Are You Concerned About Dependency in Missions?
About the Author
Aaron is a mission trip coordinator for a small non-profit working in Tijuana, Mexico. The organization builds homes for the poor and operates an orphanage where he can often be found helping out with the children.
The Persecuted Church Weblog has two excellent posts up for anyone involved in international missions.
“No, I do not believe that persecution is the greatest threat to the continuing spread of the gospel. I am much more concerned about something that, at first glance, seems benign and even helpful but which I contend is far more insidious. I am referring to the dependency creating practices that ministries are increasingly promoting in the name of “partnership.””
In Why Am I Concerned About Dependency? and the follow-up But Is It Biblical? (Dependency Part 2) author Glenn Penner walks us through some of the issues that come up when a church is dependent on western aid and offers suggestions for what he sees as a more biblical approach to helping churches without financial resources. As the name implies, his blog is focused on Christians in closed countries but the points in these posts apply anytime there is “dependency on western resources to spread the gospel.”
Found via Michelle in the Ukraine.