A chicken is staring at me with a wary eye. She wants the cat food in the bowl which we keep just outside my study window. A wave of my arm sends the chicken squawking away for the umpteenth time. If we have learned anything about free-range chickens, it’s this: they’re lazy. There are acres of grass and woods filled with juicy bugs to eat, but they would rather trek to the cat’s dish where they know they can get easy food, instead of scratching out an honest living in the woods.

Chickens are kind of like people that way. We’re lazy too. We would rather get something for free than work hard to earn it. That’s why we have to work so hard to avoid dependency at The TentMaker Project.

Just last week, I got about half a dozen letters from individuals in Africa and India asking for money. One of these was from a Ugandan man I met last May. Over a hundred Americans from scores of different churches in the USA met him last year on summer mission projects, so he was writing all his new American acquaintances asking for thousands of dollars to start up a business in Uganda. Now, he could have applied at his church for a TentMaker Project loan and gotten what he needed, but he would have had to submit his business plan to the scrutiny of deacons, follow their counsel, and pay back the loan. So he chose the easy way – get more money with less effort and less accountability by writing to a bunch of Americans and asking for donations.

He may be very well-meaning, and he may not realize the pitfalls of what he’s doing, but he is setting himself up for failure. He is asking Americans to entrust him with a vast sum of money by Ugandan economic standards without having learned how to manage smaller sums of money first.

Even pastors are not exempt from this weakness. It is not uncommon for an African pastor to regularly receive money from American churches, thus eliminating accountability to his own church. In too many cases, foreign funding has led to financial and even moral corruption. In Uganda, even $50/month can place a pastor far above the means of the rest of his parishioners, yet multiple American churches send hundreds of dollars per month, thinking they are the only ones supporting him. The short-term teams that the American churches send to visit him cannot possibly understand all the details of how their money was spent in the context of a foreign culture and therefore cannot adequately provide accountability for him. For instance, in African thinking, the leader’s moral character doesn’t matter so much as his potential to provide wealth and status to his followers. Therefore, African pastors who have channels to the vast wealth in America naturally have many people “converting” and desiring membership in their church. Numbers of baptisms, therefore are not necessarily an indication of a healthy church in Africa, but it fools many Americans.

The TentMaker Project was set up to provide a viable alternative to the problems of support of Christians in Africa. It requires a system of accountability, requires people to work for their money, and uses multiple local church officers to make the difficult decisions. I am thankful to be part of offering this alternative to American churches. Even so, we are not exempt from some of the same pitfalls. Please pray for us as we seek to improve accountability structures so that we may continue to enable Ugandan Christians to support themselves and to take responsibility in fulfilling the Great Commission.