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| A biblical fisherman getting a coin from a fish. Image text: "Fish better have my money. Matthew 17:24-27." Image source. |
In order to go on a mission trip, you need to ask a bunch of people for money. So here's the story of how that all went down.
I really wanted to go on a mission trip that summer, so in the spring I was looking around to see what opportunities there were. There was this one trip I was considering (which I didn't end up doing, spoiler), and I emailed the trip leader, Ivan, to ask him some questions. One of the things I told him was that it seemed like a lot of money (around $4000) and I was concerned about how to raise that much money.
And Ivan emailed back and said it may seem like a lot of money, but don't be worried, because "nobody that God wanted to go on the trip has ever had trouble raising the money."
I think back on that now, and I'm almost astonished, like, can you believe he said that??? What an outlandish claim to make! ... But, what's more surprising is, I actually believed him.
Why on earth did I believe him? Like, what was I thinking? I'm a math person. I'm a statistics person. How did I not immediately think, "wow, anyone who says something like that is full of shit, because how on earth would you be able to gather all the data you would need to support that big of a claim?" Like, let's stop and think about this for a second. How could anyone ever possibly know whether or not "nobody that God wanted to go on the trip has ever had trouble raising the money"? Let's try to imagine how it might possibly come about that someone would have access to information that might suggest that this is true.
Keep in mind that Christians feel pressure to put a good spin on it, and in general people don't like to talk about their financial problems. So if they did "have trouble" they wouldn't necessarily be transparent about it with their team leader. You'd have to put a lot of thought into how you design your survey questions to get past people's natural, subconscious tendency to be less than honest about their financial situation. And HOW ON EARTH would you quantify whether or not "God wanted" them to take the trip?
Do you think Ivan thought about any of that?
Even if it was true, how would you know?
It's the kind of assertion you would only believe if you already ascribe to an idealistic worldview where a God makes perfect plans and we just have to listen to Them and trust and obey and we are the heroes of our own stories. And that's the worldview I held back then; that's what I was taught in church. So actually, a statement like "nobody that God wanted to go on the trip has ever had trouble raising the money" is communicating about your perspective on the kind of world we live in, rather than stating the conclusion of a statistical study. We already believe we live in the sort of world where "nobody that God wanted to go on the trip has ever had trouble raising the money", so it's not really necessary to look for data to find out whether that's actually the case.
(Captain Cassidy has made a similar point in a blog post about speaking in tongues- people at her church claimed that a Jewish person had visited their church and said that a little girl "speaking in tongues" was speaking "perfect Aramaic" and Cassidy was confused about why nobody had bothered to get the name of the visitor and other details. Because, it's not really about evidence and facts; it's about expressing your beliefs about the nature of the reality we live in.)
It reminds me of another time- and this is really embarrassing- in college, when our campus Christian group was having a weekend conference and we were encouraging our members to sign up. One of the students on the leadership team, Helen, was talking about how people always think they can't go because they have too much homework, but we should just trust God and put God first and go to the conference anyway, and God will work it out. In fact, she said, it's quite common that you go to a Christian conference and then you find out the due date for your project was pushed back, or your homework ends up being easier than you expected- so it all works out. Sometimes we call this phenomenon "the 'God's kids' curve." (A reference to the concept of "grading on a curve.")
And so I found myself sending an email to one of the freshmen to see if she was planning to come to the conference, and she said she couldn't because she had too much homework, and, ohhhh geez this is embarrassing, I told her "there's this thing called the 'God's kids' curve" and that she should come anyway and God will work out the other stuff. (Apparently she was less than convinced, because she did not end up coming.)
Like, can you believe I repeated that urban legend? I believed it just because Helen said it, and not because it was backed up by any statistical evidence. How did that happen? I'm a math nerd, I know what confirmation bias is. Why would I just straight-up believe such a wild claim?
Anyway, back to my story about the mission trip. I didn't end up going on Ivan's trip; I signed up for a different one, led by a guy we will call Robert. (The cost for this one was also about $4000.)
So to prepare for the trip, I needed to send out fundraising letters so people would give me money. In the letter, I explained why I wanted to go to China- it was because I believed that God lives in every culture in the world, and by staying in the US and only knowing my own culture, I'm only able to experience a very limited part of God- I did NOT believe "we need to go over there and SAVE THEM." And at the end of the letter I asked for support. I said, the most important thing is to pray for us. The second most important thing is the money.
Because, of course we have to believe that, right? It's not really about the money, it's about being aligned with God's will, and if you achieve that, then of course God will make sure you get the money, no problem.
Now, of course I also believed if the recipients of my fundraising letter prayed and were truly seeking to obey God, then many of them would send me money. But see, it's not really *about* the money, the key is the praying. And, the other side of the coin is that if we have enough money but we're not praying and willing to listen to God, our trip is going to be a failure.
That's what we believed. That's what I was taught in church. Heard a lot of testimonies about "it looked impossible, but we had faith this is what God wanted us to do, and against all odds it was a success" and "everything was going so well for me and I got proud and started to feel like I didn't need God and I could do this on my own, and then it all failed spectacularly."
So the day of the trip came. First we all gathered at a church in the US, so we could fly to China together the next day. So there we were, the group of us students, meeting for the first time, and one of the students, Margaret, was asking the rest of us how our fundraising went. Did we raise all the money we were supposed to, or did we have to pay for the trip ourselves?
I told her I had to pay about $500 of my own money. And she said "ah, that's not that bad." Turns out, some of the other students ended up paying a lot more of their own money. Some of them were very late in sending out their fundraising letters- they didn't stick to the schedule Robert gave us.
Wait right there, stop the presses.
Paying $500 of my own money- failing to fundraise for the whole cost- is "not that bad"? And the way she said it ... like she was familiar with the reality of how these things go, unlike little idealistic me. Actually, several of the students on the trip- including Margaret- all went to the same college, so they knew each other before, and must have been talking to each other during the fundraising process and aware of how it was going for each of them.
See, I had never thought about this before: What if you send out fundraising letters to go on a mission trip, and the amount that you raise is less than the amount you need? Where does the rest of the money come from? I had never ever thought about that, until it happened to me, and I had kind of felt bad for "failing", until I decided to think of it as, "well I am making a donation to this mission trip, so, wow look at that, now the total amount of the donations is the right amount." And pretend my donation wasn't forced. Pretend I didn't "fail."
I guess I thought the exact dollar amount of the cost for the trip didn't affect me at all, because I would just fundraise all the money, and that's how it works. Ha. Nope. In the real world, the amount I pay is the total cost minus the fundraised amount. See? So yes, it makes a big difference if the trip costs, say, $3800 vs $4000. That's $200 coming out of my pocket.
Because, see, that's what happens. When it comes down to it, if the money you raise is less than the amount you need, YOU are the one on the hook for that money. And then where is all that fancy talk about "God's plan"?
It wasn't a big deal for me, because I did have $500 just laying around, so, whatever, I can pay for it. But now I wonder ... surely sometimes, kids aren't able to fundraise enough for their mission trip, and then they can't go- surely that happens sometimes, right? But nobody ever talks about that in church.
(Especially not Ivan, haha. Or, well, he might believe that if you weren't able to fundraise enough, that's because it wasn't really God's will for you to go. So then you're even more of a failure, for going against God's will. And for sending out fundraising letters and trying to get other Christians to help you go against God's will. Oooh, how embarrassing.)
That really affected me, though, when Margaret said "that's not that bad." What a huge contrast with Ivan's "nobody that God wanted to go on the trip has ever had trouble raising the money." Margaret told me "that's not that bad," and shattered my lofty idealistic view of "God providing." Reality doesn't work that way.
So. Off we went, to China.
Then, partway through the trip, we were having a team meeting, and Robert told us we were ... uh, spending too much money. As the leader, Robert was responsible for handling the money- choosing cheap hotels for us to stay in, buying tickets for tourist attractions and other activities we did with our Chinese friends [*cough* evangelism targets *cough*], etc. And he and the other leaders had realized that, if we kept going like that, we would end up way over budget by the end of the trip.
So, Robert told us, they were faced with a decision. Do we stop doing things and just get by on as little money as possible for the rest of the trip, or do we keep going as originally planned? And they decided to keep going as planned. Don't make changes in order to save money.
You know why? Because, he said, we are trusting God. We have seen "signs" that God is supporting us on this trip. Why, one person even got saved already! We are going to trust God and keep doing the things we planned to do, even though we don't technically have the money for that.
God wants us here, doing this, Robert said.
So, full steam ahead!
And that's what we did. We carried on with all our travel and tourism plans for the rest of the trip. Guess what: 3 of our Chinese friends ended up getting saved! Wow isn't that amazing? (Ahem, but if you read my blog you know I no longer really buy the concept of "getting saved"...)
Then we came back to the US. And a few weeks later, there was an email from Robert. He said, you all remember how on the trip I said we were over budget? Well, can you all do some more fundraising to try to make up the difference?
So I wrote a fundraising email and sent it out. I wrote about how great and successful the trip was, but unfortunately we still need more money, so if you're able could you send some?
One of my friends told me he donated some money after reading my email. But I didn't hear back from anyone else about it. I don't know if anyone else donated or not- they would have donated online, directly to the missions organization, so it's possible they did but I didn't know about it. But... eh, probably not. Who would want to donate to a mission trip that already happened, like, IN THE PAST? You don't really get the feeling that you're making a difference, with that kind of donation. It already happened. What's the point?
So I wonder what happened after that. I never heard anything else about the money situation. I wonder if Robert got in trouble. I wonder if there were restrictions put on him in future mission trips, so he wouldn't be able to overspend like that again.
I wonder if he went back and told the missions organization that God was clearly there with us on the trip, and 3 Chinese people got saved, and the organization was like wow that's wonderful, you did the right thing, who cares about the money?
I wonder if the missions organization expects that sometimes the trips go over budget, and they have a plan in place for that, and it's okay.
I wonder ... where does the illusion of "this is God's will, so we know God is going to work everything out" break down and you have to face the hard reality of "where is this money going to come from?"
I bet missionaries know a lot of awkward secrets about that point where all our romantic ideas about "God's plan" clash against the reality of money and numbers that just don't add up. A lot of things you can't say in church. The only stories you're allowed to tell in church are "we thought we weren't going to have enough money, but suddenly God provided" and "because I was being sinful, God punished me by letting my funding dry up" and "I felt so bad when I couldn't raise the money, but through it all, God was with me in a whole new way- so I realized that God had let it happen to teach me this."
So that's my little mission-trip-money story. I used to be the sort of Christian who believed Ivan's bullshit about "nobody that God wanted to go on the trip has ever had trouble raising the money," but not anymore. Now I am the sort of Christian who wonders about privilege and economic class ... Like, it must be the case that these short-term missions opportunities are only available to kids from an upper/middle class background ... right? It must be very very dependent on the average income of all the adults in their life. I grew up in a white suburban church where it was very normal for church members to receive fundraising letters from kids in the youth group going on mission trips, and people were happy to give a few dollars because they wanted to support the kids. But what about Christian teenagers in churches where a lot of the congregation is struggling financially, maybe even living in poverty? Do they go on international mission trips at the same rate? Or is it "God's will" that they don't get a chance to go? Ugh, that God is not worthy of worship. (This is why I no longer believe in a God who actively intervenes in the world- because a lot of "God's blessings" turned out to be white privilege or economic privilege.)
But I never heard anyone ever say anything like that, growing up in a white evangelical church. It was all about how God is "calling" you to go on the trip and that's the one and only deciding factor.
Nobody ever mentioned income demographics.
Nobody ever said the reason I got to go to China is because I knew a lot of rich Christians. Even though that's the truth.
And my real-life experience of fundraising for the trip didn't match the abstract, idealized stories I had always heard in church. I said in my fundraising letter that the most important thing was prayer, and money was second... but I wonder what happened to Robert when he came back to the US having spent way too much money. I wonder if, when it really comes down to it, anybody actually believes that stuff.
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Note: So, this post is about a short-term mission trip I went on, and I know there is a lot to criticize about short-term mission trips in general (in terms of harm done to the people we are trying to "save"), but I didn't get into that because it wasn't the focus of this post. Just wanted to make a note here to say I am aware of the criticism and I agree with a lot of it.
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Related:
Runaway Radical: The Stories You Can't Tell In Church
The things I've never let myself say about evangelism
The things I've never let myself say about worship
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