Why Go Overseas?

Has the international mission trip become irrelevant, unnecessary, perhaps even unseemly and immoral?

I know that some people wonder, either privately or not so privately, why it is that some Christians feel the urge to do good in faraway places when, as we all know very well, there are plenty of people in need in our own cities and neighborhoods.

I’m sure that some people feel this way about my current trip to Lebanon; I get it. After all, there is always a bit of tourism that goes on when I’m visiting another country, meaning that I am spending some time seeing beautiful historical sites, eating wonderful foods, and taking a break from the work I normally do. In that sense, it is a kind of vacation, or at least a respite from the usual list of things to do.

I confess that I love visiting different countries and encountering cultures which are foreign to me. It’s something which I thoroughly enjoy; I like trying to discover how to fit in, or at least how to tread lightly in a place that is not my natural home. 

And I understand that some people, particularly those who are my church members, might even feel that my overseas travel is distinctly not a part of my ministry at home. They might say that I am shirking my duties by spending time outside of my appointed office. 

I would respond to this complaint by arguing that this is part of my ministry; this is part of the whole call of God on the life of Wes Magruder. I haven’t come to Lebanon to engage in work that competes with or detracts from my church job. It’s one and the same work; the same gospel that compels me to proclaim the word on Sunday mornings and lead a congregation in north Oak Cliff also compels me to serve the displaced Syrian children of God.

Even so, there is still a practical question left when it comes to international mission work: does it make good sense for Americans to travel to a foreign country to do work which could just as well be done by others in that country?

This is certainly a legitimate question that must be answered honestly in every circumstance and context. It is true that a survey of American mission efforts over the last century might reveal a mixed bag in this regard; Americans have built and donated things that were irrelevant and unnecessary; Americans have gone into countries like imperialist invaders and bullied the residents around with arrogance and impatience; Americans have often been bad actors in other countries; Americans have also been guilty of doing work that benefitted their own egos and psyches rather than the people they ostensibly came to help. All of that is true.

But that doesn’t mean that Americans — or anyone else, for that matter — should stop their interest in international mission work. It means merely that we should do it better! 

We no longer have the luxury of sitting back and saying to ourselves that we should take care of our own poor and suffering first; we cannot afford to adopt an “America first” policy regarding the kingdom of God. This attitude may have been acceptable in the past, but our globe is infinitely smaller now, and a crisis in one small corner of the world will have repercussions elsewhere, whether we like it or not.

When I’m in Lebanon, or Greece, or Cameroon, I feel like I’m doing work for the only “place” that really matters — the entire planet. Because when we talk about “the kingdom of God,” that’s what we mean; God’s kingdom is that which God’s rule of shalom, love, and community encompasses. The kingdom of God is not limited to this planet (it includes the whole cosmos), but there is no part of this globe which falls outside of God’s reign.

If we really believe this, then we must act like it. As Christians, we can never subscribe to an “America first” mentality; nor must we succumb to an ideology which proclaims that our country is more divinely blessed than any other.

The world is full of diverse peoples, each of whom we are commanded to love as our neighbor, whether they love us back or not. And the only way to love our neighbors is to get to know them. 

In the end, that is the reason why I think international mission trips are urgent and necessary for the Christian. We have to get to know the real people who live in our world. It no longer suffices to send a little money here or there to address a need. We can’t fall back on our State Department or a large, impersonal non-profit organization to do our work for us. And we certainly cannot afford to let large media conglomerates tell us what the rest of the world is like, even if they have impressive video footage. 

No, I am convinced that the only true change in this world will take place when we all actively seek friendships with people around the world, when we nurture relationships with people who are not like us at all. You don’t have to leave America to do that, of course, but it certainly helps!

The world would actually be a safer place if we got out of our comfortable enclaves and opened our hearts to the world around us.

Thats why I’m here in Lebanon this week. Not simply to found a non-profit, which will do some great work. But to see my friends Ghaleb and Reyna Charif, and Tarek and Mouhar. Yesterday, I saw a woman who I met back in February; I didn’t remember her name, but she remembered mine and warmly greeted me back to her country. 

Today I met a young 23 year old woman named Shaza, who works as a facilitator for Save the Children. I watched as she led Syrian refugee children in playing Musical Chairs, Red Light/Green Light, and another game with a ball that looked like a cross between dodgeball and tag. She is the same age as my oldest daughter, and I thought of Rachel as I watched her.

All I could think was that I wished Rachel could meet Shaza. I think they would enjoy each other’s company. I think they could be friends.

But that’s what I always think. And that’s what I think about all the people of the world. We really could be friends if we just took the time to be with each other, even if only for a simple dinner. 

Truly, when you boil it all down, the international mission trip is worth it for that one simple event — the meal. That is where relationships begin; that is where God’s kingdom begins to peek through; that is where mission work hits its stride.

Creating Safe Spaces in Lebanon

I’m still dreaming about Lebanon.

But they are uncomfortable dreams … nightmares, almost.

My team and I learned a lot about what a real refugee crisis looks like when we visited Lebanon back in late February. Lebanon, a country of 4.5 million, now finds itself accommodating over 1.5 million Syrians. As you can imagine, this causes a severe strain on societal infrastructure.

For the most part, the Lebanese have responded with courage and good will, extending basic needs to Syrian refugees: shelter, food, healthcare, and basic education.

But we also discovered that there are a number of pressing needs which are going unmet. The trauma caused by the war in Syria has affected an entire generation of children, many of whom have lost a sense of hope for the future. 

According to Dr Mohammad K Hamza, a neuropsychologist with the Syrian-American Medical Society (SAMS), Syria's children of war have experienced more than just post-traumatic stress. He has coined a new term for the amount of emotional trauma that he is seeing in children — “human devastation syndrome.”

A study released by Save the Children last month, based on over 450 interviews with adults and children in Syria, showed that “toxic stress is wreaking havoc on children.” Half of the children interviewed said they never or rarely feel safe at school, and 40% said they don’t feel safe outside t heir own homes. Another 78% of children “feel grief or extreme sadness some or all of the time.”

In our brief visit, we encountered some of these children. One of them has become an emblem of the Syrian conflict to me. I met Pheros in his family’s tent in Marj, near the Syrian border. He was a hollow-eyed 19 year old, with no hint of hope. He didn’t go to school, didn’t work, didn’t have any spark of interest in anything. All he wanted to do, we finally got him to admit, was to return to Syria and fight alongside the rebels.

It may be too late to reach Pheros. He may eventually slip back across the border and join a rebel group. Maybe he’ll join an Islamist group. Or become a suicide bomber. 

Those of us who met Pheros have been dreaming about him ever since. We have been praying about what to do to prevent an entire generation of kids like Pheros from growing up without hope. 

As a result of this interaction, our team is working to put together an NGO called Safe Spaces, which will focus on the psychosocial health of women and children refugees in Lebanon. We plan to partner with some NGOs already on the ground in Lebanon, but provide training for their workers to identify trauma in women and children and equip them with some coping skills and strategies.

We plan to begin in the city of Saida/Sidon, which is south of Beirut on the coast. We want to partner with Al Reaaya, a Lebanese-based NGO that provides relief and developmental support to orphans and widows affected by the war. The first Safe Spaces will be housed in a new school, which we also hope to help finance and build.

Our dream is for this to be a replicable model, which can be expanded into other regions of Lebanon, and work closely with municipalities and school systems.

Don’t get alarmed — I’m not thinking of moving to Lebanon myself! Instead, I believe that I can help leverage the expertise, influence, and resource of the United Methodist Church in America to make a difference. I would also like to facilitate some short-term mission trips to Lebanon in the coming years. In fact, we are currently planning a return trip to Lebanon during the third week of September 2017. The Bishop has already expressed interest in going, as well as the pastor of a very large United Methodist Church in the Dallas area.

I would love for some of y’all to go on that trip, but if you can’t, there are other ways that you can become involved with Safe Spaces. In particular, I am looking for psychotherapists trained in the field of PTSD and children. If you know someone who fits this criteria, please forward their information to me. 

Even if you don’t know someone, there are things you can do to help support this initiative. Let me know; we’ll find a role you can play

Experiencing All of Holy Week

There’s a saying among pastors that you can’t get from Palm Sunday to Easter without going through Good Friday.

Believe me, there is a tendency among many American churches to jump from the parade-like quality of Palm Sunday straight to the glory of Easter morning, without ever delving into the messiness and horror of what actually happened that last week of Jesus’ life. We tend to be very uncomfortable with the blood and suffering; not only does Holy Week veer mightily close to our own pain, but it forces us to look upon a Jesus who was betrayed, battered, beaten, and executed.

No thanks, we tend to say. We’d rather imagine a resurrected, bright and shiny Jesus. We like winners!

But I don’t think the story of Jesus Christ has any power at all unless it is true that he experienced so much suffering. The entire point of the resurrection is that evil does not have the last word in our world, despite the enormous amount of evil that exists in the world.

A Jesus who did not face his own personal terror would have nothing hopeful to offer the people of the world who are terrorized by the threat of nuclear weapons. A Jesus who was not whipped and beaten would have nothing meaningful to say to a Congolese woman who was raped by rebel militiamen. A Jesus who did not die on a cross would mean absolutely nothing to a Syrian refugee whose father and three children had been killed by sarin gas.

This is not to say that Jesus’ suffering was unique; his pain was not any greater than any other. Instead, it was representative. It marks him as human, like the rest of us. He was one of us, a member of our race, a participant in our plight.

And what God did through Jesus was to herald a coming age in which humanity would be saved from the plight and plague of evil and wickedness. In God’s reign, tragedy will be transformed into beauty. Jesus’ death and resurrection are a kind of parable of what God is doing in the world — even today.

Frankly, the only way to encounter the fullness of Easter is to become immersed in all the events of Holy Week, to get in touch with Jesus’ suffering, as difficult as it might be.

That’s the reason we gather on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday for worship. We hear the rest of the story, the part that happens in-between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.

Another way to experience that part of the story is to walk the Stations of the Cross, which are now open and available in the sanctuary at Kessler Park UMC. The Stations of the Cross are an ancient spiritual practice of the Christian church, meant to imitate the journeys of early Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, who retraced Jesus’ final steps on the way to Calvary.

There are fourteen stations, scattered throughout the sanctuary; each one represents a different moment in Jesus’ suffering and death. A booklet guides you to each station and offers a Scripture reading, reflection, question, and prayer. You are welcome to linger at each station as long as you like, and meditate on what it all means to you.

I walked the path this morning, and found myself marveling, once again, that Jesus had the courage and love to say of his persecutors, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.”

These words would mean nothing at all if Jesus said them on the back of the donkey while entering Jerusalem; likewise, if he’d said them on his deathbed at a ripe old age, they would ring hollow and trite. Instead, the fact that he said it while he was hanging on the cross gives the phrase a force that challenges all the world’s evil.

At that moment, Jesus truly overcame the horror of humanity’s inhumanity. Jesus refused to be sucked into the cycle of vengeful violence and hate, and chose to forgive.

Confronted with such a love, our only response can be, “Lord, have mercy on us.”

The Stations of the Cross will be open for visitors on Thursday and Friday from 8:30 am to 9 pm, and on Saturday from 10 am to 1 pm.