Alban Weekly - Week of 1/1/07 - Mission of Missions

Why does your church pursue ministries that alleviate poverty or social justice ministries? This interesting article talks about the differing viewpoints of some doing it for those sake who need to be helped vs. the churches doing it for the sake of those who need to be changed by helping. I had dinner last week with a friend who recently did some mission work in Croatia. He told stories he heard from the locals there of US churches sending missions team and the bad experiences the locals had. For example, the Americans "had" to take showers every day and ending up running a villages wells dry. Other missions team ate host homes out of food. Another interesting story: he said American pastors were invited to come over to teach about practical theology, so they taught about small groups process, ie "forming, storming, norming, performing" etc. The only problem was they were teaching to a clanish, some what tribal culture where all the evangelical churches were small groups. I don't know whose fault that is, obviously something broke down in the communication. In cases like those I don't know if those experiences helped either the needy or the servant.