Work Teams? No, Taste and See Teams

by Andrew Atkins

Work teams are the darlings of missions. I’m defining a work team as a church group that goes overseas for one week to three months. Why are they the darlings of missions?

We have to explode some myths about work teams, and give them a new rationale and new name.

Work teams are the darlings of missions. I’m defining a work team as a church group that goes overseas for one week to three months. Why are they the darlings of missions?

Because in almost every other program we have to go out and beat the bushes for people and support. But with work teams churches knock on our doors, insisting we let them in on this.

Last year, our mission had 12 requests from Canadian churches alone, and we are quite a small mission. This was after we had clamped a moratorium on work teams, to allow us to study them before we got swamped. During that time a local pastor warned us to open the door to work teams, or risk going the way of the dinosaurs.

We do need to raise questions about work teams before the tidal wave of enthusiasm knocks us over and causes serious problems. First, what has been the overall impact on missions, churches, and people? The answer will tell us if work teams are worth the time, energy, money, and yes, the pain. If we decide they are worth it, then we can ask, How can we improve them?

Some quick snapshots from my own scrapbook will convince you that we must ask these questions:

Haiti
The work team packs up to go home. The members are frustrated, dejected. The roof they came to build is only half done. The spring they came to cap remains uncapped and muddy. Half of them are sick.

Canada
A pastor speaks at our staff devotions, still glowing about his recent work team, for two reasons: First, one of the people on the team helped bring a national pastor’s rebellious son back to the Lord; second, the team’s puppets were now being used by the national church’s youth group.

Jamaica
A casual conversation takes a surprising turn. Five of us foreigners are listening to the national work team coordinator talk about recent teams. He pours out his hurt and frustration to us, relative strangers, about the work team’s lack of trust in the Jamaicans’ ability to plan, coordinate, organize, and lead. Not only that, they blamed the Jamaicans for everything that went wrong.

Canada
The mother of a wild teenager testifies at church how her son has made a radical change for the better. She tearfully praises God for using her son’s time on a recent work team to bring about the change.

Nairobi
A mission director explains how a recent work team left one of his missionary couples in tears. They lived way out in the bush and one of their few luxuries was a carefully rationed stock of peanut butter. It wasn’t just that the team quickly consumed all the peanut butter, but how they did it—hogging it down and asking for more, then complaining when they ran out.

Jamaica
A Canadian youth pastor is horrified when he discovers that two members of his work team purchased marijuana and plan to bring it back to Canada.

Philippines
A teacher at a boarding school explains to me how, within a few days of watching a work team, he can already tell which ones are interested in learning about missions, as opposed to those who are bored because the adventure has already worn off.

Nairobi
Work team members working in the slums wear rubber surgical gloves to avoid contact with diseased slum dwel-lers, but come home and report “how we were able to love the people.”

What does this collection of vignettes tell us? It answers our first question, What is the overall impact of work teams on missions, churches, and people? The answer is a classic good news-bad news scenario.

If you focus on the team members, the impression is almost always positive: changed attitudes, new or renewed interest in cross-cultural ministry at both the church and personal levels, and, over the long haul, generally a much stronger involvement in missions. However, the jury is still out on whether this translates into significantly more career missionaries. What I do see are more churchgoers clamoring to go out on work teams.

However, the answer changesdramatically when you look at the supposed beneficiaries, missionaries and national churches. More often than not, work teams affect them negatively.

To find this out, you’ve got to dig, because people are reluctant to gainsay the rave reviews work teams get from the home office and the home church. On private levels, you’ll find some deep concerns. Some people have been hurt and say quite frankly that teams aren’t worth it.

What this mixed picture should tell us is that we’ve got to cool down our enthusiasm a bit and admit that all work teams are not automatically “great stuff.” We have to balance the good and bad parts of the story and commit ourselves to accept and understand the two-sided evaluation. Only then can we begin to attack the “bad news” about work teams and find answers. Until we do that, we can’t give an unqualified “Yes, they’re worth it” answer.

Which brings us back to our second question: What do we have to do for the best results? First, we have to explode some myths and then change our thinking, so we can come up with a new rationale (and even a new name) for work teams.

Myth No. 1: Unless North Americans do it, the task of world evangelization will not get done. The irony is that many Western Christians don’t come to the astounding realization of quality national mission work until they go out on a work team. Increasingly, the Western church’s job—including work teams—must be to assist, encourage, and strengthen the national church’s simple, inexpensive ministries to vast numbers of unreached people.

Myth No. 2: Work teams primarily benefit the missionary or the overseas church. Look at one item: costs. Try to imagine the costs of a recent work team of 50-plus people who went to Nairobi. To get them there, house, and feed them took more than $120,000. Add the costs of hosting, logistics, orientation, and time away from ministry. In reality, work teams are a ministry of the mission and the national churches to the teams and, through them, to the North American churches.

Myth No. 3: The primary need is for work to be accomplished on behalf of the missionary or overseas church. Not true. There simply isn’t work or ministry out there that would remain undone unless tackled by a team of outsiders. Granted, most teams do the work or ministry faster; granted, they bring tremendous encouragement, motivation, and relief. However, God’s work will get done if no work teams show up. Maybe it will take longer, but it will get done. Look at another side of this myth. Quite often, missionaries or local Christians have to drastically slow or abandon other work and ministry to host the work team.

Myth No. 4: Work teams automatically enhance the ministry of the missionary or church. Again, not true. Often, our Western understanding, perspectives, and methods can have a negative impact on existing ministries. So does the constant reinforcement of the idea that without Western intervention, the job won’t get done.

The fragile world of cross-cultural ministry, based primarily on relationships, sensitivity, and understanding, takes time—one thing that work teams don’t have a lot of.

Next, after exploding these myths, we have to adopt a radically new way of looking at work teams. My thesis is that the primary short-term target of work teams is the workers themselves. If we abandon the traditional view, then we can look at this ministry in terms of learning and self-understanding, not the jobs done overseas.

Along with a new rationale will come a new name for work teams. Since our long-term goal is to strengthen this generation’s involvement in world missions, our short-term objective should be to allow North Americans to “taste and see” what cross-cultural ministry is all about. Therefore, let’s call them “Taste and See Teams.”

Add the new name to the myths we have exploded and we can begin to shift the mandate for work teams. For one, let’s stop calling people who go out on teams “short-term missionaries.” Let’s see them for what they really are, student or apprenticemissionaries.

With a new mandate firmly in mind, we can shift our approach. Instead of madly getting teams out to the work sites, we can concentrate on educating the team members.

We must break out of the stereotypes and help our “taste and see” people to see that the real goal isn’t the work they do. We can help them understand our North American cultural bias and how to be sensitive and submissive to field authority. We must put their assignments in the context of field conditions and the overall ministry there. In a word, we must help them prepare for on-site learning and self-evaluation.

But that’s only half the task. Unless our missionaries and national churches are prepared to properly use “taste and see” teams, we’ve haven’t covered the entire ground. Once we’re all thinking the same way—senders and receivers—we’re more likely to see fruitful cooperation. To avoid the feeling that teams are forced on the field for public relations and recruiting values, the field should agree to and request the team.

We must help our field people to see the change of focus from field to home. If the focus becomes the field’s ministry to the North American churches, then we’re not as likely to hear that work teams are too much trouble.

CONCLUSION
Work teams are here to stay. Research tells us that, churches tell us that, experience tells us that. So, let’s commit ourselves to the necessary sacrifices to make them better. Out of these teams probably will come the leaders of our missions in the next century.

Let’s make sure these future leaders taste and see the reality of God’s church today. With clear thinking, a revised mandate, a new name, and some required education, work teams will produce Christians truly in tune with the international nature of the church and the missions task.

—–

EMQ, Vo. 27, No. 4, pp. 384-389. Copyright © 1991 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

Comments are closed.