We Don't Need Your Help

I bunked with Jake Shenk one night.

Jake and the spider he found

Now, Jake has been a missionary for decades, most of his life I think, and has seen it all. He's pastored churches, served as bishop and overseer, mentored countless leaders, literally written the book on Ndebele, the language of western Zimbabwe (and I do mean literally -- his book is even used in universities), managed farms, successfully talked himself out of speeding tickets, spotted wildlife from miles away, and handled spiders as big as his hand with a boyish smile on his face. He reminds me a little bit of Jack Palance in City Slickers.

I had the opportunity to meet Jake and his wife Nancy in September of 2015 on a short-term trip with Priority 1 Ministries serving at Ekuphileni Bible Institute in Mtshabezi, Zimbabwe. At the end of the week, Jake took our group to Hwange National Park because, as he put it, "You can't come to Zimbabwe and not see an elephant." We stayed at the Park one night, and I ended up sharing a room with Jake.

I was pleased with how it all worked out, because I had hoped for an opportunity to chat with Jake and ask him something. Now I had the perfect opportunity. I wanted to hear his opinion on short-term teams in general, and in his setting in particular. Is it actually worth it to bring foreigners like me all the way to Zimbabwe? In financial terms, the cost of plane tickets alone could supply construction materials for multiple church buildings, and could potentially pay the salaries of a dozen national workers. Basically, I asked him, do you actually need short-term teams?

Why did I ask this question? I work in short-term missions. I have studied them formally. So I'm very aware of both their benefits and their drawbacks. Short-term missions have become a rite of passage for teens in churches in North America today, they are so ubiquitous. Any youth leader worth his/her salt will plan at least one missions trip per year, sometimes more. I know how beneficial short-term trips can be, but I also know that they have weaknesses that many churches, organizations, and leaders fail to address. Short-term groups can bring more hassle than help, if they are done poorly. After the goodbyes, thankyous, and return flights, does anyone truly benefit?

He answered quickly. Yes, he said, the groups are worth it. He told me that the Zimbabweans are beyond flattered that these (mostly) Americans would give up their time and money to come to help them out. They are thrilled and encouraged by it.

OK, great. Then, what kind of teams would be most helpful to you and to the church in Zimbabwe? I asked.

Work teams, he said. He told me all about a system they had going for a number of years through which a Zimbabwean congregation would commit to putting up the church building itself, and the denomination would construct the roof, usually by means of a North American missions team. It worked well, he said. Everyone had ownership of the project, and the nationals loved having the teams come. It was mutually beneficial, and Jake would love to get something like that going again.

Hey, if that's what you need, I told him, then we will do our best to make that happen.

In answering my question, though, Jake said something I may never forget:

"We don't need teams to do evangelism. The locals are pretty good at that."

Wow.

I kept thinking about that statement. How humbling. But isn't missions evangelism? Isn't that our ultimate goal in traveling so far, in going through so much preparation, in raising all that money? I kept thinking how inverted it was compared to the US: We've got beautiful buildings full of people who are lousy at evangelism. Not everyone, of course, but that's the general pattern.

Is it possible that the whole thing is backwards?

Perhaps what we need is this: After our American construction team builds that church roof, you send a team from one of those rural Zimbabwean churches to the US, where they can help us with evangelism.

Because we don't need teams to do construction. The locals are pretty good at that.

The Zimbabwe Post: Are You Winning?

Prologue:

I wasn't in Zimbabwe long enough to speak authoritatively about it. I can speak to what I saw, the people I met, and how I felt. But Zimbabwe is big, and I just saw a small part of it. Africa is even bigger, and I wouldn't dare to even hint that now I know what Africa is like just because I got my passport stamped a couple of times over the course of a week. 

That said, I have to say that I love getting those stamps in my passport. The thonk! one hears when the customs agent slam his stamp into the booklet is very satisfying. I had missed that sound.

So how was Zimbabwe?

Here's my go-to 5-second answer: "It was wonderful. It was too short, but it was great." 

It was primarily a work trip: Our two main tasks were installing trim around the ceiling of Ekuphileni Bible Institute's (EBI's) green, octagonal library. There had been some water damage from a leaky roof which made the work a little tougher because the wooden ceiling tiles (nor the walls for that matter) weren't exactly flat. I personally spent much of our three work days either on a ladder or atop a makeshift scaffold consisting of boards nailed between two ladders.

Our second main project was replacing the fascia boards at the guest house where we were staying. This project took me up on the roof with Sipa (pictured right), a wonderful, joyful, gentle, humble man. He was our construction "boss" while we were there (though he disliked that term), and he smiled just about the entire time and made our work an absolute pleasure. We joked about not having any "problems" but rather lots of "opportunities" with our work, e.g. "Oh, I see another opportunity over here." He told Steve Westberry that he would have been perfectly happy simply to drink tea and talk with us, and waiting till we left to complete the work projects. And while part of us would have loved to do just that, we naturally wanted to be productive with our time there. Our whole team was Americans, after all; if we're not being productive then we don't exist, right? 

Of course, I jest, but we did have to be content with a less results-oriented environment. One of my favorite times was tea time at 10:30am, when the students and staff took a break for tea and bread with jam. There was no set ending time; whenever you were finished, you could leave. It was there I first had a good conversation with MT Ncube, the principal of EBI, pictured to the right. MT is one of those people (like Jake Shenk, the BIC missionary who hosted our trip) who wears a lot of hats. On Monday, I saw him drive up to the library in a pickup truck wearing the same blue overalls that Sipa was wearing. He proceeded to grab a rake and shovel and work on the landscaping in the center of the campus. I thought to myself, "Wait, didn't Jake say he was the principal? Did I hear him wrong, and actually he's the groundskeeper? Maybe it was a translation issue." Sure enough, MT is the principal of EBI and lectures on theology. He also lectures two days a week at the Theological College of Zimbabwe (or as they call it, Tee Cee Zed). But he was also a child at heart, reveling at sunsets and sunrises and gleefully rolling rocks down the steep slope of the hill we had climbed together. 

We caught something from our hosts while we were in Zimbabwe [I'll pause for the reader to interject a malaria joke of some kind. OK.]. I didn't notice it at first, but several times we heard Zimbabweans say "Are you winning?" as a kind of greeting, used similarly to how we say "How are you?" It was different from the recent slang-trend in the US of just saying "Winning!" when something goes well, even if it's full of sarcasm. That was somewhat annoying. This expression is a genuine reminder to look positively at your circumstances. Instead of focusing on our sad state, focus on the victory. Focus on our triumphant nature in Christ, in whom "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth" (Eph. 1:7-10). All that stuff should be enough for us to be joyful all day, every day.

But of course, we're sinful humans and we muck it up, and we need constant reminders of the goodness of God, of His love, and of what Christ did for us. But all we need to do to extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one is stand behind our shield of faith (Eph. 6:16). "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7). That's some pretty victorious language.

So try it out today. Ask someone, "Are you winning?" and see how they respond. Might start a good conversation.