Prodigal Medic....

I watched an incredible presentation yesterday from this year’s TED Conference. It was presented by a guy named Willie Smits, an Indonesian conservationist, who was deeply moved by a moment walking through a marketplace in a town where someone tried to shove a dying orangutan baby in his face. He ended up rescuing the orangutan baby, and began to explain how the deforestation of the palms in order to provide biofuels for the Western world. I was at first skeptical, as I always am, with these “save the rainforest” type speeches. Do I believe that the rainforests need to be saved? Absolutely. Do I have any idea how? No, and really, my garden on Facebook doesn’t really count as a worthwhile effort on my part.

However, as with most TED talks (since I have rarely heard one that doesn’t intrigue me), I stuck it out. And I was deeply intrigued by Smits’ incredibly well thought out plan for saving the orangutans. His plan was to by 5,000 acres in a forest in Borneo and to create not only a wildlife sanctuary, but also a whole new way to approach everything related with this. While it would take twenty minutes just to capture some of what he said, the summary would be a meticulously thought out plan for caretaking of the earth, reforestation, creating biodiversity, a self-sustaining and self-propagating economy for the local people which creates local ownership, a wildlife habitat, and ecology center. The result is staggering. His center, with this meticulous reforestation and business plan, has directly contributed to everything from raising this part of Borneo from one of the poorest to one of the richest, increasing education, children’s health, increasing rainfall and restoring the natural balance of the earth, saving the orangutans, drastically decreasing crime, and the list goes on. It absolutely blew my mind.

And it got me thinking…

What if this could be the new face of missions? What if we leave behind the old models of going to people groups different than our own, with our spin of the Gospel to thrust upon then, while destroying their culture and without really giving them a practical day-to-day hope? I started thinking about how in the last century, missionaries went to these far off lands to “convert and save” the “lost.” Was this effective? In certain situations, absolutely. But I’ve always been unsettled at the cost of this, because “saving” them often seems like a process of assimilating them as well. In fact, there was a recent article on ABC News’ Nightline about YWAM (a great organization) and the conflict with the Brazilian government about how YWAM missionaries are contributing to the decline of the native customs and cultures. To be sure, some of this is good, I think, as I do not think infanticide is a good form of population control. However, we need to think long and hard about how we leave these people. Are we just throwing our holy hand grenades without providing for the tangible needs of these people?

Churches like Mars Hill in Michigan, with their XYZ Initiative and microfinance work in Burundi, organizations like Blood:Water:Mission and others are on to something. And I think that Smits is on to the same thing, although in a secular way. Maybe the best way to radically effect change in these people is to enter into their world as one of them. Maybe the new way to witness is not through street plays and the Jesus Film, but by analyzing the local economy and agriculture and empowering these people groups to find the courage to believe in themselves as having value and worth just how God created them, no longer selling themselves and their land to the Western world at the cost of their very lives for the cheap buck. Maybe, as we tap the Church’s rich resources of amazing people with expertise in agriculture, finance, public health, etc. with this multi-faceted approach, we can radically be changing the goal of missions from short-term to long-term investment in a community. I even have hopes that many of these same ideas might be applied domestically, not just internationally. Especially in such economic times, the need to minister to our literal neighbors is even greater. I think by showing that people have value and worth, and incorporating the message that this value and worth comes from a Creator that loves them how they are, we can really see the whole world change for the better.