WWJD About Poverty

One of the more recent criticisms of North American Christianity, or at least the right wing version of it, has been that it has ignored many causes (justice, poverty) in favor of the pet causes (anti-gay, anti-abortion). While I agree that there is a level of truth to the accusation of imbalance I also get frustrated with what is perceived as the right way to help the poor.

The economic platforms of both the democratic and republican parties have deep histories that go far beyond our own country. Both have proven to successful at reducing poverty at various times in the past. (Both have had failures too.) Believe it or not there are some who favor republican policy not because they are rich and want to get richer but because they truly do believe that it will reduce poverty in the long run and it is therefore the kindest thing to do.

My main point of this post, however, is not to argue which is best but to point out the complexity of the whole thing. Having worked in development in Africa I have seen how complex the issues are. That's why, while I applaud people like Bono who are concerned about the impoverished, I am skeptical about their proposed solutions. (More aid, debt relief)

An excerpt from a LA Times article by Max Boot is interesting. "By any measure, the U.S. is extraordinarily generous, and President Bush is making us more generous still. He has already tripled development aid to Africa and plans to double it again. But for the anti-poverty campaigners it's not enough. It never is. Their animating idea is the same one that was behind Lyndon Johnson's Great Society: Massive transfers of wealth can eradicate poverty. It didn't work in the U.S., and it has even less chance of working abroad.

In the last 50 years, $2.3 trillion has been spent to help poor countries. Yet Africans' income and life expectancy have gone down, not up, during that period, while South Korea, Singapore and other Asian nations that received little if any assistance have moved from African-level poverty to European-level prosperity thanks to their superior economic policies.

Economists who have studied aid projects have found numerous reasons for the failures. In many instances, money was siphoned off by corrupt officials. Even when funds did reach the intended beneficiaries, the money often distorted local markets for goods and labor, creating inflation that drove local businesses out of business. Only one major research paper in recent years has found any positive correlation between foreign aid and economic growth, and that only in countries "with good fiscal, monetary and trade policies," which excludes much of Africa. Most experts think even that conclusion is too optimistic."

To be simplistic about the problem of poverty is easy. What we really need to do though is struggle with these questions and be willing to dig into the complexities of the problem. To be willing to do that is to be truly compassionate.

Participating in Worship

Over the summer we have tried to stress active participation in our worship gatherings. If you come to our gathering you will likely be asked to get up and do something rather than simply sing or listen. There are two contrasting views at work here and I'm not sure which is right.

On the one hand you have the view that people today are used to watching. They are used to going to theaters and concerts where they sit and watch something going on as silent observers. This view would hold that asking such people to be highly active participants is simply going to cause them to run and hide. After all, who wants to go somewhere where you might be noticed, or even worse, be the center of attention.

On the other hand we have those who say we now have what Erick Schonfeld calls a culture of participation. If you note things like wiki, flickr, blogs, etc. you see that people love being participants. They all feel they have something to contribute and they want to do so. To these folks going to a church that does not allow them full participation has no appeal. They are used to being able to participate.

My guess is that both views are valid even within the same individual. There are probably times when people feel like participating and other times when they feel like simply observing. Unfortunately most churches encourage the latter and make no room for the former. As a side note, creating worship environments with the potential for a high degree of participation takes a lot of work which may be the cause of its neglect.

The Ethic of Love

Andy Stanley's July 4, 2004 sermon (you can listen to it at their church website) has a thought provoking piece on tolerance. He says that an ethic of tolerance is being pushed in our society as something positive. According to this ethic we should be toleratant other religions, all political views, sexual orientations, theologies, philosophies, cultures, races, etc.

However Stanley believes that to accept tolerance is to accept defeat. If you and your wife agree to tolerate each other you have basically accepted defeat in your effort to make your marriage all that it could be. He says the biblical ethic is not tolerance but love. We are supposed to love people of other religions, all political views, sexual orientations, theologies, philosophies, cultures, races, etc.

Stanley's thought is challenging and changes the way I think about a lot of things. It makes sense in terms of living in a kingdom life here on earth.

Where Conversion Takes Place

Every now and then I am asked to fill out a survey sponsored by my denominations Youth Leadership Team. I never do because the survey is dripping of preconceived ideas and as I look at the questions I see that they often put me in a catch 22.

They ask how much of the budget is designated for youth. I'm not sure what they want here. We do have a line item for youth but that really doesn't tell the story. That amount would be about 1% of our total budget and I can just hear the rant that would generate. On the other hand we don't have a similar category for adults so by comparison the youth do pretty good. Of course being in a small church the majority of the budget goes into things like salaries, utilities, maintenance, etc. To get an accurate figure of how much we spend on youth you would have to figure what percentage of those numbers should be "billed" to youth. (They would get a high percentage of the building maintenance, that's for sure.)

The other thing we often hear from youth folks is that most people are saved before the age of 18 so that is where we should be putting our resources. That's a half truth because actually most people are saved before age 13 or 14. Teens don't accept Christ at a much higher rate than adults do and those that do tend to be shallow Christians according to Barna.

So, if most people are saved as children we ought to be putting our resources in children's ministry right? Actually most of the children who are saved do so in their homes led by their parents. All this seems to lead me to think that the important thing is to be a community of faith that helps ALL its members in their journey as a disciple.

One more thought about kids being saved in the home. It is interesting to note the child's "place" in the home before they accept Christ. They are loved just as much, allowed to participate just as much, they are not thought of as second class family members, they are cared for just as much, etc. I think the church can learn something here.

Bounded Sets

On June 7 I posted about evangelism and discipleship and how we approach it. Randy F., who is sometimes too smart for his own good, (just kidding) jumped on it because I think he was uncomfortable with not having a clearly defined line between christian and non-christian.

I spoke with Randy last week and he shared about how he was relating it to Paul Hiebert's bounded sets. Hiebert has a model of extrinsic sets that can be well-defined (or "centered" he likes to call them) or fuzzy. Extrinsically fuzzy sets are hard for most evangelicals to swallow because they lead to a lot of difficult problems, all of which seem to orbit around relativism.

The extrinsically centered sets do have a defined boundary between christian and non-christian which makes it much more palatable. In other words, there would still be defined extrinsic factors that determine if a person is in relationship with the center, in this cse Jesus.

I think what got Randy was my drawing of the set with a dotted line. Such a dotted line seems to represent a fuzzy set. However, since I was not familiar with Hiebert's bounded sets I have to say that was not my intention. My intention was not to show when someone became a Christian but how we share the good news with non-christians. I know these two issues are very closely related but I was not trying to address both.

After seeing Hiebert's model of a centered set I like it better than mine because he shows the circle not as a dotted line but with an ameoboid (is that a word?) shape. I like this because those far from the center but within the a long tentacle of the ameoboid shape would represent someone who as not yet grown close to Jesus but has accepted Christ as Savior and Lord. This maybe a new Christian who has recently been introduced to Jesus.

On the other hand, the model can show people who are fairly close to the center (Jesus) but are still outside the set. This may be someone who has wrestled with God for a long time but has yet to accept Him as Savior and Lord.

All in all I find this interesting but I think I need to do some more reading on it.

Depending on God

As our denomination makes major changes in how we are organized it is interesting to see how difficult it is for people to process change without referencing the old organization. Of course, this is necessary to a degree but I am beginning to think that successful change is very much determined on leadership’s ability to reduce the comparisons as much as possible.

In most cases people want to know how each element in a previous system translates into the new system. This is good but only to the extent that the old elements actually translate. The hard part comes when old elements are eliminated or dropped entirely or new elements are added that have very little to do with the past.

In our case we are moving from several annual conferences to one national conference. In addition, in an effort to nurture healthy pastors and churches, we are adding a cluster system in which all of our churches are gathered into groups of approximately 7. What I have noticed is that a lot of people are trying to compare the old annual conferences with the clusters. In reality I think they would be farther ahead in thinking in terms of the relationship between the old annual conferences and the new national conference and thinking of the clusters as something new entirely.

As I have watched this I have thought about how difficult it is for people to set aside something we currently have and change to something entirely new. I think it is difficult for me too. But it is also exciting. It forces me to break dependencies I have had on man made things and depend on God.

Sensory Worship

Okay, first of all, I was going to say sensual worship but I found it difficult to separate the bad conotation from the good conotation. In other words, I kind of liked the sound of sensual worship but I think it would give the wrong impression.

Any way, we have been working at adding some elements to our worship gatherings that are more participatory and involve senses that are underused in worship. We aren't going crazy with it but we have tried to have at least one thing every week that is not typical for us.

For example, last week, as we were talking about the fall of man, we passed out pieces of ribbon of varying colors and textures that represented various sin that each person might be most tempted by. After all sin comes in many forms. Everyone then hung their ribbons on a mesh screen creating a tapestry which we will keep on display through the rest of the series.

I've been waiting for someone to freak out but so far no one has said a word either negative or positive. That is typical for our church. I'll wait and see what happens when I break out the incense.