How to Love People Well in an Instagram World of Selfie Missions
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” – Jesus
“Often Americans have come through and taken pictures of themselves and our work and then used those pictures to raise money for their ministries and did nothing to help us.” – Church leader in Ghana
“When you get back to America, you tell them that not everyone in Africa is hungry.” – Nurse and STM host in South Africa
We live in the age of image. Humans once were primarily inhabitants of oral cultures. Even after the invention of writing, few people could read, and the production of books was prohibitively expensive. People connected and communicated by telling stories. Then the printing press came along, and much of the world moved into a literary culture. This changed the way we understoond ourselves and our world. But now, with everyone carrying a camera and internet browsing device in their pocket, we are in the visual age. We live by images. We use our pictures on social media and other platforms to define us. While there is much both to appreciate and fear about this age, my concern here is not with the more overall phenomena but rather its impact on cross-cultural Short-Term Missions (STM).
In the early days of modern STMs, photos were more difficult and expensive to take and even harder to share broadly. No longer. Now, if it isn’t on Instagram, it’s like it never happened.
While this can be good because we can share stories of what God is doing around the world and get more people excited and involved, it has some significant downsides we need to think through and train for before we send people, or go, on STMs.
Here are some dos and don’ts for using photography in STMs. I wish I could say I have always followed these guidelines, but I can do better moving forward, as can we all.
Use your photos to honor others and draw attention to what God is doing among them. Don’t make yourself the hero. Turning a short-term mission trip into an opportunity for virtue-signaling and glorifying yourself is abusive to others and insulting to the God who deserves all glory. This is like praying on a street corner, announcing your generosity, or putting your fasting on display. Jesus warned us about the danger of doing “actions of righteousness to be seen by people.” It’s okay to show up in pictures of global ministry, but you should make sure they don’t center on you but center on God’s work through others.
Don’t share pictures of people without their permission and awareness of how the photos will be used. Using other people’s misery to make us look virtuous, generous, or heroic is an insult to them and to God in whose image they are made. This is particularly true if you use those pictures to promote your program or raise money for yourself with pictures of people who will not benefit from the gifts.
Don’t share pictures that dehumanize any person or community or bring shame on them. Ask yourself, would I want my family or community portrayed this way? “Poverty porn” is an offensive term to me, but it captures an offensive behavior quite well. When we reduce people to objects of pity by showing them at their worst, we are abusing them. There is a place for photos of horrors in the world to help people understand a crisis and respond appropriately, but it should be done with great care and with a clear way to help those people in ways that honor their dignity as beings made in God’s image. As much as possible, show them at their best in the worst of situations. Use angles that elevate instead of looking down on them. Reducing people to objects for sentimentality to make us feel more grateful for our blessings and/or reinforcing our sense of superiority is not loving them. Refuse to use a picture to reinforce “White Saviorism.” Would you want photos of you at your worst moment of life put online for everyone to see?
Wherever possible, be the person holding the camera and not the person on camera. Use photographs to chronicle what God is doing to draw attention to him. Use them to show the amazing people he is using to push back the darkness, free the oppressed, proclaim freedom for the prisoners, give life to those trapped in death, and proclaim good news in a world trapped in cynicism and hopelessness. Your photos should increase the confidence American Christians have in the global family so they will come alongside them to expand what God is already doing there.
For more helpful guidance on STMs and larger current issues in today’s congregational missions, I highly recommend Freeing Congregational Mission: A Practical Vision for Companionship, Cultural Humility, and Co-development, by Hunter Farrell and Balajeidlang Khyllep. It is the book I am recommending most right now to help churches engage in God’s mission more effectively. The chapter on STM’s is worth the price of the book. Just the questions they provide for using photographs in missions is worth the cost of the book. But it is all excellent. I picked up the helpful expression “selfie missions” from this work.
Note: Clicking on the link will open an Amazon listing for this book. Any purchase made with this link will result in a small donation by Amazon.com to MRN.