Short-Term Missions, the Savior Complex and Dealing with our own Stuff (Part 1)

“[…] The most important thing you can do if you want to be helpful to poor people is to start dealing with your own stuff.”-Bryant Meyers, author of Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development

Something that's been on my mind for the last 6 years has been the complexity of short-term mission trips. As many of you know, my wife and I worked for a short-term mission organization here in the US called "Center for Student Missions" (CSM) from 2012-2014. CSM specializes in inner-city mission trips for youth groups and helps to supply volunteers to organizations that rely mostly on volunteer efforts.  Additionally, both of us were part of short-term groups to different countries in Africa and we interfaced many times with short-term teams while living in Zambia from 2014-2018. However, as much as we loved our experience working with short-term mission groups, they always left us wondering about their effectiveness and if short-term mission groups carry an appropriate mindset when serving. This post is a way for me to share a little about my background in short-term missions and how I think short-term missions can be better thought of, or “re-framed”. I’ll talk about this in a few upcoming posts as well. This first post will be talking about the “Savior Complex” and how we can better help those in need.

The unhelpful thinking that I’ve encountered in many short-term mission teams (including in myself) is called the "Savior Complex". A quick google search would tell you that the savior complex has do with someone viewing their responsibility in the world as the fortunate or educated person who needs to fix problems of poverty with material goods, like money, or the ability to reason. I have felt this way before and still do on a regular basis. The sad thing about the savior complex, from my own experience, is it stops me from seeing everyone as equal, as God does. The savior complex creates an “Us” and “Them” in our minds, and it shows in how we treat those we serve. The savior complex can negatively influence our ability to build relationships and deal with the root of the problem of poverty (more on that in future posts).

Ironically, as Christians we should never see ourselves as the saviors because at the core of our faith is the deep-down realization that we need a Savior and that can only be Christ the Lord, who served us in a way that only God could. Sadly, that initial posture of humbleness that we receive when we are reborn is a difficult one to keep around because we, time and time again, seek the ability to save ourselves and others. It is easy to think of ourselves as better, more hardworking and smarter than others who are in poverty because we wrongly assume those traits are what got us to our privileged positions (again, I’m speaking to myself here).

I had a great Zambian Development lecturer named Rev. Mwale who shared in class one day about a short-term development group as an illustration of the tragic savior complex:

A small group of well-intentioned Europeans and North Americans came to a small, rural village in the bush of Zambia through an international development organization. One sad reality that struck the group about the Zambians living in the village was they did not have Western style toilets. So, the individuals in the group raised money and/or donated to build about ten outhouse structures around the village with toilets inside. The fancy outhouses looked great, functioned well and the building process went as smooth as one could hope given village’s far-off location. They were the best-looking structures in the village! A local worker for the organization went back to the village some months later to find out how much the toilets helped the community so he could report back to the donors. The man arrived at village and noticed the outhouses looked the same as when they were just built. He went inside them and noticed that they looked as if they were never used. As he walked around the village, he saw no one go in or come out of the outhouses. Because the man visiting was a Zambian, he was able to find out, using local languages, the reason no one was using the toilets, and he reported that back to the organization and donors. The village was made up of a few very large very extended families and it was a taboo in their culture to use the same toilet, or use the same place as the bathroom, as their daughter in-law or father in-law. If everyone in the village began using the toilets built by the foreigners without keeping meticulously detailed records, this cultural value would be lost, so everyone continued to do what they had done before the magnificent toilets came to their village. The people in the village relied on agriculture for their livelihoods and would rather work the fields than create a system for everyone in the village to use the toilets in a way that respected their way of life. The people in the village were thankful for the gift from the group, but they found it unhelpful.

This story shows that the visitors, at least subconsciously, operated with a savior complex. They thought they knew the best way to help the people in this village without properly inquiring. The development that came to that village was done to the Zambians, rather than done with them. The trouble with short-term mission trips, or development trips like in the example above, is they don’t always do the best job of revealing to the visitors the survival strategies already in place. The people of the village obviously went to the bathroom and adhered to their cultural values so, it wasn't the most pressing problem. It would have been better for the visitors to take it slow, conduct interviews and find a way to help the community in meaningful way, rather than building bathrooms the community didn’t need/wouldn’t use. It’s hard for us to imagine in the US, but sometimes people don’t need the comforts we are so used to in our everyday life. Of course, we hope one day that everyone can feel dignified and comfortable where they use the bathroom, but communities might benefit from other things first. Maybe the group could have instead done a seminar on water, waste and sanitation and take time to learn more about day-to-day life in a way that promoted mutual learning. Afterwards, the visitors and people in the village could make future goals to one day build toilets that would work culturally and socially as well as practically. Sometimes being relational and doing a training that promotes collective learning is more effective than building something or giving something tangible, or costly, away. There are more ways to show God’s love. Working together with a community to solve a problem, in humbleness and love, can bring about the type of long-lasting change we all desire.

The quote at the beginning of this post was from a lecture by Dr. Bryant Myers. What he meant by “stuff” is the baggage and wrong perceptions we have about people in poverty. We may even consider removing the term “poor” when describing people. In his mind, the first step we can take to better help those who don’t have proper access goods and opportunities is to begin viewing them as God does: with sacrificial love and potential, as he does with all of us. We must see others as God does and not measure them by merely what they have or don't have.

I want to end this blog with a post a friend of mine made on Facebook. Lucas Nkhoma is a Zambian pastor in the Reformed Church in Zambia that I had the privilege of studying with. What he has to say is quite profound.