Passport Not Required
TORCH INDEX
What if Christians raised the money for a foreign mission trip, sent all of it overseas, and instead spent the entire week serving people closer to home?
Let’s do a little thought experiment.
Your church is putting together a mission trip. Fifteen people are going overseas for a week. Everybody is excited. There is fundraising. Plane tickets have to be bought. Hotels or mission housing have to be paid for. Everybody has to eat. There is ground transportation. There are project costs. There may be insurance, supplies, translators, drivers, and whatever else it takes to move fifteen Americans across the world and keep them there for a week.
So everybody raises the money.
All of it.
Every dollar it would have taken to send those fifteen people.
Then nobody goes.
Instead, take every penny and send it to the trusted person already on the ground who was going to coordinate the mission anyway.
Then take that same week all fifteen people had already cleared off their calendars and go serve somewhere close to home.
Work at a food bank. Help at a homeless shelter. Deliver groceries to families who have houses but no food. Help an elderly neighbor. Find a struggling single mother. Clean up somebody’s yard. Fix something for somebody who cannot afford to fix it. Feed people. Clothe people. Visit people. Whatever.
Just do it here.
Because maybe God did not make a mistake putting you where you are.
This is not an argument that mission trips are evil. If you went on one before and helped somebody, you did a good thing. Somebody got fed. Somebody got a roof. Somebody got a Bible. Somebody got help they needed. There is nothing wrong with that.
The question is whether we could do more.
A typical short-term international mission trip can easily run somewhere around $1,800 to $2,500 per person once airfare, lodging, meals, transportation, and project costs are included. For fifteen people, that puts you somewhere in the neighborhood of $27,000 to $37,500.
That is a lot of money.
Now imagine what happens when you remove fifteen plane tickets, fifteen beds, fifteen mouths to feed, fifteen people who need to be transported around, and fifteen temporary workers who will be gone again in seven days.
The money does not disappear. It stays there.
Instead of paying an airline, it can pay local workers.
Instead of paying to house visitors, it can buy lumber, roofing, concrete, food, medicine, water filters, Bibles, school supplies, or whatever the actual mission needs.
Instead of fifteen well-meaning tourists swinging hammers for a week, unemployed or underemployed people who actually live in that community can be paid to swing those same hammers. Now you are not only building the house. You are providing a job. You are not only fixing the roof. You are putting money into the hands of a local family.
You are not only helping one person who needs something built. You may also be helping the worker who needed groceries that week, the store that sold the materials, the driver who delivered them, and everybody else connected to that money as it moves through the local community.
That is a lasting impact in a way a week of free imported labor may not be.
And yes, somebody is going to say that mission trips are about more than economics. They are about relationships. They are about fellowship. They are about seeing the world. They are about opening your eyes to poverty. They are about growing spiritually.
Fine. But now we are talking about what the trip does for you.
That does not automatically make it bad. It just means we should be honest about it.
If the primary goal is to help people in another country, then it is fair to ask whether putting a large percentage of the mission budget into transporting ourselves there is really the best way to accomplish that.
Would you still raise the money if you did not get to go?
Would you still give the same amount if there were no pictures?
Would you still care as much if you did not get the story about the little village you visited and the house you helped build?
Would you still do it if nobody at church ever knew you were involved?
Those are not accusations. They are questions worth asking.
There is also another problem.
We have somehow convinced ourselves that a mission field is somewhere you fly to.
It is somewhere poor. Somewhere foreign. Somewhere with dirt roads and small houses. Somewhere you need a passport to reach.
Meanwhile, twenty minutes from your church is a man standing on the corner asking for food.
There is a family in your town choosing between the electric bill and groceries.
There is an elderly woman three streets over who cannot mow her own yard anymore.
There is a kid at the local school whose family cannot afford new shoes.
There is a homeless shelter that needs volunteers.
There is a food pantry that needs boxes packed.
There is probably someone living within a mile of you who desperately needs help and will never appear in a mission-trip slideshow.
Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself.
Maybe we should stop assuming He meant a neighbor six thousand miles away.
There are absolutely people across the world who need help. There are places where a relatively small amount of American money can accomplish an enormous amount of good.
So send it.
Raise the money you were going to raise anyway.
Send the airfare. Send the lodging money. Send the food money. Send the project money. Send all of it to somebody trustworthy who is already there and knows what the community actually needs.
Let local people buy the materials. Let local people do the work. And pay them for it.
Help their families while they help somebody else’s.
And just stay home.
Take that week you were willing to give to strangers on the other side of the world and give it to strangers twenty minutes away.
You still sacrificed the money. You still sacrificed the week. You still served. Possibly accomplishing twice as much in the process. Or more.
Perhaps God did not put you in your city, your neighborhood, your church, your workplace, and your community by accident. Maybe you do not need to cross an ocean to find your mission field.
They definitely need your money across the water, but they really need your help across the street.
Maybe you’ve simply absorbed a modern church culture that suggests being a “good” Christian means digging wells in third-world countries.
According to a Barna Group study, among Christians attending churches of 500 or more, 68% of those who had participated in a mission or service trip had gone internationally, while only 24% had served locally.
Let that sink in. Nearly two-thirds fewer people opted to help those in their own backyards. You have to ask yourself why.
In the end, the Bible never says you need a passport to faithfully serve Christ.