Erin's Answers-- International and Local

So, time for a little guest commentary.

I have the good fortune of dating one of the most amazing people you will ever encounter in your entire life.  Erin Cloninger is passionate about missions and relief work both locally and abroad.  Having just graduated from Duke with a B.A. in Political Science, she’ll be starting her M.Div. in the fall.  Even though we didn’t really meet until a party thrown by a mutual friend (Sarah Howell, I owe you big time), Erin was in my Ethics class this past semester, a course which she was taking early out of enthusiasm for the subject matter and a general inquisitiveness about the Church and how we can best serve “the least of these.”  Foreign aid and disaster relief are longtime passions of hers, and she has already answered a call to ministry through work with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a summer developing education programs in Belize, and continued research in the Duke Haiti Lab.

Erin is currently serving in her first field ed placement at Trinity UMC in King, NC, and I’ll get to see her in 17 days!  She has been a constant source of encouragement to me this summer, and her insights and questions have been crucial to this project.  Erin has a habit of asking these earthshattering, insightful questions that can completely redirect the course of a conversation or turn a previously-assumed doctrine on its head.  I love the way that she looks at the world, and when I posted a series of questions about the Church and international missions, she was willing to share her views on the subject and some of the experiences that have helped shape her perspective.  My original questions are in bold, and Erin’s responses follow.

--Tom

Can raising money for folks overseas sometimes be used to deflect feelings of guilt at not interacting with people in need here?

I think people suffer from a need to weigh absolute vs. relative poverty. I struggled with that for a long time. I'd ask things like, "Is all homelessness really equal? Better to be homeless in the U.S. where we have shelters and soup kitchens than in the favelas of Brazil, no? Better to have access to Medicare here than die of malnutrition elsewhere?" 

I've since realized that I had a limited view of poverty in asking those questions. I was assuming that poverty was about a lack of material things; but poverty is so much more. Yes, poverty can be partially about a lack of goods, but it can also be about a brokenness of relationship and feelings of isolation. When poverty is about more than "stuff," one realizes that the rich can be equally poor. The rich need the poor and the poor need the rich. But relationships do take time.

"I know I use this graphic a lot, but it's awesome." --Tom

So I think people give money abroad more than at home sometimes for one of two reasons: 

(1) If they think that poverty is about a cost-benefit analysis and a matter of determining greater absolute need, then they are making a rational calculation about where their money might do the most good (in their mind). They want to get the right "stuff" to the people who need it.

(2) If they have a more complex understanding of poverty and view it as a brokenness of relationship, giving money primarily abroad might be a way of shirking the hard work of building relationships with an immediate community. In that case, yes...they are absolving their guilt. 

In short, they might choose one over the other out of ignorance or apathy--neither of which is particularly good. 

Is it okay to let that international work take the place of local missions and outreach in some situations?  

No, it's not okay. A frequent assumption in the U.S., however, is that aid is --or needs to be-- an "either/or" thing rather than a "both/and" thing (as in either local missions or international, not both local and international). People assume that if money is going to one, it is taken away from the other. It's a matter of assuming and living into the fear associated with scarcity, which is the antithesis of the abundant giving Jesus preached. 

The battle of local vs. international can be brutal and even detrimental to relationships. When I was in DC, there was an unspoken tension between local and international nonprofits. It was assumed that we were competing for the same money and the same donors. Some people even judged people for choosing the "wrong" career based on the scope of their organization's reach. 

It also led to tension within my own family when my aunt asked how I could sign a petition for foreign aid reform when 92% of her students were on free lunch. Her implicit assumption was that school lunch programs in the US were interchangeable with subsidized AIDS treatment abroad. It's not that simple. The budgets that feed each of those programs are different and it is set up in such a way that giving to one does not harm the other. Both are needed and equally loving...we need "both/and." 

My sister also asked me a question that is all too common: "Why are you working for the International Rescue Committee when we have plenty of problems right here? Isn't it a waste? Don't you care about people in your own country?" 

My response: "Of course I care! But people have different gifts and different passions. At this point in my life, I have a B.A. in International Relations and a certificate in Latin American and Caribbean studies. I have traveled and worked with issues of community development in developing nations for the past seven years...my skills aren't as transferable to running a U.S. nonprofit as you might think. Frankly, I'm not as qualified to run a local mission operation as someone who has done extensive work in inner city USA or studied community organizing in a democratic nation. I'm not going to claim that just because I've worked with school children in rural Belize that I'm somehow qualified to speak on public education in the U.S. There are people with far more experience and wisdom on that subject and I respect them enough to follow their lead."  

She seemed fairly content with that answer and the knowledge that it's not a matter of all the international people just "switching teams." Not to mention the fact there are plenty of international security and economic reasons for foreign aid, many of which are too lengthy (and uninteresting) to explain here. 

As for the original question of churches going local or international, I think it needs to be both/and because the Church knows no border. I do think, however, that local outreach should be more regular in its commitment to relationship building within its immediate neighborhood (church + surrounding communities). Like you've said before, international missions aren't about building relationships so much as exposure to a fuller reality of social life on this planet. We are a diverse people and the "other 90%" live very different lives than most U.S. citizens. Missions are just too short and at times too vacation-y (big bus, matching t-shirts, giggling youth) to form bonds of lasting trust. Some trips can do that...but I'd say they are rare. 

Is it detrimental for a church to specialize on international aid and allow other churches/organizations to focus on the local? 

I think there is something to be said for specialization in the sense that bigger churches can offer more extensive and frequent international trips. They have the personnel to plan them and the membership to garner participants and funds.

I think too much emphasis on the international stunts community trust and evangelism though. I don't think Jesus would be too fond of you looking past the woman who is sick on your stoop because you saw a person stumbling on the road a few miles away...better to stop and care for the person in front of you and grab the nearest buddy and say, "Hey, there's this other lady down the road that I saw. How about I help the woman here get back on her feet and then she and I will meet up with you and the other woman over there soon? Cool, thanks." 

The important point in that story is that there are multiple people acting. It's not one individual faced with a sea of sick or fallen people at various distances and s/he must choose which one to "save" first. Each person in the story goes where s/he is needed and sees to it that no one is forgotten or left behind by working in community. Thank goodness churches are the same. We have diverse gifts and passions within the same congregation that allow for no one to be left behind. We also have numbers. Christians are everywhere.

If the work is being done, do people really need to experience face-to-face outreach? 

Sam Wells of the Duke Chapel says that international missions are important because they put a face to a check. They infuse at least a minimal amount of relationship into what could otherwise be a tax write-off or business transaction. I used to disagree with this and say that I just wanted people to give money and let the nonprofit people use it to do more good. It would be a way to skip (what I saw as) the fake "OMG, I <3 Africa" moments and the photo ops and just give the money to people born in the county (i.e. local African/Colombian/etc. nonprofit leaders) who could use it more efficiently than American church people could.

I still sort of agree with that. We need more community-owned development and less top-down strings on our aid. For instance, a check from a church that says, "You must use this money for malaria medication" can mean that a pregnant mother walks into a clinic and the hospital turns her away because they don't have the funds to care for the miscarriage she is experiencing…they have money...but it's only for malaria. If this weren't a public blog, I would curse at this point. I think Jesus cries when do-gooders think they have a monopoly on what "good" means and people suffer as a result. 

The US government is guilty of it too. Members of Congress earmark foreign aid spending all the time...but honestly...should a 50-something white Catholic male tell Venezuela nonprofit leaders what their Venezuelan community needs? People in DC are beginning to think they shouldn't. Praise God. 

But on the subject of churches and sending mission teams...I see now that it is important. Putting a face to a check does matter. It has the potential --not the guarantee-- to benefit all individuals in some way. That means that the next step in missional thinking is not if international missions are good, but how can we make mission teams more respectful, informed, useful, humble, loving, servant-minded, relational, trusting, open-minded, and Christ-like.

I, for one, would be interested to see how a no-cameras policy would go on a mission trip to Kenya. "Wait," a volunteer might say, "You mean we are going to visit a slum like Kibera for an entire day and have NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT?" 

Why yes...that is precisely what I'm proposing. What if you had nothing but the memories of the things that you saw, the emotions you felt, and people you met? Hmm...what an interesting trip that would be...