell your stories in ways that bring dignity and honor to your hosts. See that the benefits of a trip have ripple effects that are both inward and outward.

After this crisis there will come a time for tourism and short-term service learning programs. Let’s take this opportunity to do something of a re-set, making sure our trips are not just designed for those from middle-class and wealthy backgrounds, co-creating learning outcomes with our hosts abroad, and building in a centrifugal force so that those who travel and those who host can steward the learning for themselves and for others.