Day 15: What is the Problem?

You have a friend who has been sick for many years. He’s a quadriplegic, so he can’t
move around on his own, and he has to rely on his friends and family to care for him.
You and the rest of his friends care deeply for him and have long been hoping that a
cure or treatment would be found to help him, but his health has been fast
deteriorating and it doesn’t seem like there are many chances left for him.
Now, in assessing your friend’s situation, what would you say is his greatest need? A
cure? A new medication or other form of treatment?
Presumably, the friends of the paralytic man in the Bible would have said the same.
Read Mark 2:1-5. There are so many people gathered together to listen to Jesus preach
that the friends had to literally remove the roof from the building to lower their friend
down into the center of the room. They probably expected Jesus to heal their friend
from his illness; how strange it must have been to hear Jesus’ first words to their friend:
“My son, your sins are forgiven!”
Jesus knew the man’s greatest need, and it was much deeper than physical healing,
though He dealt with the man’s physical needs later. How often do we step back and
ask ourselves, what is the problem in this situation? What is the greatest need?
We have a tendency to view problems through a lens of financial and material
dilemmas, believing that if we just give enough money, buildings or other resources,
then we have helped the poor. Not everything is as it appears at face value, however,
as poverty is not solely about lacking financial or material resources.
There are different types of poverty, which are certainly not mutually exclusive and
more often operate in tandem one with another.
 Spiritual poverty refers to the absence or lack of knowing Jesus, lacking a
personal relationship with God, or worshiping a false god such as money, power,
prestige or other material things. Each of us experience spiritual poverty in
different seasons of our lives when we lose sight of Jesus and allow the
temptations and the worries of the world to creep in. What are ways that you
experience spiritual poverty in your own life and where do you need to return to
Jesus for His guidance and provision?
 Internal poverty has to do with individuals’ views of themselves – whether they
have low self-esteem, self-hatred, shame, pride and/or a god-complex. This type
of poverty is influenced by people’s relationships to themselves; do they think too
highly or not highly enough of themselves? How can you and your team come
alongside others to help them have right views of themselves?
 Community poverty refers to illness within a community that allows depravity to
persist. Community poverty may take the form of the persistence of exploitation
and abuse, whereby community members, even “good ones”, stand by as
women and children are bought and sold for sex. In Svay Pak, Cambodia, for
example, there were many “good” people who were not buying or selling
children and who were not participating directly in the abuse. However, they
knew exactly what was happening in their neighborhoods and behind closed
doors; yet they did nothing to make the problem stop. This is a problem of selfcenteredness,
whereby community members are not willing to put their own
necks on the line to address wickedness within their community.
 Material poverty is probably what is most commonly referred to as “poverty” –
the lack of finances, resources or other material things. There are times when
what a person needs is food to feed her family, some start-up capital to launch a
business, or money to pay for schooling or medical care or other needs.41
Just as the paralytic’s need for physical healing was real, so too are people’s material
needs. When you go to Cambodia, you will see dire material poverty: people who are
physically hungry, need medical care, and who are struggling to get by making $15 a
month working at a brick factory. It will be easy to focus on their material poverty as the
problem at hand, but it is important to ask first: what are the other underlying forms of
poverty and, more specifically, what are the problems God has you there to address?
People working in the brick factories in Svay Pak are confronted with a combination of
material poverty, spiritual poverty, and community poverty in their lack of education
and opportunities to work in better conditions. While it may be tempting to “rescue” children by buying them out of the brick factory, if these children aren’t simultaneously
receiving education and opportunities for other work, they will end up back working in
the factories. AIM conducts outreach to the brick factory workers every weekday,
providing showers, naps, clean clothes, food and educational programs to their
children and medical care and discipleship for their parents (see page 29 of the
Appendix for more information about the Brick Factory Outreach). In approaching their
poverty from a holistic level, AIM has been better able to serve them and address their
problems.
It may be that you are there to help build a new housing facility for the girls being
rescued from trafficking, but it may also be that you are there to give words of
encouragement to the AIM staff, to build them up so that as they continue the work
going forward, they are reenergized to keep fighting for exploited children day in and
day out.
Ask yourself these questions:
 What are my preconceived notions about what “the problem” is in Cambodia?
 How would I feel if the problem God is calling me to address during my time in
Cambodia is that one of the AIM staff is feeling discouraged about the work and
needs to hear words of truth and encouragement?
Spend some time in prayer to ask that God would open your eyes to the problems and
the types of poverty that He would have you work on, both within your own life and
during your time in Cambodia. Ask that you would be ready and willing to do the work
He calls you to do, even if it is not how you initially imagined it might be.

Day 14: Positive Perspective – Flexibility

Maybe you have a co-worker, a friend or a family member who, well, likes things to be
a certain way. Organized to a fault, they approach the day with daily planner in hand,
dutifully checking things off their list. The plan must be adhered to, time is of the
essence, and putting it all aside for a spontaneous movie and popcorn is audacious.
We all know someone like this, or we will at some point. They are the “choleric”
personality, the type-A, if you will. They have much to offer, but their way of doing things
isn’t always conducive to the circumstance or group they are operating in.
Imagine if your entire missionary team was like this. Actually, this rigid sense of mission
and time is all too common among Western missionaries. It’s quite characteristic of the
Western culture, really; they like to get things done quickly, make the money and do it
the easiest way. There is some value to this, of course. Much prosperity has indeed
come, at least in part, from assertive and focused people who blaze ahead. But the
mission field is not actually a project to be completed. You may make deadlines, but
there is no real deadline other than the one God has set for the last days, and not even
the Son knows when that is.38
To approach the mission field like a raging type-A personality is unrealistic and perhaps
destructive. This is not to say that plans and organization are superfluous and
unnecessary. The contrary is quite true. Managing and leading a group of people in a
foreign country over a short period of time absolutely requires a great deal of planning.
To leave everything to whims and spontaneity could indeed be a costly and ineffective
experience. But like most things in life, we must be careful not to hold onto these
schedules and expectations with a closed fist.
Flexibility is the name of the game here. To adhere to a rigid, unchanging, and often
break-neck schedule might leave you and your team members in a frenzy for a couple
of reasons.
1. The Cambodian culture varies from the Western lifestyle. We will delve into
cultural differences in the days to come, but understand that Cambodians
operate differently than Westerners. Many other cultures are slower-paced, less
inclined to Western ideas of timeliness, and what they say might mean
something other than what you think. If you arrange and plan according to your
ideas about time and efficiency, you might be sorely disappointed or frustrated.
2. The work of the Holy Spirit is not confined by human time-tables. Think about
Paul. He was doing his own thing – a very different thing than God wanted – in
his own time. These plans were fortunately severely disrupted. For most of us, a blinding light will not suddenly halt our vans and change our plans. But you must
have a mind and heart open to change what the agenda is and meet a
different need than was originally intended for the day.
Being flexible is a balancing act of sorts. You must learn as you go. Make a plan,
approach it with an outstretched hand, all the while being willing to adapt and
change, and then reflect to make future adjustments, knowing full well that strategies
and time might change again. You must be neither too urgent nor spend too much
time getting everything together to be just right. Rather, “having the attitude of a
humble learner throughout the process is far more important than having
comprehensive knowledge at the start of it.”39
It is important to remember that a local staff already works in Cambodia every day.
They understand how things work, but even they must work with different circumstances
as they are handed to them.
We can see flexibility even in the ministry of
Jesus Christ. Let’s visit Mark 6, when Jesus and
His disciples fed the five thousand. This wasn’t
really in the plans. Jesus had intended for
them to withdraw to a “deserted place”
after some intense ministry. But the crowds
couldn’t give them a break and Jesus was
“moved with compassion.” So the plans
changed, and a miracle happened.
This is not to say that being purposeful and
intentional is wrong. But your ultimate
purpose must be to advance the kingdom of God and serve Christ and His people.
Sometimes, that might look a bit different than what you were expecting.
Venturing into the unknown and having your day or your next hour look like
unchartered waters can warrant feelings of fear. Control no longer feels like it rests in
your hands as you struggle to re-orient yourself around a new circumstance.
Look at what Jesus said in Mark 8 to His disciples after the five thousand were fed. He
told them to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.” They thought He said these things
because they had forgotten to take bread with them on their journey. He asked,
“When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments
did you take up?” “Twelve,” they responded. “Also, when I broke the seven for the four
thousand, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?” It was seven
baskets that they collected. Here we see that Jesus operates outside of our finite and earthly way of thinking. We
are quite concerned with the way things ought to be, with what we think of as reality.
But Jesus understands circumstances differently. He sees matters in an eternal light and
limitations as somewhat relative. Changes in plans do not prevent Him from working.
Sometimes they are the very evidence that He is in fact doing something marvelous in
the lives of people. Jesus is our powerful and able God who takes that which does not
make sense to us, that confuses and frustrates us, and he turns it into something that
demonstrates His love and glory and brings about His kingdom.
Take some time to think about how attached you are to Western ideas about action
and ministry. Honestly, how tightly do you hold to your perceptions of time or how
ministry ought to be conducted? Do you have a sense of fear at the prospect of really
not knowing what your day is going to look like? Begin to truly understand your own
level of flexibility, how that might need to be adapted for the Cambodian mission field,
and how you can confidently surrender your fears into the capable hands of the Lord.
“We must not live as if God’s mission is somehow contingent upon our plans and
strategies. God remains on the throne and continues His redemptive work with or
without our frantic sense of urgency.

Day 13: Positive Perspective – Teachable

Jim and Elisabeth Elliott were a young couple who did ministry among the indigenous
people of Ecuador. They, and several other couples, were instrumental in bringing the
gospel to some of the most remote tribes in that part of the world. And while Jim’s
ministry was powerful yet short due to his martyrdom at the hands of a tribe that would
later become believers, Elisabeth has remained on this earth to tell their story and write
numerous books offering spiritual lessons from a woman who knows much about the
trials of life.
In her book, Be Still My Soul, Elisabeth gives a brief account of her time spent among the
Auca Indians:
When I lived with the Auca Indians for two years, I learned more about servanthood
than I had known from my Christian upbringing. . . . The women would go
out into the fields as soon as they had taken care of the babies and fed the small
children and had eaten whatever might be left over for them. At the end of the
day, an Auca woman would come home carrying her fifty- or sixty-pound basket
of manioc and plantains . . . She would walk into her house, stoop down to drop
the basket behind her, and set to work stirring up the fire, cooking the food, very
calmly and quietly doing the things that needed to be done before the family
went to bed. Sometimes far-away Westerners, who had little idea of the actual
situation, commended me . . . There were others . . . who condemned me . . .
[But] I became reconciled to my situation by watching the Indians, serving each
other and me untroubled by the relative value of their work, free of the pressures
of competition and comparison.36
We find in this account a willingness to learn, to adjust and conform to the Auca’s daily
life – to be teachable. She found in the Auca way of life something valuable and
refreshing in comparison to the cultural practices from home. No doubt Elisabeth had
much to adapt to and overcome as she transitioned from a Western lifestyle to the
seemingly simplistic, but perhaps more laborious one of the Auca Indians. Despite the
criticism she received for bringing her children into such an environment, she was
nevertheless willing to abandon her customary way of life and trade it in for another for
the sake of the gospel. She did not enter the Auca community expecting to transform
every aspect society. She may have had much to teach them spiritually, but that would
come in time. And there were some things that did not need to change. Superior
technological knowledge and ideas about efficiency may very well have been on her
side, but whereas other missionaries often come in with blueprints and plans
characteristic of their cultures and ways of life, Elisabeth recognized the value of setting
all that aside for the sake of meeting people where they are. Staying and working in Cambodia will be not be as dramatic an experience culturally
as Elisabeth encountered in Ecuador. But just as Elisabeth was a student of the Aucas,
so too must you become a student of the Cambodians as well as the local staff. She
held the keys to the kingdom of God in her hand, but the way to teach those people
was not like that of an army storming a city and claiming it de facto and with mere
banners.
You have much to say. There is a passion and a desire in your heart to bring heaven to
earth, to show the world who God is and what He has done. There is a time and a
place for that to happen in Cambodia. But it must also be important to you to learn
what you can from the Cambodians, to go before them in humility and listen with open
ears and open hearts. This is not just a formality, a way of being culturally sensitive.
Rather, it is an avenue for you to better serve
those whom you have come to minister to as
you learn to operate within their culture and
be salt and light to them in a way that they
will best understand.
Cambodia comes with its own dirt, decay
and underlying community issues that differ
from those that you might find in your own
area. Customs are different and ways of
communicating might be strange. The ebb
of history has formed and shaped this
country and its people uniquely.
Do not let pride convince you that you are infinite in your knowledge and all powerful in
your ability to teach. Omniscience and omnipotence belong to God alone. The rest of
us always have much to learn, forever students of the kingdom of God and of one
another.
“He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm
spirit.

Day 12: Positive Perspective – Humility

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which
you have ordained,” writes the psalmist, David, “What is man that you are mindful of
him, and the son of man that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than
the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor.”30
If there is any doubt as to the inferiority of man in comparison to God, this passage of
scripture clears it up well. We serve a great and powerful God who alone can grant
honor and glory to men. But unlike the world of men in which inferiority breeds hurt and
pain and jealousy, an acceptance of humility before a deserving God fulfills the best in
us personally and enables the best kind of ministry in a way that our own arrogance
and pride cannot.
Perhaps in the studies on paternalism the last few days you have begun to form in your
heart and mind a positive replacement for notions of paternalism that too often
accompany foreign missionary service. But to make sure there are no weak points in
your foundation, know that the hole that the absence of paternalism leaves must be
filled with something.
And that something is humility.
This is at the core of doing effective ministry – both spiritually and materially – in
Cambodia, and thus the reason humility is addressed more than once in this guide.
Dealing with different economic markets, worldviews, leadership styles and cultural
expressions of time and commitment can be frustrating to a foreigner. To successfully
navigate cultural barriers and demonstrate the best love you can to the people of
Cambodia, you must embrace an attitude and heart of humility.
In her book, Brokenness: The Heart that God Revives, Nancy Leigh DeMoss outlines
characteristics of prideful people compared to those who walk in humility. Since pride is
at the root of many manifestations of hurtful ministry, it is imperative that prideful
attitudes be uncovered and substituted with humble ones. Below are a few points she
makes that are poignant in their application to your ministry in Cambodia.
“Proud people feel confident in how much they know. Broken people are humbled by
how very much they have to learn.”31
Whether it is your knowledge of economics, construction, or theology, you will probably
want to share. And to desire to do so could be of great use in certain ministry settings But a failure to listen to locals and understand cultural context could render your advice
unheeded or disallow a community from building for themselves. Being willing to listen
and learn could enhance your knowledge and help a community, both economically
and spiritually, even more.
“Proud people are self-protective in their time, their rights, and their reputation. Broken
people are self-denying.”32
Short-term missions make it so that time is of the essence to prideful missionaries who
want things done a certain way. Humble missionaries will lay down their plans and way
of doing things for the sake of being true servants of God and His people. They are
willing to include locals, listen to permanent staff members, and use wisdom that might
previously have been unknown to them.
“Proud people desire to be known as a
success. Broken people are motivated to be
faithful and to make others a success.”33
Home churches might want pictures and
statistics to justify their financial investments in
their mission teams, and team leaders crave
positive testimonies to report every day and
confirm progress, but this is not to be the
heart and core of ministry. Humble missionaries will put the needs of the people and
guidance of the Holy Spirit first, recognizing that fruit may not become evident until they
have returned to their own homes. This is not to say that ministry tactics shouldn’t be
evaluated and adjusted, but they should not be judged purely on a Western definition
of success. Instead, missionaries should mark success by how much the ministry enables
the community for future progress.
“Proud people have a feeling – conscious or subconscious – that ‘this ministry is
privileged to have me and my gifts.’ They focus on what they can do for God. Broken
people have a heart attitude that says, ‘I don’t deserve to have any part in this
ministry’; they know that they have nothing to offer God except the life of Jesus flowing
through their broken lives.”34
This is perhaps what points most directly at the heart of what often defines foreign
ministry work and what ought to define it. Remember who did the real work of
salvation: Jesus. It is Christ who prepared good works in advance for us to do,35 who strengthens our hands and minds and puts breath in our lungs in order to be able to
give and serve. These are gifts given to be freely poured out in recognition of the
power, love and grace of the gift giver.
Your skills and knowledge may find a place of use in Cambodia. Or they may not. Are
you prepared to just do the dirty work? Are you prepared to learn and adapt and
admit ignorance? Are you going into ministry with a genuine heart and plan to serve
the Cambodians according to their needs, or according to what you desire? Do you
think you can do it on your own?
It is God who will enable you to effectively minister to His broken people in Cambodia,
so long as you are a humble and willing vessel. You were and are in as much need of
restoration and redemption as those who you will minister to. You are a tool in the
hands of God who does the real work of bringing the dead to life and restoring
individuals, communities and humanity unto Himself.

Day 11: Negative Perspective – Spiritual Paternalism

Probably one of the first things a child must learn when they leave the “me-centered”
environment of home and start functioning outside of it is how to listen. School teachers,
other children, Sunday-school teachers and friends’ parents all vie for their attention
and the children who are most praised are those who figure out how to close their
mouths and listen to someone else for a change. But at some point in the transition to
adulthood, this lesson is often forgotten.
The Western world is one in which everyone fights for a voice. Whether this voice is
found in a blog, the success of a business or as a professional speaker, in a large society
that values individualism and recognition, listening can fall to the wayside. While
owning special knowledge and controlling the ability to share it with others is valued in
Western cultures, this is not the best way to bring about spiritual growth and
independence when doing missions.
What many might call “sharing knowledge” or “enlightening the ignorant,” should
actually be labeled spiritual paternalism. Like resource and managerial paternalism,
spiritual paternalism can have honest and good intentions, but may stem from an
underlying attitude of superiority and have a negative long-term impact on recipient
cultures.
At the root of spiritual paternalism is a sense of superiority. One group or person feels
they have knowledge to share that another group lacks and believes they are the best
ones to carry the message. Of course this isn’t entirely untrue; different people have
unique insights or greater access to certain areas of knowledge that might be quite
useful to others. Many forget that it is a two-way street, however, as well as that
knowledge may be of use in one context but not in another.
When travelling to a developing country like Cambodia where poverty is pervasive, it is
tempting to think that missionaries have the key to spiritual prosperity. They may indeed
have insights or spiritual resources that will prove valuable to Cambodians, but
missionaries must also learn to employ their sense of hearing and listen to what
Cambodians can teach them as well as what new spiritual knowledge would be most
effective in doing ministry in Cambodia.
Evangelical tactics used by Paul to the highly philosophical Greeks and Romans might
not have produced the same results had they been utilized in Jerusalem. Similarly,
marching in with a system and structure that has proved to be tried and true in the
Western world may fall on deaf ears in a culture that values different things or views
concepts with different imagery than those of the West.
28
Is the ministry you are
doing enabling and
preparing the local
church body for future
success when you are
gone?
And while mass evangelists have certainly reaped a great harvest and thus become
valued in places like the United States, ministry in Cambodia must be developed
primarily on a local level in order to produce a healthy and thriving body of believers.
Thus, it is important that missionaries not take ministry solely upon themselves. They
ought to work alongside, and be purposeful to include, local pastors and believers.
Teaching and preaching on a two-week trip sounds great, until you are gone and the
community is left without the hype and “great knowledge” of the Westerners. Instead, it
would be better to listen and work within a cultural framework and incorporate local
believers into the ministry.
This is not to say that foreigners don’t have
something new and valuable to contribute.
Of course they do! But the ability to
communicate it in an effective and enduring
way that strengthens the community will
make all the difference between seed
planted in good soil and seed planted in
stony places, where the hearer of the word
receives it gladly but establishes no root and
soon falls away.29
Take, for example, doing house-to-house evangelistic outreach. You might bring along
a Cambodian believer to translate for you as you speak to and pray for the locals in
their homes. This might seem like it is avoiding paternalism because you are working
with another Cambodian. But instead of using this person merely as a translator, you
ought also to have him pray for the family himself, from Cambodian to Cambodian –
not from foreign missionary through Cambodian. A long-lasting relationship might be
built between the Cambodian believer and the family as he receives honor and
respect in their eyes for being asked to pray. By doing this, you are serving and
ministering as well as helping to enable a network and community of local Christians.
Spiritual paternalism might be harder to recognize and thus more difficult to address
because you are not dealing with projects and tangibles as you would with resource
and managerial paternalism. And it is possible to begin classifying many types of
ministry that are actually healthy as paternalistic. The important question is this: Is the
ministry you are doing enabling and preparing the local church body for future success
when you are gone?
Before you leave, consider habits of ministry you may have that might not work
effectively in Cambodia. Pray for a heart that is receptive, for ears that hear, and hands
that humbly help build a strong and durable spiritual community.

Day 10: Negative Perspective – Managerial Paternalism

If you know anything about rust, you know how destructive it can be. In an industrial
world that relies heavily upon materials that are subject to the permeability of rust,
great measures must be taken to maintain pipes, cars and building structures. Rust can
transform something that is extremely functional and useful into a destructive problem,
or something beautiful into a wreck. Rust cannot just be painted over and ignored. And
in fact, it can be a hidden menace, lurking unknown beneath the surface of a structure
until the damage has already been done.
Paternalism operates in much the same way. It is a fairly simple concept really, but one
that can be applied in so many different ways and circumstances so that, like rust, it
pervades a culture and a community in a degenerative way. We have already
discussed resource paternalism and we will later discover how spiritual ministry can also
be affected by paternalism, but today, we will take a look at the effect of managerial
paternalism and how that might best be avoided.
Managerial and resource paternalism overlap in many regards. They both involve
community and poverty alleviation projects. But managerial paternalism does as much
to hinder the psyche of the community as resource materialism does in terms of the
economy. When it comes to short-term mission trips in which time is of the essence, to
come into a community and crank your projects out as fast as you can and leave with
a sense of satisfaction and completion seems like the best route to take. With valuable
skills and a heart to serve, Western missionaries might think they will do the most good
by taking control of a project.
In reality, while managerial paternalism might produce a good immediate result, it does
not contribute to the overall health of the community and can actually produce a
society that is less sustainable when the missionaries are gone. Taking control and sole
responsibility for projects, albeit often done with good hearts, negatively accomplishes
a few notable things:
1) Locals develop an inferiority complex that submits to the authority of wealthy
foreigners and prohibits them from being productive when missionaries are gone.
2) The community becomes dependent on outside leadership and resources, and
is unable or unwilling to initiate change on their own for future endeavors. 3) Missionaries undertake projects that locals actually understand to not be the
most effective or beneficial to their society.26
No one would realistically want this to be a result of something they are intending to
flourish and produce community vitality, but it can be hard for missionaries to let go of
their managerial styles and “get it done” attitude. But “process” must be put ahead of
“production”27 in order to sow good seed and establish firm roots in a community.
Consider Matthew 7 and the parable of the builders and foundations Jesus gives.
However heartfelt and genuine it may be, to engage in managerial paternalism would
be like building a house, or a community rather, on sand. When the winds and the rain
come, that community will not have a solid
foundation to stand upon. The initial lifegiving
projects will last for a time, but will be
devastated because of the community’s
inability to maintain and replicate them
independently.
Instead, missionaries ought to use their skills
and abilities to help enable locals engage in
and complete projects themselves. Take, for
example, a construction project. Hiring local construction experts and laborers to work
alongside willing mission workers would give the community a sense of ownership that
would have a more positive and far-reaching effect than just raising a building.
Dependency would be replaced with confidence, independence, and a tangible
example of what the community can do for itself.
Missionaries must also be aware that participating in this sort of community
engagement may mean that the project is not accomplished in the time frame or
manner in which they would like. Adhering to a culture’s collectivistic tendencies,
perceptions of time, and public customs, might be difficult when it comes to finishing a
project as planned, but doing so will have a long lasting impact that outweighs
potential concerns.28 Even where a project is not completed during a mission team’s
visit, permanent local staff might be able to continue the work and finish the project on
their own.
Unlike the shaky and false foundation built on sand, a firm and lasting foundation is laid
when the community is involved in its own development and restoration – one that will
not be so easily corrupted by rust and decay.

Day 9: Negative Perspective – Resource Paternalism

When you arrive at church there is a cardboard box at the entrance. Church members
are coming together to donate some new and gently used clothing which will soon be
packed and taken by the church mission team on their trip to Cambodia to be given to
those that are less fortunate in Cambodia. Great idea, right?
Little does the church team know, Agape International Missions (AIM), the host
organization in Cambodia, has been doing job training for the last two years with a
former victim of sex trafficking to help her open her own garment and tailoring shop.
She has just opened her shop and all the clothes your church has collected will be
distributed in the community she’s working in. These clothes may be a blessing to some,
but they will be a curse to her and her dream of opening up a tailoring shop.
It would have been far better if the church’s
mission team had considered these
questions before moving forward with their
clothing drive: Did the host organization in
Cambodia ask for these materials? Could
these clothes be bought or made in
Cambodia?
Yesterday we discussed the broad topic of
paternalism: doing things for people that
they can do for themselves, or doing things
for people without involving them in the
process. Today we want to talk about
resource paternalism: bringing in resources
that are already available in the host country, or bringing in resources that haven’t
been asked for.
Western missionaries often bring in a lot of resources that are readily available in host
countries that were never asked for. For example, they bring in large supplies of rice,
medicine, and clothing without thinking twice about what it might do to the local
farmer, pharmacy, or tailor. In an attempt to be compassionate and generous with our
resources, we can inadvertently undercut legitimate business in the community we are
trying to bless.
What is important to understand is that AIM works in communities where it is imperative
to build up legitimate business if there is to be long-term sustainable change in these
communities ravaged by sex trafficking. Many of the communities that AIM works in are
economically driven by sex trafficking; the main industries are brothels, drugs, gambling, and alcohol sales. For God to restore these communities, these businesses must be shut
down and replaced with legitimate profitable businesses. Knowing this, you can begin
to realize how devastating it is when a mission team, which has come to stop sex
trafficking, undercuts the legitimate businesses through resource paternalism in the
community they came to serve.
The best way to avoid this is to buy and use resources that are available in the host
country you are going to visit.
Here is a real case scenario of what another mission team has done to avoid resource
paternalism and to transform the community they were working in:
A medical team from the US planned a trip to offer medical and dental services in Svay
Pak, Cambodia. Instead of bringing their own medicine from the States, they bought
their medicine at a local pharmacy in Cambodia. Instead of bringing Power Bars and
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they bought noodles from the local restaurant for
lunch in Svay Pak. Instead of bringing their own scrubs for the medical mission trip, they
planned ahead and asked a former trafficking victim, who was a new owner of a
tailoring shop, to make the scrubs for the team. This small decision provided three
months of salary for that young woman. This team used the local resources available to
them and, in doing so, blessed the Cambodian business owners who have rejected
being part of the sex trade and extravagantly blessed an amazing survivor as she
started her own business. If this team would have brought their own resources, they
would have hurt the local pharmacist’s business, and passed up an opportunity to
support a local restaurant and the young tailor.
As you are preparing for your trip, begin to think strategically about the resources you
will use while on the trip and ask the following questions:

1. What are ways your team can avoid resource paternalism and utilize more resources in Cambodia?
3. What are ways that the Cambodians you will be serving can participate in the miracle, not just see it?
4. What are some of the underlying biases and assumptions we have that lead to resource paternalism? What is the truth that overcomes those biases and how does this change how you view the community you will be working with in Cambodia?