I was listening to a missionary from the Philippines talk about the differences in ministry between that culture and the American worldview. He described how, when people come over on missions trips, they usually have two points of emphasis: projects and performance. They want to know what we can do to help these people physically, or what kind of program we can put on to help people know Jesus.

Then he said something like this, “In most of the places where I serve, they are only interested in knowing you. The way they see it, they have all the time in the world to do that thing, but you might only be there once in your life, and they want to know you.”

As an American writing this, I must admit that it is true for me. I want to get things done. But the call of Jesus is to value people and relationships as we do his work. We are to do his work, and we must never lose sight of the fact that we are doing it as brothers and sisters in Christ. And if a choice must be made, we must always choose people over projects.