Developing the Developing

I used to work in community development in the developing world. My friend Joe and I spent 5 years in one of the poorest countries in the world. Joe was from there so he knew the language and the culture. He also had a masters degree in development (the actual name of his degree was much more complicated than that so I don’t remember what it was for sure) from an ivy league school and is quite a bit smarter than me. We had both learned from our training that effective development isn’t easy but we were determined to be different. We had both grown up seeing the wreckage of development projects gone bad and wanted to do something that would actually work.

In spite of knowing the difficulties we soon fell into the same trap as most other programs. There is great pressure to do something very visible not only from the bosses and donors but also from those we went to help. The latter know all about development projects and are experts at playing them for whatever can be had. We were cured, however, by a couple of experiences that still influence how I go about initiating change today.

Joe and I used to travel by motorcycle quite often and one day we set off for an initial meeting with a village we wanted to work with. We both had our backpacks and thermoses. The thermoses were important because the water quality in the village was bad and so we always brought our own. Mine was a beat up Stanley stainless steel one. We also went armed with surveys that had been completed by another organization of the village. We went in knowing what a lot of the problems were.

When we got there we all gathered in the schoolhouse. The chief and tribal elders were there along with just about everyone else in the village. Joe and I went into our presentation. Joe could talk in the native language and he would interpret for me when it was my turn. We discussed the problems of water quality, latrines and other health issues. We rambled on about finance systems, agriculture development and even the diamond mining that was taking place near by.

After about an hour we stopped for comments and questions. Things had gone well with a lot of people nodding their heads in agreement with what we were saying. We felt like we had hit a homerun because we had been talking about things that would have profound positive impact on the quality of life for the people in the room. There was silence for a few minutes and then the chief rose to speak. He was very serious and several people were nodding and adding their own comments. About then I noticed that Joe, who was sitting next to me at the front of the room, dropped his head and kind of chuckled to himself. I asked him what they were talking about. Joe pointed to my thermos that was sitting on the table in front of us and said that they wanted to know why the “glass” in my thermos didn’t break.

You see, where we were they didn’t have stainless steel thermoses. They all have those glass insides that break if they get banged around a lot. My thermos had dents in the side but didn’t break because the inside was made out of stainless steel instead of glass.

I was dumbfounded. We had been talking about the major problems in the village and were offering hope that a solution could be found and the only question that was asked was about my thermos. What fools. Of course by fools I’m referring to Joe and I.

We tried one more time. The processing of palm kernels into palm oil is a big business where we were. The process is labor intensive and not quite as efficient as it could be. Joe and I knew that an oil press would do a much more efficient job so we went about designing and building one. It worked too. It was very efficient at rendering the oil and took much less labor. It was a complete failure though.

In the traditional way the women and children provide most of the labor. After the oil has been rendered from the kernels the women go back and rewash the kernels to get out some of the left over oil. The use this oil to make soap which they sell. This money from the sale of the soap is theirs to keep. Our oil press was too efficient and the women couldn’t get enough extra oil out to make any money for themselves. As a result the whole project was rejected.

Our approach changed dramatically after that. Our first step became developing authentic relationships with those we were working with. By authentic I mean that these were strong relationships that were not simply established to accomplish an objective but because both parties grew to really care for each other.

Step two was to encourage dialogue about the issues they faced. There were always lots of opinions and it was interesting to discover so much of the history that those villages had with the problems they faced. It also allowed them to work through the social impacts that we were clueless about.

Step three was to point to options. These were options not solutions and we tried to be as careful as we could not to provide answers for them. For example, one of the questions they had was why the palm plantations they planted were not as productive as the ones planted by a development program that had long since disappeared. We knew that it was because they were planting seeds from hybrid trees which doesn’t work genetically but we simply asked them where they thought they might be able to find the answer to that question. The following discussion resulted in a field trip to the nearby agriculture university were all was explained.

Of course this approach doesn’t bring about flashy results and is much more of a long term process. Our bosses didn’t understand it so we shut down our work. There are many in the development field who disagree with this approach and so we still see people running around the developing world digging latrines and drilling water wells. Of course, they are not phased one bit by the fact that people having doing that for nearly a hundred years now with very little to show for it.

I had a guy from well known development organization visit me while I was there who was visiting the area to see the work they were doing. We got to talking about a village where we both had been working and he was bragging about the latrines they had built there the previous year. They had dug the pits, put on the slab and built a brick chimney for about 50 latrines around the town. All the people had to do was build the walls and put on a roof. I offered to take him to see his latrines and he was shocked to find that only a handful had ever been completed. Unfortunately I’m sure the report shows that they had built 50 latrines and the donors loved it.

I have written all this to say that it is extremely difficult for people from developed countries to work in developing countries. The issues are extremely complex and what seems like an obvious solution to those from the developed world often fails miserably in the developing world. It might not be popular but I still maintain that the best way to approach this work is with relationship, dialogue and exposure to options. It must be kept that simple.

I also think the same formula applies when people who come out of healthy churches try to help those in unhealthy churches.

Crashing the System

I wonder if the bitTorrent idea used for distibuting published works on the web can apply to churches and denominations as well. The main problem with developing a great idea and getting it into the hands of people who want it on the web is that the more popular it becomes the more bandwidth is used up and eventually the whole system crashes. BitTorrent solves this by having downloaders use their uploading capacity to serve others. The more you upload the better treatment you get when wanting to download.

Perhaps this is an ethic we need to work on. Perhaps we have too many people and churches wanting to download and never upload. The result is the servant (server) gets overloaded and the system crashes.

Just mangling more metaphors!

The Good Shepherd

I'm having an argument (I suppose debate would be a better word) with a friend who is doing his thesis on shepherding in a biblical sense. I should probably give up becasue he is doing the research and I'm doing the very dangerous activity of thinking off the top of my head. Unfortunately, I can't help myself.

My argument is that the life of an oriental shepherd was a lonely one. That is they spent much of their time alone with their sheep leading (not herding) them to food and water. At night they would return to permanent folds near home or temporary ones built near the pastures they were currently using. Only at these times did they come together with other shepherds and cooperate with others to protect the sheep. (I also assume that this was a great time for building friendships, sharing ideas and learning new things.)

My friend rejects this lonely aspect and believes that they worked together much more than that. Therefore we apply it differently to our work as pastors. I say that pastoring is a lonely vocation and pastors should expect it. He says pastors should work together with other pastors in their congregation, even though those "other pastors" are not official and are basically lay leaders, to shepherd the flock. I say that while they should work together there is still a difference and that even pastors of multistaff churches should expect loneliness. He says that there is no difference between multistaff churches and single staff churches except the lay leaders in one are official in the other.

Which ever way I end up going on this I am grateful that the Good Shepherd has entrusted me with a portion of His flock not as a hireling but has His child. On the other hand that means that I must be een more dedicated to my flock and not runaway when it faces danger.

By the way, I also think we don't do enough of the shepherds getting together thing.

They All Have A Story

It has been a long time since I've been here. Our soccer season started and we just finished two weeks of pre-season practice. That means I pull double duty and rarely get to this site. Now that school has started I have my days back for the most part.

One of the things our team did this pre-season was go on a mission trip to Nashville. It mainly involved working at various inner-city ministries and we really enjoyed it. I have seen a lot worse poverty than we saw in Nashville but it still wasn't pretty.

One thing that captivated me was listening to the stories of the people we ministered to. One morning we were sent on an assignment to go find a homeless person to take to breakfast. They were all nice guys (yes, all men) though some were a little less sober than others. It was interesting to hear them tell about their families, especially their children. Yet from those homes they ended up on the street. It is agonizing to hear how the situations slowly developed.

I had supper with another guy at the rescue mission. He was from Jacksonville, FL on his way to visit his grandkids in Kentucky when his car broke down. It had taken him two weeks to get it fixed and in the mean time his money ran out and he ended up at the mission. He is a proud man who has served in the military and has a job back in Jacksonville. Fortunately he had everything fixed and was planning on leaving the next morning. A trip like that would not have been precarious for me but he ended up at the mission.

While eating supper with him a couple of young men, 20 years old maybe, were kind of acting up at a nearby table and had to be told to settle down by the mission staff. My dinner guest slowly shook his head and simply said, "They have a long way to go." It struck me as words of wisdom from an experienced traveler.

Getting Worse

Leaders who are looked up to constantly
who give out answers competently
who everyone assumes are living what they are saying
often have acute experiences of dissonance

“Who I am
and what people think I am
aren’t anywhere close
to being the same thing

The better I get as a rabbi
and the more my reputation grows
the more I feel like a fraud
I know so much more than I live

The longer I live
the more knowledge I acquire
the wider the gap between
what I know and what I live
I’m getting worse by the day…”

Found Poem - Eugene Peterson - Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places


I think there are at least two ways for a pastor to respond to this. On the one hand he can enter a spiral of depression and failure that lead to him either leaving the ministry or subsisting in it as a fraud. He will see himslef as a total failure and be unable to come to terms with the case built against him.

On the other hand, the more he learns of the gap between what he knows and how he lives the more he will understand grace and be all the better for it. He will truly be able to love others because he will begin to see them as God does and he will love himself for the same reason.

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.