The Opportunity Cost of Service

There's been two growing strains within the North American Church within the last couple of years regarding service trips. If you've ever been on one, then you've undoubtedly come into contact with this debate in an implicit or explicit way. The reality of this situation is that we have litereally thousands of churches in the US who are sending kids and adults away on service trips around the corner and around the world to do service for people around them.

There are a lot of people who are very quick to jump up and say "Amen" at this proposition. Most of these are the "nodders" from the congregation who think sending as many of our own congregants to do service projects is the definition of what Jesus commands us to do. Another group who has a similar reaction to service trips are those who have gone on a trip that they really enjoyed because they liked what they did, liked the people they went with and liked how they felt about themselves when they came back.

Modern liberal Christian thought has told us this is wrong. In many ways, they've hit a good nerve. Many churches and schools spend literally thousands of dollars per person to send laity overseas for a week at a time. They come back with the impression that they've changed the world, ebbed closer to their salvation and gained the right to tell every person within five feet of them about every aspect of the trip. The reality, as the pundits point out, is that often times these people do little to no good, sometimes even hurting the ministry that they go to help because of something an immature Christian says, displaying an inconsistent lifestyle and simply acting on general bias with an imperialistic notion. Hey! We're the cocky Americans here to help you because you're mostly worthless, on our own terms. People generally get indignant or repentant when shown the errors of their ways here. Okay, we're the bad guys, we get it.

Lets consider the other side of this for just a minute. On the one hand, yes, ministry would be FAR more effective if we took all the money we spent on our own lavish service/vacation projects as North Americans and gave it to indigenous missionaries/aid workers who are culturally sensitive and work for lasting change without bigot abrasiveness we often bring. However, if you think that indigenous missionaries would automatically get the same amount of cash as teenagers doing a carwash to go themselves, you're wrong. People give for various reasons. Among them are good things like a heart for missions, a care for others and a servant spirit, but also among them are things like reactions to a real and present service team, emotional first-person reports afterwards, and a general guilt about not helping out the service trip as much as everyone else in the pew around you.

But, there are also ministry opportunities where outsiders can do the work more effectively and more efficiently than the local staff. Take the current situation in the Gulf Coast region. There are many, many opportunities for work, and nearly no one who is willing to put their hands to work. Those who are there are overwhelmed, untrained, and hopeless about their situation. The cost of labor for bringing in a contractor paid for by a church in Kansas IS less effective than bringing in a team that can and will do the work of drywalling, stilt-setting, roofing and painting (granted, this does not refer to the inevitable tendency of high schoolers to paint eachother during service trips...ugh). The fact is that you can put a team down there, including travel costs, for cheaper than the cost of bringing in a contractor, plumber, painter, roofer, drywaller, etc.

This is a basic economics concept known as opportunity cost. It refers to what one has to give up in order to accomplish a goal. This could be money, but it could also refer to time and other resources.

A month ago at a fundraiser, a random homeless guy showed up at our church who had been hitchhiking around the country and read about our fundraiser in the paper. He came just to encourage in what we were doing because "kids need to see what is out there". I can stomache that. What's harder for me to stomache is everyone who says that we need to give people a "heart for missions", which means that we turn them in to mission trip addicts, often ones that need to get bigger and better every year to feed this "heart". What would the church's mission program concept look like if we considered the opportunity cost of what we do before going in on a trip rather than going "because it sounds fun" or "because we can help other people (as if they're the main beneficiaries of our trips". And when we realize that cost, are we willing to be efficient, responsible servants in our mission trip planning?