Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep989: Rethinking Orphanages: Brandon Stiver

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

Are orphanages helping orphans? Most Christians would say: obviously yes. But Brandon, who’s been working in orphan care for over a decade, says that they are actually perpetuating a system of care that is ultimately not helpful for orphans. Kids belong in families, and there are many other more healthy ways to help kids be raised in a family.  Brandon is the senior director of global programs and partnerships for 1MILLIONHOME–an organization aimed at revolutionizing orphan care through broadly shifting mindsets and scaling up proven community-based models that reunite children with families and eradicate practices that lead to family separation. Brandon has worked in the child welfare and nonprofit sectors for over twelve years. Before joining 1MILLIONHOME, he led a family based care and advocacy program in Tanzania for several years. Brandon has also worked at a Tanzanian orphanage, in the Californian foster care system, at various churches and teaches on issues facing at risk children at the university level. He has his Master’s Degree in Global Development and Justice and is passionate about indigenous leadership, community mobilization and seeing global entities come together to deliver the best care for at risk children. –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/titr or use code TITR at faithfulcounseling.com –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If you missed the Exiles of Babylon conference last year in 2022, we do have the digital version available. If you want to engage the conversation about sexuality, gender, politics, unity in the church, hell, race, and racism, then check out the digital version of the Exiles of Babylon conference at theologyintheraw.com. Also, if you want to support the show, you know where to go, patreon.com forward slash theologyintheraw. Support the show for as little as five bucks a month. And thank you to all of you who are part of the Patreon community and keeping this show not only going, but flourishing. My guest today is Brandon Stiver. I'm laughing because I kept

calling him Brian throughout the podcast. Sorry again, Brandon, for misnaming you like all throughout the podcast. I don't know why I did that. Your name was right in front of me in the screen in your Skype account or whatever. So I don't know. I'm blind. Brandon is the Senior Director of Global Programs and Partnerships at One Million Home. One Million Home is revolutionizing orphan care through broadly shifting mindsets and scaling up proven community-based models that reunite children with families. The conversation today is about orphan care and the problematic relationships that orphanages have in the orphan care conversation.

orphanages have in the orphan care conversation. This is going to be similar to the conversation I had a few months ago with Alicia. I'm going to butcher her last name, so I'll just say Alicia from Story International. And yeah, it's one of those conversations that might be very eye-opening to some of you. It might be hard for some of you to hear, but hopefully we will always want to do the right thing and do something that actually is helping the very people we're trying to help. And the role, it's questionable whether orphanages are doing that. So I'm really excited for you to hear this conversation. I learned a ton again about orphanages and orphan care by talking to Brian. Brian's an awesome dude. I had a great time talking to him. So please welcome to the show, for the first time, Brian Stein. Hi, hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Raw. I'm here with

a new friend, partner in... No, we're not partners. You ever start saying a sentence and you're like, where am I going with this? You just started the partnership, man. I'm all for it. Yeah. Well, I'm already a huge fan of your work, even though I technically don't know much about your specific work, but I know the kind of work you're doing. And I want to have you on to talk about this whole question of whether orphanages are a good thing or possibly doing

more harm than good or however you want to frame it. But let's first give us a snapshot who you are, what have you been doing in life, and how can I grow such an awesome beard? Those of you who aren't watching, Brian's got, I mean, the pipe smoking beard going on here, which I'm really jealous. Mine does not look that cool. Thanks, man. Yeah. So yeah, I'm Brandon Stiver. I'm with One Million Home. How you get the beard, you take some German blood, you mix it with some Swedish blood, and this is kind of what comes out, I guess. Yeah, you could pass as like a Viking, man. You should, uh, bro, that's what I was for Halloween with my kids. Oh, holy, holy. Yeah, man. Uh, yeah. So I'm with 1 million home. Uh, so we are a nonprofit social venture,

uh, focused on global child welfare. And basically what that means is, uh, well, it can mean a lot of things but basically it's a recognition that when we talk about child welfare in the global south there's a lot of gaps um and specifically when it comes to care settings so that's kind of what our focus is um you know we got connected to you through a mutual friend a colleague of ours alicia who was on the podcast not too long ago and have some other mutual connections, as we mentioned, with Crazy Love and all those guys. But basically what we do at One Million Home is we recognize that there's a lot of kids that are separated from family,

and we work to get those kids back into family. So numbers can be a little hard to interpret sometimes, but there's about 5.4 million kids that are, you know, living in orphanages throughout the world. That's according to a Lancet report from last year. Numbers of kids on the street, you know, vary quite a bit depending on the source and because it's hard to survey those kids, but looking at maybe a minimum of 100 million kids that are on the street. So basically what we do at One Million Home is just we work with organizations throughout the world to create pathways for kids to get back into family. So that's kind of in a nutshell what we do. Okay. And real quick, your background though, you said you lived in Tanzania for a number of years and so you've been a missionary and have you worked with orphanages before in the past or? Well, dude, for me, so I

was, I'm a, I'm a California native, um, was living in Southern California and going to a big church in Costa Mesa called Rock Harbor Church. And we, um, I was in a service on Father's Day in 2007 and actually felt God calling me to go run an orphanage in Africa. Like those were the words that like I felt God impressing on me. And that was kind of the start of a journey for me. I shortly thereafter, you know, I was entering my last year of college, just kind of applied to whatever short term missions they were sending to Africa, got caught on with Tanzania. And that kind of started the whole journey. I went and did a short-term missions trip in 2008, then did a two-month internship in the same city in Moshi, Tanzania in 2009. And then it was during that internship that I actually got hired to work at a children's home. So, you know, I know coming out of your conversation with Alicia, you know, that was kind of a big, you know, takeaway and a big takeaway

that a lot of people are coming across right now. And that was me. I did the short term, you know, missions, volunteering at the orphanage thing. I went and worked at a children's home for two and a half years. It was it was the kind of children's home that, you know, all of us like to donate to. Right. Where,'s faith-based, it wasn't corrupt. Making the future leaders of whatever country they're in, that whole vision statement and all of that. So I worked there for two and a half years. I got married halfway through that. My wife came on a short-term missions trip, and we got engaged six weeks after meeting face-to-face.

So that's a whole other story. So short-term trips do serve a purpose. It was very successful for my wife. Yeah, yeah. So we went full in. And then once we had a kid, though, we started to realize, you know, I was kind of working out of this complex. And it was a complex. It was white savior-ish. It was, um, yeah, it was, it was, yeah, you could

call it a complex, but basically just thinking like, I am the father to these children. Like I'm a father to the fatherless. But once I actually had my own kid and my daughter was born, it was like, Oh, hold on. There's a difference here. You know, what I thought was happening in the orphanage, you know, being a father to these kids and all this and that, like the kids needed fathers. There's no doubt about that. But to say that just because I was working at a children's home or because God had called me into that space or, you know, whatever you wanted to call it, there was a I could see there was a marked difference.

So we went back to California for about a year and a half. I worked at a church in the interim and then, um, returned to Tanzania, back to Moshi again, and, uh, ran a family-based program for, for five years. So a family-based models can vary. They can look like all sorts of different things for us specifically. It was focused on the local church, the indigenous leaders there, doing a lot of mobilization, doing a lot of Bible training. And then we also had like a social services component kind of on the side to get kids into family or to preserve families that are at risk of separation. So yeah, so I ended up doing that for five years. So we're in Tanzania about eight years altogether between the two different ministries. I do want to point back to, let me see if I could pull up the episode.

Yeah. So, so Theology on the Rock episode 957 titled, Are Orphanages Doing More Harm Than Good with Alicia Penizzotto. I would encourage people to go back and listen to that one. I don't mind because this conversation is probably going to dovetail with that one. So it's almost like a two-part conversation. And I don't mind any repetition. But let me, I guess, start with the question I threw at Alicia. You know, what is orphanages? This is like the cream of the crop of like Christian involvement.

You know, if you could work in an orphanage, fund an orphanage, visit an orphanage, just, I'll just say it. I mean, it's not, not no shame or whatever, but just last week at church, we had, you know, celebrating an orphanage that we're supporting and somebody that's running an orphanage. And I'll say this probably several times throughout the podcast, very, very, very good and awesome hearts for somebody to move into a poor country, to work in an orphanage. Like that takes an incredible heart, a desire to want to help the vulnerable. So 110% celebrate that desire. We do also have to ask the question whether, to I guess quote the title of a famous book, there are times when our helping could actually unintentionally hurt or maybe not help more holistically in ways we thought. So that's kind of a runway to what are some of your concerns with orphanages as a means of caring for orphans and the vulnerable? Let's just, and you can start one-on-one, like pretend like somebody hasn't listened

to that episode, may know nothing about it. Maybe they're even shocked that we're even questioning whether orphanages are doing nothing but great things. Yeah, and I totally agree with you. And most of the people that I interact with that are running children's homes or involved or supporting, they always have the best of intentions. And a lot of this kind of comes down to whatever the mindset is that we bring to this conversation. So if I'm listening to a podcast and people start to get on this conversation of, you know, what have Christians contributed to society? They'll go along some frame of mind where they'll say, or stream of thought where they'll say, oh, Christians, they started the first hospitals and Christians founded all these

schools and they were pro-education and they started orphanages. And it's just kind of like one of those things that's just kind of like, oh yeah, like these are the good things that Christians do, right? And there's kind of a whole history, you know, with orphanages and kind of how they came about and where they've been used and all of this. But fundamentally, we kind of have to get after, you know, if we're talking about these big social, you know, support systems that Christians have kind of contributed to the greater society, what is it that we're addressing? So if there's a school, what we're saying is that education is important, that there's people that are uneducated, what they need is a school, right? If somebody goes to the hospital, it broke their arm, right? My, my, you know, my daughter broke her arm a few

years ago, right? Where do we go? We go to the hospital. They're going to have a doctor there. They're going to set it, you know, she's going to get better, right? So schools are for education, hospitals are for healing. What does an orphan need? And unfortunately we kind of jumped to that same kind of institutional model, right? Like hospitals and schools or institutions will jump into, well, they need an orphanage, but what are you actually giving them then? In the best case scenario, you're giving them shelter, you're giving them food, but that's not, those aren't the things that make them an orphan. What an orphan needs is family, right? They need parents, you know, first and foremost.

So we're not necessarily meeting the key deprivation, you know, that those kids have by allowing them to basically just continue in their orphanhood by basically just housing them, right? So within child welfare, there's different types of, you know, systems that you might be calling upon to meet the needs of a child. So if we were to kind of say, you know, orphanage, um, we don't really have traditional orphanages in the U S anymore. I'm starting with like Teddy Roosevelt and, um, some of that progressive movement in the early 20th century. And then we've kind of phased them out. We really haven't had any traditional orphanages for the last 60, 70 years. You know, like you'll still get some residential care, which is kind of that bigger umbrella. And there is a need for certain types of residential care, you know, within just about any child welfare system. South specifically, is that there is an over-reliance on residential care. And we are often institutionalizing children that really don't have any need, you know, for that particular type

of quote-unquote service. And even when a kid goes into a residential facility, an orphanage, a children's home, whatever euphemism you want to call it, even when they go in there, if it's temporary or if the kid, you know, maybe you're getting a kid off the streets and they have some addiction problems, you do like a rehabilitative care that's short term and then get them back into a family setting. You know, that's kind of how those residential services ought to operate. areas that are high tourism and high poverty, we get kids that are entering orphanages at ages that you would never see any kid going into any residential setting here in the U.S., but they can enter really young and then they can end up spending their whole childhood there. And then that's when you kind of get into all of the different challenges that that kid's going to face across multiple fronts. So they're not going to have adequate stimulation for proper child development. There's some studies that say if a kid spends three months in an orphanage, they lose a month of development.

they're going to lose out on development. They're going to not form healthy attachments, which is really kind of like a founding building block for every human. It's what you have with your children, what I have with my children. It's that, you know, kind of a, that kind of a given response that we're building with our kids. You know, the child cries, the parent meets the need. That's how people build trust. When kids are in orphanages, they're not forming that attachment, right? And because of that, then they're getting attachment disorders. Right. And this again, this is even in the quote unquote good orphanages. And you get into some of the more murky stuff like abuse and neglect are much more common, like abuse and neglect happens in family. Like we all recognize that. But it's even more common, you know, when kids are outside of the protection of their parents. So there's that issue. Is that, is that, is that statistically true? Like, is that, um,

that, that a higher percentage of abuse happens in orphanages than in homes that again, homes can be abusive too, but, um, yeah. Okay. So, so for sure. Uh, so what you guys could do is go and look up our partners at faith to action. They've been better care network. These are two organizations that act as act as kind of like a depository for these types of studies. So, um, yes. So those, those studies are out there and I really ought to be able to name one off the top of my head, but, um, at any rate, so, so there's the issues of, yeah, abuse and neglect, attachment, development, and then social and cultural things. You have these kids that are growing up in basically a totally different society. So even

if they, you know, go into an orphanage in East Africa, you know, Tanzania, whatever, and then they exit that same orphanage and they're still in Tanzania, they have this big cultural, you know, where it doesn't sync up because they didn't grow up in Tanzanian family, in community life. They grew up in an orphanage, you know, so. And I forgot the statistic that Alicia shared, but I was blown away that a very high percentage of kids in orphanages actually have at least one parent still alive. I just thought the overwhelming majority had no parents, or even if they had maybe one, it was a horrible situation

to where being in an orphanage would have been better than being in the care of their single parent. But do you have stats for that, how many kids in orphanages actually have at least one surviving parent, maybe possibly two? Yeah, the global stat is four to five. That's been based off of various studies. There's a really compelling one that came out of Haiti, which was nine out of ten, which was done by Lumos Foundation.

So 90%? 90% in Haiti. Yep, some are going to vary. So that's just in Haiti. So the other one was four out of five. So 80, so 80, would you say globally speaking, 80 to 90% would be inaccurate. That's the global number. Yeah. And, um, you know, when we talk about statistics, it's, it's really important.

So if you were to go to, um, right now COVID is kind of causing an increase in people in children that are losing their parent or primary caregiver. So the current studies that are coming out of like the CDC and kind of this whole task force around COVID is that over 10 million kids have lost their parent or primary caregiver due to COVID-19. So there is an increase in orphanhood, right?

So that is happening. an increase in orphanhood, right? So that is happening. But before COVID hit, we were actually, while the global population of people has been on the rise, the number of kids that were technically orphans was actually on the decline. So if we were to say, you know, go back 15 years ago, we would say, how many orphans are there in the world? And they would say 153 million orphans in the world. Well, today, you know, COVID aside, so say 2019, that number would be 140 million. So the numbers have actually been trending down. Now, this is a number that just comes from like UNICEF, you know, how many orphans are there in the world? But the tricky thing with that is that that gets lost on us and kind of these paradigms that we work through with, you know, little orphan Annie or Harry Potter or whatever, you know, our cultural mindset is, um, is that when they say 140 million, most of those kids actually still

have a parent because they include what are called double orphans or sorry, they include single orphans. So a single, single orphan is a kid that has, you know, lost one of their parents, not both of them. Now that still conveys a level of vulnerability. So that's kind of why they capture it. But to us as Americans, we just hear 140 million. Oh my gosh, what are we going to do? And we tend to run to the solutions that are supposed to be the last resort, which is orphanages and intercountry adoption. Those are really supposed to be kind of like the last resort. But that's kind of where we run to. Okay.

The abuse thing was startling as well. Can you unpack that a little? Is it abuse from staff members at orphanages? Is it abuse among the kids? Is it a from staff members at orphanages? Is it abuse among the kids? Is it a both and? And why would there be such high levels of abuse in orphanages? And the question I ask Alicia is, is this endemic or intrinsic to the nature of orphanages? Or is it just so happens that this is a problem and we need to clean it up in

orphanages? And I compared it to, you know, there's abuse. I mean, just with the recent, you know, SBC document release. I mean, there's abuse that happens in the church. Does that mean the church isn't good? Or does it mean we need to clean up the stuff happening in the church? But so is it intrinsic to the nature of orphanages that is fostering abuse? But first, like, can you comment, give me a little more description of what are we talking about here? What kind of abuse is going on and by whom? Sure. And even with abuse, so a good kind of framework when it comes to abuse in general is the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study.

This was done by the CDC a number of years ago, and it's kind of picked up. But basically, it's a 10-point scale of childhood adversity, which includes abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. Now, a lot of these studies were focused on the U.S. I would love to see them applied, but it's still a helpful framework. So even when we talk about abuse, that can be physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and then there's different forms of neglect as well. And then household dysfunction includes like, uh, domestic violence in the home, divorce, you know, those types of things. So if we kind of use that as a framework to say like, well, what is abuse? What is childhood adversity? You know? Um, so with, with the abuse within orphanages, um, ultimately what we, what we're looking at is that there are

gaps in child protection systems, right? So when a kid is abused, what we're saying is that that kid was not adequately protected. Um, now if you go into a lot of these children's homes, they don't even have policies in place to actually protect children and they don't have adequate training, you know, of the, of the caregivers to actually protect against this. And this is something that I saw in a lot of orphanages that I interacted with in Tanzania. And at One Million Home, we facilitate this community practice of organizations. And this is very common to not have policies and practices in place that are actually going to protect kids. So that's kind of like the organizational piece, right? policies and practices in place that are actually going to protect kids. So that's kind of like the organizational piece, right? And then ultimately, you know, you're bringing in kids that have all gone through some level of trauma. The fact that if they are truly a double orphan, meaning that their parents passed away, that's traumatic, right? If their parents haven't passed away, they've become separated and that's traumatic. And some of these kids may be entering residential setting as a form of protection because maybe they came out of an abusive situation like

within their home or within their community. So basically what you're doing is you're putting all of these kids that have gone through trauma, have gone through adversity all into the same place. And because of that, the most common form of abuse is peer-to-peer, older kids taking advantage of younger kids. There are issues as well with staff. And the other piece to kind of think within this, there's a difference between abuse, neglect, and exploitation. A lot of these kids are actually being exploited in these high traffic or high tourism areas where the kids actually are getting trafficked into the children's homes as a means of generating funds either

through what was traditionally intercountry adoption, but even more so now tourism and short-term missions trips and that whole piece. So the kids, so there's abuse, there's neglect, there's exploitation. And in those situations where the organization or the orphanage or, I mean, I say organization, a lot of them aren't even registered. But in situations where they are being, you know, exploited, those are also situations where abuse is also, you know, just direct abuse, physical abuse also are coming into play that might be from an adult to a child. physical abuse also are coming into play that might be from an adult to a child. So it's basically, yeah, it is, I would say, a bit intrinsic. And even in the nice orphanages that we support,

you know, or not we like One Million Home, but like we as American Christians support, which is a multi-billion dollar industry, that even those quote-unquote good orphanages are still having abuse and still having these gaps in child protection and safeguarding issues that are basically allowing for this abuse to take place. I mean, I'm just trying to imagine just a real concrete scenario. If an orphanage is well supervised, you know, let's just say there's 20 orphans, 10 girls, 10 boys. There's one or two adults that are sleeping with the boys,

female with the girls. And assuming the adult's not doing anything, you know, bad. Right. Is it just the kids find a way, like in the middle of the night are kids waking up and maybe sexually abusing other boys or maybe they're out in the playground they take him behind and kick the crap out of him or something behind the basketball hoop i mean how does it if it's well supervised

because i can see somebody saying well no we just need better supervision and then it wouldn't be happening is that true or are you saying it's even in the most well supervised well run there's it's a high a good chance it's still going to happen. It is true that kids can find ways that they can find gaps. But for sure, like we would encourage anybody to increase the amount of supervision and protection and policies and practices that ought to be in place. And again, I'll just say, you know, our organization, we are all focused on getting kids back into family where we believe even scripture, you know, says that kids ought to be. Um, but you know, if there is a children's home out there and their step forward is to increase how they are actually protecting

kids within their care. And then also to maybe add some family-based services where they're not just bringing kids in and the kid just lives there for the rest of their childhood. Like, um, because then they're going to, even if they're not abused, you know, abuse is not like the only thing that's detrimental to a kid's childhood. You know, the, the fact of being separated, the fact of being ostracized because you're an orphan living in an orphanage, all of these things are also really detrimental to a kid's wellbeing. So, um, so yes, absolutely. Increase supervision, um, get properly trained on how to protect children. Um, make sure you have policies in place that your staff are well-trained on, um, so that those kids can be safeguarded for however long they're in the children's home. But also don't be, don't grow content with the fact that you have an orphanage

and, you know, nice, you know, little kids that feel special to you, really champion that these kids need moms and dads ultimately. And, you know, they don't, you know, a children's home is not as good as growing up in a parent's home, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's, I mean, to use a cliche, I mean somebody could say, yeah, I know orphanages are like Band-Aids.

But Band-Aids are necessary to fulfill – maybe it's not ideal. But would you go further than that to say they're actually perpetuating a system that overall is just really not helping these kids. I don't have a word in your mouth, but... Yeah, no, in most cases in the global South, yes, they are perpetuating or just kind of exacerbating. So, you know, if we think scripturally for a moment, if we're looking at the Old Testament or if we're looking at the New Testament, it's always orphans and widows, orphans and widows. That's a vulnerable family unit. I don't think that was just like a coincidence where it's like, here's the strangers, here's the poor, here's the widows, here's the orphans. And like saying those are four categories, I would say widows and orphans, they're always listed together because it's a vulnerable family, right? It's a

fatherless kid and a single mother, right? So scripturally, you know, the, the desire is for kids to be, you know, with, within the family. And even if that's just with a single parent, you know, that's going to be, that's going to be a better, you know, situation for that kid. Um, and you know, for, for us to basically just say, are we going to allow the kid to just perpetually be outside of parental care? I think we have to wrestle with that even theologically, because, you know, we could read Romans 8 and it's like, God has not given us a spirit of bondage to fear, but a spirit of

adoption, right? Or even kind of Jesus in John 3, 16, it's like being born again into the family, right? Like that's kind of like, these are like the scriptural connotations of what it even means to be a follower of Christ is to kind of be brought into the family. And then when we see kind of this woven throughout all of scripture with widows and orphans together and actually providing them support as a family unit, we really have to kind of think through, are we okay with this, Right. And there are some parallels, you know, even like John 14, like Jesus says, I will not leave you as orphans. So it's kind of like this, this, this understanding that orphanhood is not really

something that we should want to allow to perpetuate. Right. And we don't want to put any kid in a situation where they're going to basically have their orphanhood facilitated through their childhood and then they age out and now they're just an orphan for the rest of their lives. You know, like that's really, that's going to be detrimental even just psychologically for the kid. What about like, you know, you said it, you know, if they have a single parent, so 80 to 90% have at least one parent to go to, but let's take a scenario that probably is not that uncommon where even that single parent, what if that single parent is abusive? And what if the orphanage down the street happens to not be abusive or minimally so?

And what if the single parent is living in extreme poverty? They're abusive. They're going to be malnourished. They're abusive. They're going to be malnourished. There are some one-to-one situations where even staying with the single parent is actually worse for the person than an orphanage. I'm throwing out the scenario as a way of pushing back, trying to represent what I know some people are thinking. What would you say to that? Yeah, I suppose my response would be, do we have to live within that dichotomy? Either you're separated from family in an orphanage or you're being abused by a parent, you know, that isn't really

suited to care for you. My response, having worked within this space for, you know, over a decade now would be just to recognize like, actually there's, that's not, that's not a, that's not a realistic binary, you know? First of all, when we talk about family care settings, most of these environments that we're talking about are collectivist societies. And their notion of what family is is a lot more expansive than what we see here in the U.S., right, with our kind of, you know, real fixation on the nuclear family. fix, a real, real fixation on the nuclear family, um, in the global South, you know, for example, okay. So in Tanzania, um, my child, when my child was born in Tanzanian culture, they were born with multiple mothers and multiple fathers. So I have two brothers. Um, I have an older brother and a younger brother. So I'm Baba Mzazi. That means father parent. My older brother is Baba Kubwa. My younger brother is Baba Mdogo, big father, little father. My wife has two sisters. They're both older. So my kids are born with two Mama Kubwas. Right. So that's just from a linguistic standpoint to kind of show you that this that their view of family is a lot more, is a lot bigger. So even when we say, look, the kid only has, you know,

one parent and the parent, you know, the kid's living with their dad, but he's an alcoholic and he's abusive. It's not a safe situation. We absolutely do not want the kid in that situation. If we're not protecting kids, then we're not doing our jobs, right? But to just say it's either this or that, the reality is you can actually talk with that alcoholic father that's abusive or whatever and say, hey, you know, where's, you know, does your deceased wife, like, where's her family? And they say, oh, they live in this next village. You can go and you can start to talk to people. Oh, okay. And then where's your, you know, where's your sister?

Oh, you know, she lives around the corner. You go and this is called family tracing. sister. Oh, you know, she lives around the corner. You go and this is called family tracing. You go and you find other family members and you kind of do the assessment and you, you assess the kid, you know, what's going to be the right placement for them. Then you assess the family and you basically draw this, you know, almost like a family tree of different places that this kid could get to. Right. And once you, you know, find that right placement, then you start the preparation process for that kid to be, you know be moved from care setting to another care setting. Now, if you exhaust all of that and your only option is for alternative care, alternative care just means alternative to where the like the kid's biological family.

So an orphanage is a form of alternative care. So if you have to go to alternative care, could you go to alternative family care? So could you, like Alicia's done,, could you go to alternative family care? So could you, like Alicia's done, develop like a foster care system, right? Can you get them into an adoptive placement, right? So they actually have permanency as well. You want to kind of go, you want to kind of build out that menu of social services that are going to allow that kid, you know, and this is hard work, right? When we talk about orphanages, we're not like coming after orphanages, like you guys are bad or whatever. Like,

like this was me, like, right. Like I was working at the, at the Christian children's home. Like this was me. Nobody, nobody's, you know, there are corrupt ones, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about like the good people, but it is a rather simplistic solution. Like the kid doesn't have a home, we'll put them in the orphanage. But doing all of this social work and tracing families and finding the right placement and then doing the follow-up and the case management and getting them connected with community service, it's involved and it takes work. But that's what we have to do, right? Because that's what's going to be in the best interest of the child is to do all of that hard work to make sure that they're in an environment that's going to be conducive to them developing and thriving. That makes total sense. I guess

my question is more historical then. If that kind of natural kinship system is just natural to many cultures in the global south. Why didn't that happen? Where did orphanages end up? I guess I'm asking where they come from. If that was the natural way that clans and kin would take care of kids in orphanages or kids that have been orphaned, where did orphanages come from? I keep asking the same question multiple times for some reason. No, no, you're good.

So there are eras here. So I think the first orphanage was coming in like the Roman Empire. I had some name for it. You know, I think you asked Alicia about a book. A good book to read would be Orphan Justice by Johnny Carr. It's a little old, but, um, it's almost 10 years old now. Um, we need more books kind of in our sector to be honest, but that would be a good one I would recommend. Um, and he kind of, he kind of talks a little bit about, um, you know,

kind of like the older Genesis around orphanages, um, right now, kind of in this current, because, because even like you probably familiar with like George Mueller and like he set up all the orphan homes in the UK and all of that. So if we kind of just say, well, what's the current, what's the modern piece around why these orphanages are so pervasive? It is a post-colonial type of construct. So it was very common within colonial times to basically separate families, right? And of course, we have the colonial piece that's kind of the cousin of colonialism is like the transatlantic and the trans Indian, you know, slave trade. So it was this separation of families, right? You even see it with, you know, the whole what was that whole thing in Canada with like the burial and like like getting kids into the boarding schools, like the mass graves and stuff in Canada, like like separating kids, you know, from their families, putting them in some sort of institutional setting.

That's a very colonial type of model. Very Western, very not global South. So very Western. I keep going. I think I'm tracing your thought here now. Right. So, so that's, that's kind of where, how we got to this modern situation, right? So there is that colonial piece and you see it a lot in sub-Saharan Africa. You see it in India, you see it in, you know, other places where there was colonial rule. Um, so we input, just to be clear, we, we developed it in, you know, other places where there was colonial rule. So we input, just to be clear, we developed it in the West and imported it to the South. Yeah, exported it.

Yeah, exported it. Yeah. Which is interesting now, if you think about it, because we don't have these large scale orphanages here in the US, and yet we're so intent on perpetuating them in other places, even though in our own context, we said, actually, this isn't a good way to care for a kid that's gone through trauma. Right. And yet we're, you know, still eager to export it. Now, the, the thing that the apparatus is kind of held up on now is a lot of tourism, to be honest. So to give you an example, I mentioned, um, Moshi, which you've been through before. My understanding is, uh,

Moshi is, uh, right next to Kilimanjaro. And if I say Kilimanjaro, people think, oh, you know, big mountain in Tanzania. Um, so obviously we're going to get a lot of tourism. We're about a day's drive from Serengeti. So people want to go out, they want to go to the Serengeti for a safari. They want to go climb Kilimanjaro. And whenever they come to this type of area, they are going to want to visit orphans because they heard about the AIDS epidemic and they heard about, you know, this is this is what true religion is, you know, if they're on a short term missions trip or whatever. And oh, yeah, we're also going to go to on safari while we're there or whatever. while we're there or whatever. So people have that kind of mindset. Now, those interactions are not benign and they also are not neutral when it comes to finances. So what I mean by that is if you go into an orphanage in Tanzania or Haiti or wherever and you see, oh my goodness, these kids, they need help. You might be inclined, especially if you have a team of like short-term missionaries that are going to go in there and

they're going to say like, oh my gosh, we have to do something. Let's, let's take up an offering. Right. And now, you know, after a two hour, you know, visit on a Saturday, we're dropping five, six, 700, you know, a thousand dollars, whatever. And so just take care of the kids, just take care of the kids, you know, kind of thing. Well, in some of these, you know, situations where the average person makes two or $3 a day. And in some cases, that's actually a living wage. I'm not like saying like, that's okay. But like, you know, just kind of think like an honest day's work might get you a few bucks, right? In some of these contexts. Well, if you can actually recruit a bunch of kids from, you know, from the village, right? In some of these contexts. Well, if you can actually recruit a bunch of kids from, uh, you know, from the village, right. And a lot of these kids are going from

rural to urban settings. If you can get a lot of these kids, you know, even just for the weekend, you know, which happens sometimes you can actually exploit, you know, their childhood, um, and make a pretty nice killing. So, you know, if the, if a $500 donation comes in, maybe four 98, you know, goes to the, goes to the director of the orphanage and, you know, maybe a couple bucks goes to buying the kids some rice or something like, like those, those situations are real. Um, and they are intrinsic to high tourism areas. So in Kilimanjaro, where I was, um, just within was, just within the urban district, there were 17 orphanages. Only five of them were actually registered. You go out to the

adjoining rural district, and you're going to get more orphanages. You go over to Arusha, which is about an hour and a half away, and also a big city, you're going to get even more orphanages. These high tourism areas, you know, attract orphanages, attract kids going into those orphanages. It's kind of like, um, what was that field of dreams? If you build it, they will come. People are building these orphanages so that they can just fill them with kids, not kids that actually need any type of alternative care, but just that's what they do. You go to other areas of Tanzania that have the same level of poverty, have the same level of HIV AIDS, and you won't find any orphanages because there's no monetary incentive for people to establish orphanages there. And it's one of those things where, yeah, the money kind of dictates the service that's provided.

So you're saying in places where there's little to no tourism, there are very few orphanages? Right. And you think about that old adage, which came from Africa, it takes a village to raise a child. You talk about traditional forms of caring for children. That was more common. So there's kind of like this confluence of all of these different issues that are coming into play. So you have the monetary piece and the volunteerism piece. You also have people that are leaving the village. So as you're probably aware, I don't know if this is an eschatological thing or what, but people are moving if a kid was, you know, did happen to be orphaned or whatever, they would it was very natural for the village to raise them like that. And then the kid was in family. The kid was in community. And that was a much more sustainable.

That was a much more ethical model. And yet, because we exported or imported whatever, we brought these orphanages into these environments. It basically created a demand. And especially when we infuse that with money, now it's kind of like all bets are off. We're going to get a lot of kids in here. You mentioned earlier a multi-billion dollar industry. I've got so many questions about that. Because let's just say, because I mean, okay, a single parent household or even no parent, a double orphan. So what if you go down the line to people that could care for them and they already have four or five kids and there's a big poverty issue um the orphan the orphanage is or an orphanage has money has has funds they can really care for this kid what if the village maybe could take it in but it would be a really pretty impoverished environment um i guess the i don't even i mean it's so it should be so obvious. It's like, well, wait a minute. What if we kind of redirected some of the billions of dollars toward helping the village have the money to fund?

I mean, I don't want to answer your question. No, that would be much preferred for sure. Yeah, it is. And it is a multi. And I would just say, you know, poverty is a bad guy. I would argue, though, that poverty are not growing up in orphanages, but they might be growing up poor. You know what I mean? So it's not like we're just every every kid that's poor goes in there. So it's always poverty plus something else.

So poverty plus family breakdown, poverty plus abuse, poverty plus, you know, death of a parent, poverty, you know, that's kind of more the situation. So poverty is absolutely a bad guy, though, and it exacerbates all these other vulnerabilities and risk factors that a kid might be going through. But for sure, like redirecting funds. So there was a study that was done last year with Barna Group. funds. So there was a study that was done last year with Barna Group. I can't remember if Alicia mentioned it or not, but $2.5 billion annually from Christians towards residential facilities annually. That's more than like Compassion and World Vision combined, right? So this is a huge industry and it's being done by churches and little mom and pop nonprofits that you've never heard of, you know? And yet it's kind of all adding up to an aggregate of about $2.5 billion.

And to me, I think that's conservative because I don't think that they're really counting the money that's being given on like these short-term trips that tend to be quite lucrative for the orphanage directors. So it's, yeah, it is a multibillion. And for sure, if we could redirect that towards supporting family-based care, ethical orphan care, supporting community development, economic development, all of those things are actually going to help families, communities, and kids. I mean, it's such a multibillion-dollar industry. Loads of churches support orphanages. Oh, yeah.

Would you say it's just sheer ignorance? Like everything we're talking about, they're like, oh, my God. Like if all these churches listening, which quite a few probably are. Sure. Do you think like they're like, oh, my gosh, never thought about that. I need to really rethink it. Or are they aware of the problems and they just ignore it is it a both and um and and i would like there's another question up i mean maybe i'll let you answer that one but

if could you step inside the mind of the best pro orphanage argument like somebody listening who is informed who knows and and like what would they say like if they're on the show what would they say well brian no you're you're missing, you're missing this. You're Brandon. That's okay. Brandon. I'm so sorry. Keep calling you. I did at the beginning too. I was going to acknowledge.

I don't know why I call you. Your name. Brandon's right in front of my face right here. Okay. The first question. Remind me what the first question was. Why are so many, is it just pure ignorant?

Ignorant. I don't say that in a demeaning way, but just, they just haven't thought about everything you're saying or is it more intentional? They have thought about it and they're just going against it. I think most, most people that are supporting, it's not intentional whatsoever. It's just all that they've known. And because this, uh, mindset has been so perpetuated, um, they, uh, they just don't know any better, you know, like if you were to, you know, I don't know if I were to talk to you a few years ago and just say, Hey, what's your opinion of orphanages run by Christians, you know, in sub-Saharan Africa, you'd probably be like, Oh yeah, that's great. You know, they're helping kids, right? That would

just be your, your default, right? And, and that's basically a lot of people just kind of working on the default, not really thinking critically about what it is that kids need, you know, or not even reflecting on maybe, you know, for parents like you and me, would we be content, you know, with our kid growing up at an orphanage if, you know, heaven forbid, you know, something happened to you and your wife or me and my wife, like, would we be content or would we just think like, oh, for sure they would go to their aunt, you know, or like, would we be content or would we just think like, oh, for sure they would go to their aunt, you know, or like, oh, for sure they would, you know, but for whatever reason, there's like this, I don't know if it's a cultural thing or just because of how we've been enculturated in the West to kind of have this rosy view of orphanages.

It's just the default. It's not intentional. I guess I get that. Like if you were going to ask me 10 years ago, maybe five years ago, that probably would be my answer. But if I was in the church staff member in charge of our orphan care program, I might Google around a little. Or if I started a nonprofit, I would want to know, what does it take to be taken care of? Like, am I too optimistic that people actually do a little bit of research? Or if they did do some research, like, what's the best way to? Like, if I was a mechanic, it's one thing to ask me about a car. I'm like, I don't know.

But if I was like, I'm going to start working on cars. Like, I would Google how to change. You know, like, I would have some knowledge base and if somebody does try to do some research are they still not going to come across alternative orphan care is it's kind of buried on the sidelines of the of the conversation sure yeah and and i i don't want to be overly cynical preston i i would assume that you're a little bit of an anomaly i mean not not not everybody would actually do the research you know know, that it would require. And to be honest, I think if you just typed in like something like orphan care, uh, you're going to get a lot pro orphanage stuff. Then you're going to get,

you know, stuff that says, Hey, these orphans, you know, have families or should be in families or what have you. So, um, yeah, I don't, I'm going to do it right here. Keep, keep going. I'm just, I'm going to Google that. Yeah. So, you know, I think they hear a plea, you know, in their church or they have some friend that went to an orphanage on a missions trip. And like that's those are not necessary, even though it's like, hey, we raised all this money and we went to such and such country. That's not they're not necessarily, you know, they're not thinking critically. necessarily, you know, uh, they're not thinking critically. Um, they're just kind of going because it's exciting or because, you know, and, and this is a part of that whole, when helping hurts umbrella, you know, where it's just kind of like, are we just doing this to do this? Or are we actually thinking critically about what's going to actually help and empower, you know, these,

these, uh, you know, the people that we're going to, you know, should we even go? People don't normally ask those questions. I think, I think they might be a little more, and again, this is a cynical approach, so I acknowledge that, but I think people are a little more, um, yeah, just, they're just not thinking along those lines. So what was your second question, dude? Sorry. I, I, I, I did Google it, orphan care, and I got a bunch of ads for supporting orphans. There you go. I got a Gospel Coalition article here. I'm trying to figure out 21 ways to get involved in orphan care.

I'm trying to see. They talk about adoption. Well, NC, there you go. So you're getting hit up for child sponsorships. They're talking about adoption, which most of these kids don't need to be adopted. So, I mean, you know, this is very, obviously, very baseline. You know, you and I have graduated because we know that this is very baseline. Support organizations like 127 Worldwide.

I don't know what that is. 127, that's James 127. I know that. Yeah, okay, yeah um there are more than probably huh yeah i would have i'm not gonna take time to this but um that's interesting okay yeah my second question my second question is what is um can you oh a pro orphanage yeah like play devil's advocate with yourself somebody who is, who is aware of whatever and might be really upset that we haven't talked about this or that or whatever in favor of orphanages. Yeah, I think the pro-orphanage would probably be – actually, I would say that you've already kind of played it a bit. They would talk about the issues within families. They would talk about, oh, there's abuse in the home or there's addiction in the home or, you know, there's all of those things. The home is not a safe environment,

you know? Um, I think that that would, and therefore we need to protect these kids by having, you know, this residential facility, you know, and hopefully that same person would, you know, approach it from a safeguarding standpoint where if the kids are going into that home, they themselves then are kind of addressing some of the potential gaps in care, you know, from a protection standpoint, again, there's, you know, it's hard to not take off my hat because I was that person. Right. But, um, you know, again, I would just say I wasn't thinking critically even when I was at working at an orphanage and because I've kind of, uh, engaged with people that are starting orphanages. Um, I've been sometimes successful,

sometimes unsuccessful in kind of helping them think, Hey, what are some other ways that we can engage? But people that are, that are already there and already kind of dead set on starting it, like that's just what they're going to do, you know, and they don't necessarily have this like big argument as far as why. Um, but yeah, I think the best arguments are around child protection, um, and lack of community mechanisms, which is, which is not inaccurate. Like there are pretty porous systems in a lot of these countries that kind of allow for kids to be abused. Um, to me though, that doesn't mean therefore we need to remove the kids from the community. That means we actually need to address those porous systems that are allowing kids to be

abused or neglected. So the most thoughtful argument would say, yes, of course, orphanages aren't ideal, but they're better than the realistic alternatives. And you would say, if you really go deep in exploring realistic alternatives, you can find a better way in most cases. Yeah. And I think ultimately, as Christians, again, we have to think through when we read something like Psalm 68 that said, God sets the lonely in families. Do we actually believe that? God can set the lonely in families. Because kids that are without parents, that must be such a lonely experience, right? We've adopted, my son grew up the first eight years of his life in a children's home and it's a very lonely experience. I just remember seeing him and just thinking like, wow, this kid's lonely, you know, and like I've seen that with every orphan living in an orphanage that I've interacted with, which is quite a few at this point.

Do we really believe that God would set them in families? And are we content if they're not in families? So I would just really kind of think along those lines as well. You know, is it possible? Yes, it is possible. Is it possible for orphanages to transform into something else? Yes. You know, that's feasible. And even after your conversation with Alicia, it was like an orphanage in Liberia that reached out to to her and then she got them connected with us and people are starting to take the, yeah, people are

starting to take these steps. Yeah. It's cool. Right. Yeah. So shout out to them in Liberia. Um, but, uh, you know, this is, this is, this is feasible, you know, and there's, there's, there can be a step-by-step process. And even like, man, they talked with the, with the local director. This was so indicative. Uh, they said, you know, how many of these kids do you think are going to need to be adopted if we get them into family? And she said, zero, she knows where all of these families are, you know, kind of thing. And this was like, literally I had this meeting like last week and it was all started with Alicia being on here and then her connecting them with us. So, um,

anyways, yeah. So it's, it's totally possible. And we have to believe that God wants kids and families, man. Like we have to, and, and, and we just can't be content, you know, we, we can get into all the complexities and we should partner with orphanages. We should partner with people that are family-based operators. We have to get the church better involved. We have to get the church thinking critically, you know, not just being like, well, it was really, I had this really emotional thing that came up when I held the orphan in Guatemala or whatever. Like we can't just be like, oh, I get my emotions are so tied up in here and therefore, you know, I'm just going to do this. We have to think critically

and think what we would want for our own kids and really align ourselves with the fact that God sets the lonely in families. He doesn't set them in orphanages. He doesn't put them out on the streets. Do you think, I would just be a point blank question, that churches, like if somebody is listening and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm convinced, or at least I need to really think through this, would you say that churches that are funding orphanages should not do that? Like if somebody is listening and they're in charge of the purse strings,

what should they do now? Like a slow trickle off or reallocate those resources towards something like, I mean, you're not going to, I'll say it. I mean, something like your ministry or somebody who is doing an alternative better way or which just end of funding right away. Like, cause I do. I, now when I hear churches supported, it does like, I get a little uncomfortable, like, Oh.

So, so, and I would just say at 1 million home, one of our programs is actually working with churches to answer those questions. And it's not just like a simple, like, Oh, just cut it off. Like no big deal. Like, you know, because there's relationship there. And hopefully there's an opportunity. You know, the first thing that we say is don't cut off your funds, but actually talk with them. And it could be a simple question like, hey, are you guys providing any family-based services? Like, when you bring a kid in, like, what's your intake process?

And do you create, you know, a pathway for that kid to reenter the community and family? You know, some of those conversations are really valuable, especially when it's a donor. And there have been situations, bro, I've talked with pastors where it's like, we were supporting an orphanage in Haiti and we found out that they were trafficking kids. Like, you know, like it's, there's some gnarly stuff out there. And for those types of situations, like, yeah, for sure. You want to stop funding them, you know? But if it's an orphanage that was started in good faith and they want the best for the kids and you guys have a relationship,

I would just say, use this conversation to kind of, you know, take a step forward and say, hey, what can we do to help these kids get in family? Like, we really are thinking like God wants kids in family. Like, what can we do? You know, what's possible? And if the orphanage is receptive, then for sure, that's somebody we want to keep partnering with, right? And if they're not receptive and you have these conversations over and over and they're just like, no, this is our model. This is what we do.

We're content with kids, you know, spending their childhood here. Then, yeah, maybe you do want to rethink that. And there's so many great organizations. And I would say you don't even have to give to One Million Home. You know, there's a lot of organizations from our community of practice that are autonomous. And you can find them literally on our page. And people can go and just give. We want to fund foster care in the Congo.

Or we want to support kids with disability in Uganda. You don't even have to give to us. But we'll show you some organizations you can give to. And you can just access them from our own website. So there's quite a few. It's not just you and Alicia and a few others. There's a lot of people doing this. We're a ragtag Gideon's army, dude. So that's really cool. So you actually, my question, like that's what you guys,

that's part of what you do. You help churches to transition. I was just meeting with the church last night, dude. I was just meeting with the church last night. Yeah. That's one of the things that we do. And, and, and people can reach out to us. It's just hello at one. That's the number 1 million home. If you guys have a church, reach out to us. We would love to kind of talk through and provide some support and consultation to, to start to unpick that because it is big, it is big, but you know, and we actually, we we've talked with pastors as well, even on recorded, you know, and we actually, we've talked with pastors as well, even on recorded, you know, what does this look like for you? You were supporting this orphanage

in Kenya, but you learn better. Like, what do you do? You know, we've, um, you know, so, so we have, uh, mentor examples as well, you know, of what that can look like that, that, that can be helpful and informed. That's awesome. Cause it's one thing to say, oh, church, you shouldn't be doing this anymore. It's like, all right, I'm a volunteer. I'm on the orphan committee. We meet four times a year, and I work 60 hours a week, and my wife's going to lead me. And what do I do?

I need to read a book. How do I transition this? And the head elder is the main supporter of the orphanage, and his wife founded it. And that conversation is not going to go well when I say, I don't know. There's a lot of real practical things that could cause a lot of anxiety. I just stressed myself out by painting that scenario. But that's so awesome that you come alongside and say, hey, we will help you transition this well.

That's awesome. And that's what we do. As a social venture, we help orphanages transition and we help churches transition. Like that's, that's our main thing. We have this big direct services piece that's working in Kenya. And then we have joint ventures and other places like Sierra Leone, Haiti, Uganda, um, Lesotho. Um, but then we have this whole church piece, you know, that's fledgling, but it's going,

you know, we're, we're working with churches to transition as well. Because the financial piece, we cannot understate. I'm a big 90s hip-hop guy. Wu-Tang Clan cash rules everything around me. We have to work that whole paradigm. If we're not addressing the cash, this thing is just going to keep going and going and going. Addressing the fact that as long as billions and billions of dollars keep getting poured in, it's going to keep going. There's not going to be any reform. There's not going to be any

meaningful reform if we just keep funding bad alternatives. Cause that's the thing. If you have a child, I've worked in child welfare in California as well. We would get money to provide services that were entitled. That came from like taxpayer money that went to the government. Then we win the contract. And that's how these things get funded, right? That's our foster care, mental health services, all of that. That's the financial piece, right? Those types of infrastructure are not present in the global South. So what are they? They're only relying on private dollars. but if the private

dollars are coming in and they're saying, this is the type of service that we want provided, we want to establish an orphanage, then that's the service that's going to be provided. Whether or not that's actually, you know, according to like an assessment of the community, what's actually needed, that's just what's going to get provided. And if it's provided, that's what's going to get used. So because the, the, the government of, you know, fill in the blank country in Africa is not going to, is, is typically not going to be like, Hey, here's X amount of dollars for you to provide, you know, a free daycare, right. To help a vulnerable mother, right. Which would be an awesome service, you know, for a vulnerable mother and her fatherless child, you know? But the government's not doing that. They got like they do with, you know, Head a vulnerable mother and her fatherless child, you know, um, but the government's not doing that.

They go like they do with, you know, headstart or like some of these programs we have here in the U S so because the government's not providing it and then the government's not really doing, and they don't have enough capacity to properly regulate the child. You know, a lot of these child welfare actors, it's in some of these countries, it's just like the wild, wild West. That's why you get this proliferation of orphanages and high tourism areas that are largely unregulated. They're totally raised on private dollars. So if we don't actually start addressing the fact that

Christians and churches are feeding into this system financially, then we're not going to move the needle in a lot of these countries because the government just isn't it can't stand up to to the market you know and to the economy around golly um we don't have do you have a few more minutes i really i would love your thoughts on short-term trip uh mission trips because it's it it's it's related it's similar quite i mean it's different but it's a lot of similarity here. And this is my inroad. I think it was, well, it was reading When Helping Hurts and then rethinking short-term mission trips. I was on the, I was years ago when I was on staff at Cornerstone Church where Francis was at, they tasked me to kind of like revamp their short-term mission policy or whatever.

And I'd already had some questions like, you know, talking to career missionaries and, um, you know, I feel like it was really frequent with the short-term trips kind of hindered their long-term ministry in so many ways. Like, um, and some of the cynicism and frustration with, with, um, And some of the cynicism and frustration with – I had one career missionary in India tell me. He literally got an email from a church, like his home church or something saying, hey, we're going to send a short-term trip. And we are going to, I think, build a bridge.

He was like, we don't need that. And I'm busy. And I, you know, stressful that is like, I was like, really? They just said we are going to do. So that's might be a more extreme. Anyway, my question is, yeah, we'd love some maybe big picture pros and cons with short term trips and maybe some blind spots that people who have never even thought about kind of the possible negative effects of short-term trips. We're just right. And I would, I would just say that that example you gave from India and with your friend, like that's not far fetched at all. Like that's not,

yeah, I don't, I don't think that's like an anomaly necessarily. Yeah. So I was a short-term missionary. Um, I did trips to like Poland and then, you know, living in Southern California, of course, you're going to cross the border and build a home every now and then. And I did an internship in Tanzania before I moved there. And then once I was actually a long term missionary. Right. So it's not weeks and months, it's years. I was tasked with facilitating some short term missions. Some of them are better than others.

A lot of it comes down to the attitude that they bring. So we had teams that came through where the people were really kind of self-absorbed and, um, it was really about them. And that's just, it's a complete waste of time. It's a waste of money. It's just detrimental. Like, um, you know, we had two teams from the same university and they were like night and day just based on attitude, you know, to be honest. So going into it with the right mindset is kind of like baseline. Um, and then, you know, you mentioned when helping hurts, that's a great place to start. And I think pretty sure they also have, um, they also have, uh, when helping hurts in short-term missions, like it's like one of their accompanying books, which is really good. There's also resources on short-term missions with vulnerable children.

The one thing that I would say, you know, so the best form of short-term missions that we brought out and hosted and actually even recruited for a little bit was having people come out as interns. So I would much rather have, and they could be young people. They often are, but I would much rather have, you know, two or three interns for two months, you know, than a team of 20 people that come out for two weeks. Like every single time I'd rather have the interns. It's not really about like making money and all of that. Although people like missions, organizations do bring in income, you know, through short-term missions, which I think they should. They're basically providing a service to this team that's coming in. I keep talking about money, Preston.

I don't know. But it's a reality. But I would much prefer interns. And like you said, you've got to listen to the missionary. And even beyond the missionary, you have to listen to the local leaders. And hopefully you're partnering with missionaries that are already listening to the missionary and you got to, and even beyond the missionary, like you have to listen to the local leaders and hopefully you're partnering with, with missionaries that are already listening to the local leaders. There's a lot of things that just don't serve, you know, and you get that within when helping hurt. You know, there's a lot of things where it's just, yeah, we're going to paint this wall again.

And we're going to, you know, we're going to go to the orphanage. Like don't go to orphanages. You know, if I could give one, you know, short term missions advice, don't go to orphanages. These kids have become separated from their, from their parents, right? Um, a kid forms attachment, um, like basically in utero forward, right? Um, by being connected with their mother physically and the nursing. And once that has been severed, um, the kid is very, um, likely to develop an attachment disorder. And when that has been severed, the kid is very likely to develop an attachment disorder. And when you get short-term missionary volunteers that come in and then leave and then come in and then leave, it exacerbates those attachment disorders. Some people will say that starts the attachment disorder.

The attachment disorder actually starts because of the separation. It's because of the separation, but it's exacerbated when you send in the, you know, oh, we have, you know, the church of whatever in such and such place. And they're visiting our orphanage today and they're going to come in and you're actually encouraged to like, hey, I pick up the kids, give them a hug, you know, all of this, which is just like really poor conditioning for a kid. Like, I mean, I don't want to share too much of my son's experience, but like this was something we had to walk with him through because when he was in the orphanage, he was encouraged to just run up to strangers and hug them. And that's not safe.

That's not safe behavior. And yet that's exactly what we've conditioned these kids in orphanages to do anytime there's short term missionaries that come through. Like, yeah, go, you know, throw them up in the air, hug them, kiss them, cuddle with them. Like the kids need love, you know, that kind of of whole thing and it's just like they don't need love from strangers like they need love from like a committed parent or you know guardian that that's going to be there for them day in and day out and i saw it on the kids faces like when they get that like that you know dopamine adrenaline whatever like, the visitors are here. Let's go play soccer. Let's go jump on them. Let's go do all this. And then they leave and the kids are like

downcast. They're bummed out. You know, it's just like, man, what a turbulent childhood. So on the short term piece, that would be one thing I would encourage people to do. Even if you're like supporting an orphanage, like we go back to that whole conversation we're having a moment ago, um, find other ways, like feed into the staff or, you know, do something else, but start by actually listening to the missionaries and the local leaders that you're connecting with. Because for sure, a lot of harm can be done on short-term mission strips. The big one for me that was eye-opening was building projects. I remember doing a lot of research in like sociological journals

that measured the local economic impact of a bunch of people from the wealthy West coming in with power tools and free labor. Like when you go paint a building, we have to at least ask, what effect does that have on the painting industry in that local community? Especially if it's a poor area where painters are really looking for work and they see a bunch of free

labor come in and paint a building that they could have gotten paid to paint right does that have a does your free labor which again i'll say it one more time 100 well intended hearts are hearts are gold but we have to at least ask a question. What does this have? Is it a positive effect on the economics of the community? Or could it be stealing work away from somebody? We have to at least ask that question. And I'm not saying it's clear-cut every time.

Maybe, I don't know, maybe the ministry you're going to help can't afford to pay a local painter. So, I mean, but even that, I don't know, like I, I would. Yeah. But if you think even in that, even in that situation, you think through it like, okay, so we're going to send 10 people and they're each going to have to raise at least $3,000. So what is that? That's $30,000.

Like, Hey, would you, and I think actually Brian talks about this in his book, but it's like, would you rather have this money or would you rather send people and we can come paint your, you know, it's just kind of like, that's, that's a no brainer, you know, like we can watch it for 30 grand or we can bring a bunch of people in. Right. I mean, it's, it's kind of crazy. And, and it's not even like, Oh, we're bringing in skilled painters or people that are going to build the fence or whatever. The local people actually know a lot more. Like when we were at the orphanage, um, I remember on our short-term trip before I worked there,

they were like, Oh, we're going to do these projects around the orphanage. And they were like pouring cement, but they, but the short term, my team like spent so much money pouring cement when they're like, you know, like here, like we mix it with sand to make it go longer. Like you guys just wasted a lot of money cause you weren't doing it the local way, you know, like, and it's just kind of like, Oh, okay. Like, and then there was a response. Oh, I had no idea. Well, of course you had no idea.

Like you're an American, you know, and you're 20 years old. And again, like I'm probably not being as gracious as you, but it's like, like the local, the local Mason, you know, the local painter, the local builder, like they know how to actually do those projects and they're going to do it for a fraction of the cost. And you're going to feed their whole family, you know, for the next month by commissioning them, you know? So, um, and they're going to do it more efficiently and more cost-effective than you too too so yeah yeah definitely don't go and do billing trips are you an office fan by any chance of course dude yeah office for sure do you remember the episode when michael and andy were on the bus of the short-term trip there was i don't know it

was like mid maybe season five or something oh yes yes yes yes it was there at the church and then they all swept up in the moment there's the youth groups going to drive to mexico and they started getting like cold feet like halfway out of town or whatever and they're like what are we gonna do and and and uh michael's like we're gonna go build build a house or something and he said we don't know how to we don't know how come we're gonna do it he's like well they don't know how to build houses on there he's like said we don't know how to we don't know how come we're gonna do it he's like well they don't know how to build houses on there he's like well we don't know how to build and then he's like well katie knows how or something like the leader of the youth group right right right it's just so funny because you like you see them get so wrapped up

in the fervor right and like that's just it's it's just like this is pure adrenaline this is pure emotion and like not like like whenever we're activating those parts of the brain, we're turning off our thinking brains. Yeah. I do think that – like you, I've been on several short-term trips and my kids are going on one and I think a good one. Like the youth leader is very knowledgeable. He has them do a lot of reading ahead of time. I think they read chapter seven or whatever when helping her. He has them do a lot of reading ahead of time. I think they read chapter seven or whatever when helping her.

They have another book that kind of says here's good and bad ways to do this. And I forget exactly. Sounds like I'd say it's a more thoughtful trip. So would you agree? Unlike maybe orphanages are like, yeah, we should work to and or like we should but we're we're short-term trips there there are good forms and and and less like maybe more bad forms of trips yeah i i think yeah because some people want to say categorically like all short-term trips are always should never happen right um yeah and i wouldn't say that i mean we were talking about francis we basically took

francis chan on a short-term trip to ken, you know, and, and, and Kevin and their whole team. And, um, I think that was really valuable because it was about, Hey, let's connect with, you know, people that left orphanages, let's interact with some organizations that are doing good work. Like, you know, and in that regard, like it's more about education. It's more about advocacy. It's more about like partnering, like, and more about like getting behind local leaders, like those types of things and those types of trips should happen. We do have to kind of think through the privilege piece. You know, there's a reason why we drop off, you know, 15 Californians in Kenya and not 15 Kenyans in California, you know, and to think like we, you know, that there's that, that there

aren't other implications, you know, because of that privilege. You know, it's kind of interesting. Like we have a Kenyan that goes to our church. And I think he brings so much just by being here in Washington state, you know, that that I would love, you know, to have more of that cross-cultural interchange, but not where we're going and being like, hey, we're here. You know, check us out. Like, we're going to help you hey we're here you know check us out like We're gonna help you out even in a you know so i think we kind of probably should think critically As far as just that cross-cultural piece and what could we do like

Would it be better to like actually bring the local leader here because we actually have some deficiencies in our church You know here in the states like what if we bring out like, man, they could totally light us on fire and like, we'll be, you know, like, so, so I think we should actually kind of be thinking critically about that cross-cultural piece and how we actually do partnership, you know, with, with leaders and ministries in the global South. Um, but yeah, for sure, there are good ways to go about it. We, you know, that in and of itself is a really big industry that isn't like captured within the 2.5 billion that I mentioned earlier. Um, so I think if we could actually harness that you could do a lot of good with it, you know? Um, but it's going to take, again, it's going to take intentionality and it's going to take, um, you know, it's going to take, uh, you know, people getting into the weeds

and allowing it to be complex and not just being like, well, we're just going to go. And, you know, I took two weeks off for this Christian vacation kind of thing. I mean, just asking simple questions of does this trip help or hinder the long-term ministry of the locals on the ground who, when we go home, they're the ones that are going to be there. Even things like a short-term trip coming in, maybe they're not doing a building project, but they're doing a big event, really high quality,

and whatever that might look like. The local missionary or the local indigenous pastor leader that maybe doesn't have the resources that we're bringing in, could it hinder his long-term effect and respect from the local community when like, he doesn't have PowerPoint, he doesn't have a big drama show, he doesn't have all these white kids bringing in, you know, just Western, you know, enthusiasm or whatever, like, yeah, I don't know. Just asking those, I'm not, again, I'm not saying there's clear answers, like, no, that

will always hinder, but like just asking the hard question, will this help or hinder long-term ministry? And a lot of people that live in honor-shame cultures, it's going to be hard for them to give you an honest answer, right? If you say, we're going to come in, it's really shameful for them and unhospitable, really, to say like, well, actually, that's not going to help my – They're like, okay, yeah, sure, and everything's going to be up front. Sure. Yeah, that's true. Very hospitable – they're like, okay, yeah, sure, and everything is going to be up front. Sure. Yeah, that's true. Very hospitable and thank you for coming and everybody smiles. We have to take that into consideration too.

Is it David Livermore's Scene with Eyes Wide Open was a book I read. That was years ago. I don't know that one. Scene with – or short-term – I don't know. David Livermore, I think, is the author. You can Google it. I thought it know that one. Scene with, or short-term mission. David Livermore, I think, is the author. You can Google it. I thought it was really helpful. Anyway, I cut you off.

You were going to. No, I just think that what you were mentioning there, are we willing to not be in charge? Right? If we're talking about kind of, because it's like we had the first missionaries to go into these places were like aligned with colonial, you know, powers that like exploited, you know, and it's like, are we willing to go into these countries and be like, I'm not in charge, you know, like, and if the pastor who, who is like in these places that are like extremely hospitable, um, if he, like, do we have the rapport with him where he could just tell us honestly, you know, like, you know, this is what actually would help. This is what actually would serve.

Um, you know, and if we don't have that rapport and if we're not willing to not be in charge of our short-term mission, then we have no business going. We have no business going. We wouldn't want somebody just to come into our house in our neighborhood and be like, Hey, I'm going to do this program. And we're like, this is weird. Like this doesn't, you know, like we wouldn't want that. Why, why would we assume that they do? So yes, there's a place for it, but you have to start with listening and you have to be willing to not be in charge. And you have to actually have an understanding of what's actually needed and what are culturally appropriate ways to get something done. And also just kind of lay down even the notion of getting something done, you know, like just, just go and learn, just go and build relationship. And, and, you know, who knows

what God could do in that. And also, you know, maybe bring them back this way. Who knows? Yeah, that's good. Well, uh, Bryson, thanks so much. Brandon, thanks so much for coming on Theology and Raw. I've really been looking forward to this one ever since I talked to Alicia. I've got friends, too, who are so excited that I'm having these conversations because they've been thinking about this for years and are excited to have other people start to maybe rethink a better paradigm. So thanks so much for the work you're doing.

One Million Home website is what? I'll have it. One Million Home. Yeah, it's the number one million home dot com. Yeah. So you can come check us out. You know, we're not here to promote anything other than kids getting into family, you know, and there are people.

Alicia is not the only one. You know, we're not the only ones. We actually have a whole community of those types of organizations that are just like, man, let's get kids into family. And we have people that we partner with to transition orphanages into those types of organizations. So, um, so that's, that's what it's all about, man. So yeah, definitely check us out. Um, yeah. Cool. Thanks so much, man. Great. Great talking to you.