When Being Helped Hurts

Author - Umn ministry

June 03, 2022

My experience on the receiving end of a mission trip taught me you can’t force love on a community.

When we got a phone call from a larger, wealthier church from a larger, wealthier town offering a service project a few years ago, we readily accepted. For several years my husband Tony and I co-pastored a small, rural church that had many needs. The other church had a group of middle and high school students coming to our area to attend a camp, and some of them wanted to volunteer to work in their afternoons and pay for the supplies.

It seemed like a great idea. As teens, Tony and I had participated in similar service projects, so we were excited to be a part of this one. But we had always been on the giving side, never on the receiving side.

Our elders got together with pastors from the other church and made a plan: paint the walls and the deck, paint the grid in the drop ceiling, tear out some bushes and put in a patio, plant flowers, clean out the yard, and put in new glass doors for the front entrance. The pastor threw around dollar amounts to donate that seemed outrageous to us.

The kids were eager and excited to help. They gave up their afternoon camp activities—waterskiing, zip-lining, etc.—to serve us. And we were genuinely grateful. But the gift began to feel complicated.

It was small things, like the paint drips on our carpet. No one would expect a middle-schooler to be careful enough not to drip, or even to remember to use a drop cloth. But the adults with them didn’t seem to notice either, even as they watched Tony and I crouch on the floor to scrub out the spots. We ran around with drop cloths, trying tactfully to remind them. When you are on the receiving end of help, it is hard to correct the helper. You don’t want to appear ungrateful.

The same happened with a small table we used to hold ...