It is.
While I do take exception to some of these *missions trips* that people fund raise for, there are some that I know that DO go to places like Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.
And these people are not engaged in tanning, but building Schools, churches, health clinics, in out lying areas that are beyond destitute.
There's not a poor person in this country who doesn't have access to all kinds of government sponsored social services, free food, free healthcare, free education, free cell phones, free transportation to said services, etc....
What is *poor* in this country, is wealth beyond the means of most of the world.
The article is starting with the false premise that these people who do short term missions trips are in it just for the vacation.
It's a dishonest portrayal and a slap in the face of those who go there and work hard to help others.
Well stated. Thank you. I go with a team almost every year to the Dominican Republic. My daughter has been to Guatemala and Mexico when she was a teen. In addition to what you’ve listed, some teams take down needed items in their luggage - where it is not subject to exorbitant tariffs. Her first team took down 35 pieces of luggage filled with common medical supplies - aspirin, cold medicine, as well as supplies for diabetics. After they returned, the team had a “debriefing”, which my husband and I attended. To a person, every one of them had a new perspective on their own lives. For some of them, it had a lasting impact.
I think this is the point of the editorial that you seem to be missing. It's not saying Evangelicals aren't doing missionary work "per se", rather that there is a need for missionary work still here in the US, while many Evangelicals are sending their kids and young adults off to foreign countries.
There's not a poor person in this country who doesn't have access to all kinds of government sponsored social services, free food, free healthcare, free education, free cell phones, free transportation to said services, etc....
By your own words you're demonstrating the claim of the editorial true. You're just surrendering all the people here, in the US, to government "help" (ie control). Just as the editorial said, you apparently think the government can, or should, not only meet the physical needs of the "poor" but their spiritual needs.
This isn't a comfortable article to read but I think it's an important one. Recently I discovered in myself a desire to do some kind of charitable (or as you might call it "missionary") work. I went to my friends with the proposal that we start doing something, maybe visiting a nursing home or helping out at a soup kitchen. But my friends told me of a more pressing need, not more urgent because of its severity but more urgent because it was more local. It turns out that a friend I had lost touch with has a need for charity. For Christ really.
The point is as Christians, really as imperfect human beings we tend to compartmentalize all aspects of our lives even our Faith. So we like to even think of evangelization or mission as something we do on weekends, with strangers at another location.
This is, I believe exactly what the editorial is criticizing. This notion that we can compartmentalize the great commission like we do other things in our life like mowing the lawn or cleaning out the garage. Also, this tendancy (that I too like everyone has) to, when we do want to do charitable work, we seek such opportunity elsewhere, by going to different places either across town or across the globe, instead of reaching out to say our neighbor, or even our friends. It's more comfortable ultimately to do missionary work that way because when our "shift" is over we can go back home and maybe say a prayer for the ones we "helped". But we eventually forget them.
This isn't true charitable work, I'd say. We do charitable work ultimately to encounter Christ either in the situation or in the people we help. But we can't do that if we compartmentalize it. Put it in a box only to be done on weekends or when we have free time, and then check it off the list when done. True charity is meeting people in their lives and being a part of it, this is really tough but it's what Christ calls us to do. To be truly human. To encounter Him.
“It’s a dishonest portrayal and a slap in the face of those who go there and work hard to help others.”
Seems that the Christian-haters go to great lengths to smear the reputation of Christianity and its adherents.
(Not a peep, ever, about the shenanigans of atheists and their propensity to murder lots of people.”)
IMHO