The Disease of Mission

I'm on a mission trip this week. My church has several youth and adults serving in Washington DC. We've done work with the homeless, people trying to kick addictions, and with victims of domestic violence. We've worked with numerous faith-based and not-for-profit agencies. We've been sent out to do mission work on behalf of our congregation...and it's diseased.

We've visited with pastors and ministry leaders. They've talked about how big the plight of addiction, homelessness, and poverty is, and how it's systemic and a cycle. We may very well think that our labor is in vain; and to some extent, it is. We're not dealing with the system to end this. We may serve a meal, clean a chapel, hand out toiletries, glean fresh vegetables, or more - but those things are Band-Aids on a much larger problem. Our actions reduce poverty, or homelessness (temporarily), but they don't eliminate it.

I've been thinking a lot about the disease of mission this week in terms of our understanding of mission. A church sends out a team to do mission work. The team goes, does the work, and comes back home - and very little changes. Let me offer some examples of what I mean.

1) We helped prepare and serve a meal for about 20 people earlier this week. They were waiting outside the building (and so were we). We went in and did our work, but also spent time talking with the people. We heard lots of stories about their lives. I'm certain for many, that might have been their only meal of the day. People are walking around hungry - two meals, one meal, or none at all. And, shortly after we finished serving breakfast and were in the middle of our work at the next place, people in our group were already complaining of hunger. Seeing and hearing the plight of hunger does not make us change our eating habits.

2) We helped with a shower ministry at our home church this morning (and will do so again later in the week). People came into the church with varieties of things - garbage bags to small suitcases, to purses, to the clothes they wore. We handed out toiletries for them to shower, and for those that needed it, a new pair of underwear or socks. Some walked away with two pairs of socks - the ones they wore into the church, and the new pair they wore out of the church. Yet, people were shopping in souvenir stores the past couple of days, wanting to buy another t-shirt or sweatshirt for an already overabundant collection of clothing. I looked at the new pair of shorts I bought to bring on the trip, and felt ashamed that I had so much, and gave so little.

The disease of mission is that we think it's a one-time thing. We go out and we do it, and then we're done with mission until the next time we are scheduled to feed people at the local mission, or the next opportunity to travel for mission comes up. We say that mission and our interactions with people changes lives, but it doesn't produce lasting change. It doesn't change the system of our hearts. It simply allows us to think we've been following Wesley's General Rules - to do no harm, to do good, and to stay in love with God. But, if we truly follow Wesley's rules, we can't just do mission work once a month or a week out of the year. Wesley's rules are intended to change the systemic cycle of our spiritual, physical, emotional, and relational lives. And so, mission cannot be a destination or a date, but it must become part of the fabric of our lifestyle. We must, in the words of Mahatma Ghandi, "be the change you want to see."