Development; of my heart this time

There is a famous saying that I want to dissect for a little while.  “If you feed a man a fish, you feed him for a day.  If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”  I’ve talked before how that is incomplete in some ways.  What I mean by this is that what happens if you teach a man to fish but there is no pond nearby?  Then what do you do?  However, today I want to mainly take this saying and apply it to different principles in development.

First, some background about where I’m coming from on this subject.  My heart was first set aflame for missions in 2006 when I first went to Kenya for a month in the summer.  The team I was blessed to work alongside was an amazing team and I simply cherish the time we had together as well as the subsequent times some of us have had together since then.

Shortly after Kenya and subsequent mission trips, something started to bother me.  I think it may have even started in Kenya.  The question that I wrestled with deep in my soul went something like this, “If we truly want to help people, how can we do that?”  It occurred to me shortly on that many short term mission trips were more for the people going on the trips than they were for the locals we were visiting.

Obviously, this was deeply troubling.  You can only go on so many of those types of trips before it occurs to you, “What am I doing here and why?”  Are you going for your own benefit or the benefit of the locals?  These are undoubtedly difficult questions we must ask ourselves but ask ourselves we must if we are to move forward.

What I have learned since roughly 2008-2009 I think has been nothing short of earth-shattering in my heart and soul.  I have learned about economic development and aid and the futility of almost all forms of aid and how it leads to enabling rather than empowering.  This is not to say I’m an expert at all in the field as I know very little compared to countless others.  That being said, I want to share what little I do know in the hopes of spurring some constructive thinking among my brothers and sisters in Christ who truly want to help others whether in their communities or around the globe.