Release your people to use their skills to serve others

Here is a email I sent to a missions leader to help her with concerns about missions trips.
"Dear C _____,
You raised important concerns about short term mission experiences that focus on work projects. Yes, the danger exists that these projects take jobs from locals. I have often felt the same way.
Here are some "arguments" to consider why short term mission experiences that include a work component can be a win-win:
1. Work trips are effective when you partner with local builders to accomplish a project. This way, local workers are not left out nor do they lose out financially. This is a key goal of OMS work trips.
2. When you involve locals, you also create opportunities to build deep relationships with them and find ways to share Christ. OMS trips include opportunities for prayer and devotionals that are tied to faith sharing. In some cases local workers have the opportunity to hear the gospel that they would otherwise not have. And, trip participants receive the opportunity to build deep relationships with locals and share Christ and encourage them. Your national partners have new relationships to follow-up and opportunities disciple people after the work team departs. Work teams return to their home context with a greater motivation to share Christ with family and friends.
3. In some cases, a ministry can't afford to hire and work solely with locals. Having the occasional work team visit and assist a project becomes a real momentum builder for finishing a project.
4. Finally, consider that most economies, especially the US, are globally connected on multiple levels. Many of the products or merchandise I purchase here have been made in another country. Perhaps some or much of that money I paid goes to another part of the world, thus causing my local or national economy to lose out. Despite this, I still buy things made somewhere else. Does this one make sense and hold weight in this discussion?
There is so much anecdotal evidence to support work trips as one type of trip a church uses in its broader short term mission trip strategy. I was really encouraged to hear you say you could easily mobilize a work team trip at ______. If we build in the above guardrails, we could stand back and watch some really awesome things happen with the ______ church family. Go for it.
