mami irene

Well, it’s finally hit! After three months, I feel fully settled into Phnom Penh. Too bad I leave in three weeks.

As I’m writing this, Heng, my fabulous landlady, is showing my apartment to two sets of potential renters who will both begin leasing at the end of June. Man, that’s soon! When Daneth, one of the lovely Khmer girls who works with CHAD at the office, realized that I’d be leaving in only a few weeks, she asked me what I’d learned about “mission work” (whatever that is) while I’ve been here. It seems like such a ridiculously easy question, right? Well, maybe. People talk about “mission work” all the time, and there are all these rather vague definitions floating around in the church and out of it, but is that really what I’m doing? I’m creating policies, writing grants, publishing newsletters, posting blogs, interviewing locals, taking pictures, designing brochures and banners…that’s not exactly what I call “mission” anything. Volunteering, maybe. So what’s the difference between “mission work” and volunteering? Working for the church in a majority world country and doing development work outside the church…isn’t it the same?

Huh. Quite a question. Maybe I should have known a little bit more about what it means to do “missions” before I flew halfway across the world to round out a year of doing “mission work.” But I don’t really think I was prepared to answer Daneth’s question until this past week, when I had the pleasure of interviewing the lovely Ms. Irene Mparutsa (affectionately known around the office as “Mami”) of Zimbabwe to update her biography for GBGM.

About thirteen years ago, Irene was working in relief with the Red Cross in Africa as a midwife and nurse. She felt called to continue her medical work in Cambodia, where she eventually served as the “midwife” for the birth of Community Health and Agricultural Development, i.e. CHAD (one of GBGM’s main programs that I work with here). During her transition, she asked essentially the same question that I just have: What’s the difference between volunteering (with the Red Cross) and doing mission work (with the United Methodist Church and GBGM)?

Thirteen years later, she has an answer. And over a decade in the making, it’s a rather good one, in my opinion.

With the Red Cross, Irene and her coworkers distributed hand-outs for relief in projects that were externally-initiated and externally-sponsored. They often left sites wondering, “What will happen to these people when we leave?” but with a firm conviction that they’d at least left people in a better place than they’d been when Irene and her team first arrived. Oftentimes, Irene told me, their “relief mode” mentality made them all too ready to help people – to baby them, in a way. To lavish those poor helpless souls with as many resources, medicines, clothes, and supplies that they could before they got back into the helicopter and flew away.

Now, Irene knows that her work with the Red Cross was valuable and that many of Red Cross’s projects are incredibly necessary, effective, and efficient. Red Cross is one of the smoothest-running NGOs out there. But bragging on the Red Cross still doesn’t answer Irene’s question. What’s different about working with the church for Christ?

Well, to Irene, she found that two main things make the difference: the diagnosis of the problem and the treatment. As Irene transitioned from the Red Cross to CHAD, she moved from working in externally-initiated relief to community-initiated development. When and where appropriate, relief work is wonderful if it is immediate, temporary, and does not create dependence. But Irene found out quickly that, if relief doesn’t point recipients to self-initiated development, it’s doing more harm than good. In Cambodia, as in most situations around the world, people don’t need hand-outs or more stuff or other people to come in to tell them how to do things. They don’t need money or food or donations. While working with CHAD, Irene discovered that most materially poor people’s problem isn’t material-based; it’s about how materially poor people view themselves.

For instance, let’s take a look at Ed. Ed is a materially poor person. Ed sees himself as having less value, less ability, and less potential than the people around him, principally because he appears to be (and is) poor compared to his neighbors. Ed therefore has a broken, distorted image of himself in his head that affects everything he does. He believes in three lies, which means that he has zero confidence in his worthiness as an individual (his “worthlessness” lie), zero confidence in his ability to secure and keep a job (his “inability” lie), and zero confidence in his potential to overcome his current impoverished situation (his “lack of potential” lie). Ed feels stuck. Dependent. Worthless. And with his current mentality, he is stuck. He has allowed himself to become dependent. But he is not worthless.

Although Ed may look and be materially poor to an outsider (“Easy fix! He just needs some food and a wheelchair ramp! Short-term mission trip, here we come”), actually, Ed’s poverty goes much deeper than just “stuff.” In fact, NGOs and churches that come in to do an “easy fix” like throwing food and resources at Ed (who, by the way, is not a “relief” candidate) make him feel even more dependent, less self-reliant, and more ashamed at his circumstances than if people had just left Ed alone. NGOs’ and churches’ well-intentioned, externally-initiated projects and programs have misdiagnosed Ed’s problem and, therefore, prescribed the wrong treatment. And the wrong treatment can be fatal. Unfortunately, many fall into the trap of applying “relief” treatment – immediate, temporary, comprehensive help after a catastrophic event – to “development” situations – community-initiated, sustainable, long-term processes that concentrate on the development of people rather than the finishing of projects. Ed, suffice it to say, is in a pickle.

So what’s the proper treatment to Ed’s problem? As Irene says, that’s where Christ, acting through the church, comes in.

Irene says that the most exciting thing she gets to be a part of in Cambodia is CHAD’s “Mobilizing the Church” trainings at local churches out in the province for lay leaders, church members, and the community. The content of these trainings may not seem like much on the outside, but they get to the heart of Ed’s problem. They teach that…

We were all created with the image of God.

Because of that,

We can claim our true identity and unsurpassable worth in Christ.

(First, you combat the “worthlessness” lie.)

God created each person for a purpose and with a plan in mind.

(Then combat the “inability” lie.)

Therefore,

All men are equal and uniquely beautiful in God’s sight.

This equality means that every person – yes, even the materially poor – have the potential to live a full life.

(Then combat the “lack of potential” lie.)

And

This fullness of life is sustainable because the Holy Spirit is inside every follower of Christ because

Christ is the Sustainer of all things.

(And now Ed can see that Christ is working to make all things – even him! – new.)

So, to sum all that up, Irene has found that to her, “mission work” is about working together to walk alongside the materially poor to discover the potential that everyone has for goodness and a full life. And the difference between working for Christ rather than anyone else? Instead of being the one with all the resources, you point to the one who is the source of everything. And although this world and its stuff are passing away, he’s going to be with us forever and ever, because he is the reason we are alive. How about that for sustainability.

Well said, Mami.