President's Blog

I don’t know about you, but I have quite a number of “Satans” with which I struggle. Like Saint Paul, I often find I am consumed by my own failings, or more often too quick to indulge in bad habits!

Lent calls us to look beyond ourselves and our own struggles. We are reminded in Sunday’s reading that like Jesus we are called to enter our own wilderness and struggle with the temptations and distractions of this world.

But Lent is really a gift. It is an opportunity to consider how we relate to our community and our neighbors near and far. It gives me time to explore my spiritual hungers. It is also a time to pray for and reflect on those in the world who hunger or thirst not just spiritually but also physically.

As you and your congregation journey through Lent, please remember those who live with hunger and deprivation around the world by observing Episcopal Relief & Development Sunday this weekend.

Episcopal Relief & Development’s daily Lenten meditations were adapted from the writings of the Rev. Barbara Crafton Click here to subscribe:

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Click here for information about Episcopal Relief & Development Sunday (March 1st, 2009). You can select an alternate Sunday during the Lenten Season or another time in the year.

Today I cede my blog post to Bertin Subi, the NetsforLife® Coordinator in the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

“The mobilization team [of Malaria agents] of the Boga diocese found it extremely difficult to do their work in some of their project areas due to the worsening security situation.

All this notwithstanding they remain committed to their work and are going about their training and community mobilization work.”

The modesty of the words, “All this notwithstanding” jolted me out of my own solipsistic reveries about the state of my retirement accounts and the challenges of my life right now. Frankly nothing compares to the heroism of Bertin and his colleagues as they go about their training and community mobilization work in such a precarious environment.

At the risk of goring a sacred cow, I need to confess that I am deeply ambivalent about church-sponsored mission trips, especially overseas. Forgive me.

As a development agency, Episcopal Relief & Development must focus on the beneficiary. Our first objective is to do no harm. Then our mission is to serve people in need by unleashing their own capacities to make their lives better for themselves. See my first blog post on this topic (Guided by Jesus and Lao Tsu).

However, I fear that many of the mission trips that I learn about or observe either bypass this or unintentionally work against this effort by reinforcing power relationships that undermine local empowerment and capacity building. Empowerment and capacity building are the only strategies that I know about that will lead to sustainable change.

Many mission trips that I hear about are focused on “doing for” or “doing to” a community or group of individuals. To be sure, the folks going on these trips come back transformed. Many feel deeply satisfied that they have made an important contribution in the face of what is invariably unimaginable need.

And, in a very real sense, of course they have. They have built a house or a school or dug a well.

Yet, in another sense they have left undone things which ought to have been done.

If we could find a way to focus mission trips around addressing the underlying issues of inequality and disempowerment that lead to entrenched poverty, I would feel a lot better.

What ideas do you have about how to do this?