To begin with, it's no surprise that short-term missions are expensive. The efficiency of our groups is often dulled by culture shock, which may come in the form of sickness, exhaustion or emotional processing of exposure to both acute poverty and a foreign language. If we fail to examine the structural injustices that produce a society in which the wealthy of the suburbs of the world must send their children away for a week to expose them to the impoverished of the world, then maybe we will always be attempting to cover the gaping wounds with a Band-Aid. Our attempts to fix homes and build churches may amount to little if more people are forced to live in such conditions each year. And we may just find that our own lifestyles, and even our Christian churches, uphold the status quo and consumption patterns which cause the gap between the rich and poor to continually grow.
Paternalism is another difficulty with short-term missions.
Many impoverished communities have had the power to control their economic, political and even educational systems taken from them, and the only ultimate solutions to their situation are ones in which they are involved. Too often in our desire to help we use our money to make decisions for the poor, causing or maintaining a dependence which undermines our work. Having raised these questions, however, I am not suggesting that we dismiss short-term missions. They will continue to happen by the thousands each year, and many participants will continue to have their attitudes concerning the poor and their own lives changed. The improvement of short-term missions, then, must be a subject of discussion for the church.