I’m all for mission coated holidays.

Or should that be holiday coated mission trips?

Whatever, however, any which way, I’m all for them. Truly, deeply, madly, really, I am.

We encouraged all our kids, when they were teenagers, to spend some time in Africa, to see the way ‘the other half live’, and the courageous things our brothers and sisters were doing in Jesus’ name in difficult contexts among disadvantaged communities.

This led to one of them, at the ripe old age of 15, becoming such an Africaphile, that we feared she would abandon her country of birth. She eventually took herself off to do student work with a church in inner city Johannesburg for four years, coming home with an Irish/African husband and an African born son.

I have taken several teams of Australians to southern Africa on missionary coated holidays. I haven’t pretended they were mission trips when they were really a holiday or visa versa. I built in both components quite deliberately.

I wanted so much to take my parents on one of these trips. They had travelled to Western and Eastern Europe on but Africa, though closer, seemed like a bridge too far. Whether it was the danger or the disease or the difficulties in getting around but I so desperately wanted them to see the work our friends were doing. By the time I had demolished their every objection, their frail aged bodies were beyond it.

What are the advantages of mission-coated holidays? Let me suggest a few:

1. We realise that God isn’t white and that Christianity is much bigger than our western stereotypes

2. We get a handle on the raw courage of our brothers and sisters in Christ as they testify to Jesus in contexts where it’s really costly to stick your head up and out for Christ

3. Our hosts are deeply moved and encouraged by the efforts we have made to visit them and share in their labour for the Lord as we are deeply moved by their sharing of ministry with us

4. We develop relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ, whose faith in the midst of adversity, can become a life challenging and changing challenge to our own ‘discipleship’

5. We discover the joy of reciprocity and mutuality of ministry so that real partnership replaces our pathetic little paternalistic and prejudicial ways of thinking

6. We better understand concepts of wealth and poverty and resolve to live life more simply in order to share more justly the resources of the earth and we will channel some of our extravagances into joyfully given resources to further the Gospel and care for our brothers and sisters in Christ in poverty

7. I could go on

Of course, it doesn’t always work out like this. On one mission team I took to South Africa I suggested that the guests (over 30 of us) shout our hosts lunch on a particular day that we all (guests and hosts) went on a sightseeing bus trip. One of the guests (one of us Australians) responded quite loudly, “Well, how much extra will that cost me?” I wasn’t sure whether I wanted the ground to swallow us all up! Most of us, including this person, had tacked on a typically western extravaganza to the trip by a few days in a game park or by returning home via Europe.

Another thing that floored me was that when some of our hosts made a reciprocal trip to Australia as our guests. We had the privilege and honour to be hosts to those who offered us such generous hospitality in their homeland. But some Australians, who had been treated like royalty in South Africa, were too busy to be hosts. It was a moment and matter of extreme embarrassment.

But still, in spite of these aberrations, I am all for mission-coated holidays.

There are, however, two things that stick in my gut.

1. When wealthy white westerners like us appeal for money to fund our mission-coated holidays. I got an email recently asking me to sponsor an Australian so he could go on a mission trip to another western nation! I couldn’t believe it. This was an upper middle class Australian who could give away half his wealth and still be a middle class Australian (as could I) and he wanted a hand out for a mission coated holiday in another western context! That’s about the worst of it. But I am still troubled when wealthy middle class Australians want other people to pay for their mission-coated holidays to developing world contexts. We could go without a few indulgences, save our money and let our friends give their money to the people we are going to serve who really need it!

2. The second thing is the lack of understanding by some that when white wealthy westerners go to developing world contexts, their very presence there is an enormous drain on local resources. My vexation would be greatly eased if we donated at least as much again to our host communities as it cost us to enjoy our mission-coated holiday. In some contexts our ‘feel-good’ labours deny the possibility for local employment, where unemployment is one of the main reasons for poverty, or distracts our hosts from the hand to mouth ministries that can often mean the difference between life and death.

Yes, I am all for holiday coated mission trips and mission coated holidays! Under God’s sovereign hand they can change our lives and the lives of those we go to serve through the development of long-term relationships and lasting commitments that bring untold blessing to all concerned. Terms like benefactor and beneficiary are evaporated by the reciprocity and mutuality of ministry that Paul spoke of in his longing to go to Rome (Romans 1:12) or that Jesus spoke about when he said it is more blessed to give than to get (Acts 20:35).

I recommend that we think through far more carefully:

➢ who and what these trips are really for

➢ what are the long-term goals and benefits that we are aiming

➢ how can our engagement with our brothers and sisters in Christ help build up their capacity for ministry and have a sustainable impact

➢ how can the impact that this engagement has had on us transform our life and ministry when we return to Australia

➢ what relationship responsibilities such encounters and experiences should place upon us for following 10, 20 or 30 years.