We are back from Brazil. The collage of photos is an incomplete chronicle of the trip, each photo telling a story – some of those stories are reminders of wonderful things in the past, and some point forward to relationships and works that may yet come.

Those reminders of the past are rooted in the many short-term mission trips to Brazil we were able to take over many years. Wonderful trips.

While the short-term missions phenomenon has not yet spent itself, it may not be as robust as it was prior to the pandemic. From the 1990s through the 2010s, short term trips were at the heart of many American churches’ mission outreach. Youth and adults alike would raise vast amouts of money, book passage to some foreign country and spend a week running a Vacation Bible School for the kids they found in the villages and towns of the foreign country, painting the building of their host church, or passing out evangelistic tracts to people whose language they did not speak. It felt so good to help those poor people, and feeling good is what American Christians are all about. Pastors would drop in for a week of training indigenous church planters and return home with a PowerPoint presentation for their sending congregation showcasing the amazing effectiveness of their teaching. Bragging rights never end.

Ten years ago, the Chalmers Center, an organization dedicated to helping churches do a better job with mission work, especially short-term mission, produced a cutting satirical video on the worst of short-term mission trips. It is worth watching again. (The center produced what is still one of the best resources on congregational mission, the book When Helping Hurts and associated materials [again, worth watching].)

How bad were many short-term mission projects? Pretty bad. I should know; I was an enthusiastic practitioner.

In order to ameliorate some of the worst aspects of short-term missions, we often spoke of “short-term mission with a long-term commitment.” To be sure, the joy we experienced in visiting with friends we have known and loved for over two decades is due to long-term commitments both here in the United States and among our Brazilian brothers and sisters. With few apologies, we are able to say that God used our partnership for his good purposes in our lives and in their lives. Short-term mission with a long-term commitment.

But there is another photo from our trip that reminds us of a very short-term trip with no long-term commitment. In 2001, 2002, and 2003, our mission teams visited a little farm town an hour or so outside of Belo Horizonte, the city of our long-term commitments. For one afternoon we Americans ran Vacation Bible School (EBF – Escola Biblica de Férias) at the Presbyterian church in Florestal. Drop in and drop out. After three years it got to be too much to do, and so we quit doing it. Short-term, no commitment.

We spent this past weekend with friends from Belo Horizonte at a hotel fazenda (ranch resort) near Florestal. We had been there before. It was good to be back. On Saturday afternoon Becky and I decided to take the mile and a half hike into town, and while there we wanted to walk past the Presbyterian church. Long story short, we met the pastor and a young woman who was a child when the Americans came with their EBF. She remembered those days in July 20-plus years ago. She told us that her experiences in EBF were one of the reasons she kept coming back to the church until she was old enough to make a commitment to Christ and his church. We dropped in and dropped out, but God kept working in her life.

How bad were those short-term mission trips that were so popular in the American church from the 1990s to the 2010s? Many of them pretty bad. But what a joy to see that God used even our drop-in, drop-out trips to Primeira Igreja Presbiteriana de Florestal for his good purposes.

I’ve mentioned our upcoming trip to Brazil a couple of times (here and here). Well, the time has come and we will be on our way in just a few days. We visited Brazil last fall, thinking it might be a last trip to see a place and a people so important to us. But now we are going again (one more time?). The occasion is the 30^th anniversary celebration for Igreja Presbiteriana no Jardim América, the congregation to which our lives have been so deeply bound for most of those thirty years. As I have said before, we were at IPJA for its 10^th anniversary and for its 20th anniversary. It seems right to be there for the 30^th.

The photo in the header is a view of the church’s community taken from the church and looking uphill towards Favela da Ventosa. I share the photo not to commend ourselves for helping poor or disadvantaged people, but as a reminder of a place dear to us and the home of friends who are a gift from God. Continue reading →

Becky and I are heading for Brazil in about twelve days’ time. More on the trip next week. We’re not quite at the suitcases-out stage of preparations, but both of us have to-do lists in our minds. One of the things I need to do is to call the bank and buy some Brazilian reias. The real (plural – reais) is Brazilian currency, and I should be able to buy about five reais for a dollar.

Brazil is a highly digitalized country, and we won’t need to use our reais often, but we are going to spend a few days near a small village, and we might want some paper currency in our pockets if we visit one of its shops or restaurants. A dollar may buy five reais, but the shopkeeper or the restaurant owner in Florestal won’t want our dollars and may not have internet access to process a credit card payment.

The currency in Brazil is the real, not the dollar – almighty as we may think it is. We call the process of exchanging one currency for another “conversion.” Hm. Continue reading →

In last week’s post I complained about using Easter as a metaphor for the cycle of the seasons or a kind of vacuous spirituality. But then I talked about a potted Easter flower already drooping on our kitchen table. I wrote, “Perhaps it serves as a metaphor for the danger of Easter faith drooping as Sunday turns to Monday and a new week too much like the old week unfolds before us.”

Several of you were kind enough to respond. Reflecting on the danger of drooping faith, one of you wrote, “Maybe next week you can write about not allowing that to happen.”

Hm. So how do we keep our faith from drooping? The new week gave another metaphor to help as I pondered the question. On Good Friday I ordered a needed item from a seller in Wisconsin, but the need was not urgent. No next-day delivery needed, and no next-day delivery promised. Good enough. The Monday after Easter I received notification that the package had been placed into the keeping of the US Postal Service and that  I could expect delivery by Friday, April 10.  Good enough. Still a week or so before I would need it. Continue reading →

There’s nothing like a good metaphor to brighten a note or letter. A metaphor well used jolts the sleepy reader to life. To a good writer, the use of an effective simile is like the use of just the right herbs and spices to a master chef. A clarifying analogy explains the meaning of our words as a pair of reading glasses sharpens the letters on a page.

We need to look no further than the words of Jesus to validate the use of figurative language. Jesus spoke of a city on a hill, of a lamp under a bushel, of vines and branches, living water, easy yokes, logs in our eyes, white-washed tombs, and lost sheep.

Any of us hoping for our language to satisfy like a cup of cool water on a hot summer day, or to cut to the heart of an issue like a sharp two-edged sword could do worse than listening for the ways the Bible uses metaphors, similes, and analogies.

But we Christians are, at times, guilty of metaphor abuse, and no more so than at Easter time. Some things are not meant to be taken figuratively. Some things are what they are. So it is with the Resurrection. Continue reading →