Deep change

Today I received a phone call from a youth pastor that I worked with this summer in Jamaica. She brought her team of students to serve with a local church and school, a great group of kids willing to work hard and be flexible at the same time. They had a great mission trip and an amazing experience and will be partnering with PPM again next year. During the trip the team led an after school program for students and helped build a school building in the parish of Trelawny. Her call to me today regarded a man by the name of Desmond who was one of the local guys who showed up to work at our work site. He was a pleasure to have around and the team loved him, and he provided direction and expertise for the work so I allowed him to work through the week and was able to pay him a modest but fair amount at the end of the week for his work. The leader told me that Desmond recently sent letters to some of the team sharing his desperation in needing to find a job and to get money for groceries and to send his child to school.
       I couldn't help but think to myself how important a model for short term missions really is. There are a few different approaches to responding to this situation:

• The easy, quick solution that many would settle for would be to send Desmond a check and a letter back. This would be a grave mistake. 
• Another solution, better, but still not meeting the deep need: to send money to the local school to pay the school fees for his son and to send him food directly or a way to purchase food for his family, or even find a way of getting him a job.
• Still another solution, and the route that PPM takes, is to encourage community development, continuing education and influence of local leadership through the support of local churches. This means having to say 'no' to Desmonds direct request, but also gives him an opportunity to connect with a church that cares about him and his needs.

      While sending money or food or finances to pay for school would be helpful, it would be putting a band-aid on a deep wound, something that would only help for a short time. The model that we take as we're serving in Jamaica is to support local churches and point people back to the church and the church's leadership. Many churches in Jamaica are investing in education programs that help under-educated adults read and write which allows them to find jobs (like the Wakefield Baptist church in Trelawny, among many others), some churches are even initiating agricultural projects (like Jones Town Baptist Church in inner city Kingston). Pointing things always back to the local church is the way missions should be done. They are the constant and the local pastor is the staple of that ministry for the community. While churches are established for spiritual purposes- to make disciples, there is a great need to meet physical needs, and the churches in Jamaica are very aware of this and are being proactive about meeting both spiritual and physical needs.
     Our solution to Desmond's request, therefore, is to reply to Desmond's letter with a letter of our own. We will share with Desmond that we cannot meet every need directly that exists in the community, because we know there are many others. However, what we do revolves around the local Baptist church and the pastor of that church. We will encourage Desmond to speak with the church leadership, something he'll likely do on a Sunday morning if he's serious enough about making a change in his life. This will allow the church to give guidance and direction to Desmond. Subsequently, this youth pastor and team decided to send a check not to Desmond, but to the local church to support their efforts in community development and continuing education. That's fixing a deep wound with deep change, a surgery that takes time and is very meticulous, rather than a band-aid on a deep wound.