Missionaries

Balfa

In this part of the world, it's not uncommon for teenagers to come home from Sunday school and beg parents for money to go on a mission trip with the pastor to anywhere from the downtown slums to Central America.

I'm wondering what the point in this is. Well, I can see a point in that members of a given religion want to spread the word to as many people as possible so as many people as possible will be "saved" and have a terriffic afterlife.

But is a mission's success is defined by how many baptisms it completes? Surely there's more to religion than that. Allowing God into your life is supposed to make your life better, not just your afterlife, right? If all these baptised newly christian people go off and live their christian lives, we should see some sort of social impact, and I'm all for an organised religion if it keeps society in line and smiling.

My main question: are there any studies into or statistics about social change before and after a heap of baptisms? Birth rate? Death rate? Crime rates? Quality of life? Anything? If not, then it seems to me, missions are very close-minded things. Baptism done, job done, eh? Sounds more like the whole thing is for the benefit of the people on the mission trip, to make them feel good about themselves.


Any thoughts or references on this?

robindch

> But is a mission's success is defined by how many baptisms it completes?

In Baptist USA, yes, I'd say that's a pretty good summary of what religion is all about. On my one and only trip to Dallas, I passed by the huge Fellowship Church near DFW, just to get a flavour of what happened in these places. Turned out that Pastor Ed gets around 20,000 people per week, and during the fifteen minutes I was in the auditorium, we were told that the last years' charitable contributions amounted to 1,000 pairs of shoes sent to some place in Brazil (which, assuming good shoes, I estimated at around 2% of his annual floor-take). Didn't strike me as very generous at all, but then again, I don't believe he's there to help people.

> are there any studies into or statistics about social change before and
> after a heap of baptisms?

Not that I'm aware of, per se. However, there are studies into correlations between level of religious belief, and social indicators. In summary, it turns out that high levels of religious belief generally correlate with high levels of social problems, while low levels of religious belief generally correlate with low levels of social problems. The following report quantifies this in some detail:

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

> Sounds more like the whole thing is for the benefit of the people on
> the mission trip, to make them feel good about themselves.

Try reading this account of an American missionary's trip to Honduras and see if your judgement is accurate:

http://www.robertbreaker.com/honduras/honduras/honduras.htm

There's plenty more of the above, but these two are good intros. Hope they help.

DublinWriter

Balfa wrote:

My main question: are there any studies into or statistics about social change before and after a heap of baptisms? Birth rate? Death rate? Crime rates? Quality of life? Anything? If not, then it seems to me, missions are very close-minded things. Baptism done, job done, eh? Sounds more like the whole thing is for the benefit of the people on the mission trip, to make them feel good about themselves.

Any thoughts or references on this?

I'm sure there's been some scholarly sociological research on this.

As for making yourself feel better, I remember asking the same question to a newly ordaned priest about his vocation when we were all shepparded along to a retreat in fifth year. He was stumbling over an answer when the bell went!

Also bear in mind how Irish Catholic missionaries in Africa the 1950's used to dress up young African kids in ceile uniform and teach them ceile dancing, and the 'penny for the black babies' charity campaign.

How ironic is it that Ireland now has to 'import' African Catholic preists and we're dependant on immigrant labour, much of it Nigerian, to fuel our Celtic Tiger.

BrianCalgary

How about a report from one who has first hand experience on such trips? You can go to carnduffministry.blogspot.com for the complete report.

Before I go anywhere I need to know who is there full time ministering to people? When we go to Guatemala we build homes for people. The home is 12' x 16' with tin roof and concrete floor. The people feel they have received a palace. The concrete floor takes the family off a damp dirt floor. Within a couple of months the kids health improve, their noses stop running and their eyes lose their redness. We are going again this year to build more homes. We are a group of Christians that are able to help raise the standard of living of some who aren't as well off as us. In doing so we are able to show the love and generosity of Christ. As far as the 1,000 pairs of shoes, don't get me started on how little we give, it is terrible.

My contribution to the trip is to do soccer camps with the kids. This also allows me to preach the gospel, after all it is the eternal salvation that we are most concerned about, this supports the efforts of th elocal missionary.

I have also just returned form a mission trip to Italy where I helped a church planter with soccer camps. He is bringing the message of an eternal relationship with Christ to the families where he works, as opposed to the RC version of Christianity. He is being well received as people hunger to hear the message.