One of the concerns that brought World Harvest Mission into being was the plight of the poor in Africa.  Providentially the churches represented on the board of World Harvest Mission began with a burden to see Christ glorified through preaching the gospel to the afflicted in Uganda and ministering to their material needs. 

The Problem of Ministry to the Poor

Looking back on the first involvement of our several churches in 1977 with refugees in ‘A’, we can now see that we had a great deal to learn.  One thing we discovered is that good intentions are no substitute for wisdom. One bruising experience that we had concerned a man who as an Ugandan refugee promised to start a business to employ other impoverished refugees.  He was given a great deal of money to start a substantial enterprise.  Regrettably only a few refugees received any help from the project, but the man who was running the business did very well indeed, and soon refused to have anything to do with representatives of our churches.  Eventually the man disappeared from sight altogether, along with many thousands of dollars provided for him by our churches and a United Nations agency.

            Later in ‘Z’ itself we learned that up-front relief work had other complications.  For example, the team members from X Church arriving  in late 1979 discovered that major relief projects had a way of attracting large numbers of poor people who seemed to have only one concern: the consumption of material goods.  For the first time we learned what Vinay Samuel of Bangalore, India has stressed: the poor are inveterate consumers.  You get the same picture in V.S. Naipul’s study of Africa, “North of South.”  Here you see the poor consuming material goods with great intensity, and seemingly lacking any sense of saving – what he calls no “storage concept.”

             One African Christian put it this way, “You Americans have long been exposed to material goods in abundance.  This exposure has been with you from childhood.  You take the shiny things for granted because you have seen so many and you know how little they really satisfy.  So you have had time to develop ‘shock absorbers.’  But not us.  We have no ‘shock absorbers’ when we are suddenly faced with Western material things.  Our hearts are easily captured by the glamour, and all we want is more.”

            What this African brother says is especially true of the poor who live in cities.  Through advertising in magazines, posters and window shopping, they see a golden world that seems to be rich beyond their dreams.  In such a setting it is ridiculously easy for Christians seeking to share their material wealth with the poor to confirm them in their consumerism, and to create what Samuel calls “a culture of dependence.”  And as far as evangelistic outreach is concerned, there is nothing easier than to gather vast crowds of people together with the promise of material goods.  When this happens it is almost impossible to sort out the sincere seekers from those who have been prompted to come for the wrong reasons to hear the gospel.

            On this basis it is easy to quickly build a congregation that has no substance in it at all – or at least one that lacks spiritual power and endurance in the cause of Christ.  We think missionaries are easily deceived in this matter.  The thrill of immediate responses to their preaching is so great that they tend to ignore the spiritual and cultural sensitivities that are in the picture.  The rude awakening comes eventually, however, when the worker from abroad discovers that he or she is pouring life and energies into what seems a bottomless pit of need and there is so very little to show for it afterward.  Too, you are very likely to discover in a context where material hope is way up front that your chief disciple (the one who constantly carries his Bible) is a consummate thief.  Now that can happen anywhere in the world and in settings where material relief is not prominent, but one thing you can be sure of is that it will happen every time that material goods are prominent in the care of the poor.  If you are inclined to doubt this strong statement, we would recommend that you read John L. Nevius’ classic work, “Planting and Development of Missionary Churches,” treating as it does the same issues in a Chinese setting.

“Remember the Poor”

            But does this mean that we should give up the care of the whole person and simply preach the gospel to the poor? Never!  For it would be a shame to Christ if we who are rich Christians in the West neglected the care of the poor.  With Paul who had been exhorted by the Jerusalem apostles to “remember the poor,” we must be able to say “which very thing I was eager to do” (Galatians 2:10).  We must always be eager to remember the poor because that is how we received our salvation.  When we were poor sinners, Christ who was rich became poor so that we might enjoy His riches (2 Corinthians 8:9).  And what is true spirituality is made for us by Paul a model for our learning to share out of our abundance with those in deep need (2 Corinthians 8:9-15).

The Painting Company

            Furthermore, our experience in working with the poor in Z eventually became an excellent testimony to Christ’s gospel as the power to transform the poor in the same manner that it transformed us.  We have in view the painting company that began almost four years ago and became a highly successful business and vehicle for discipling.  In a word, with a small investment of $5,000 given over a period of about four years a painting company run by new converts blossomed into a much sought after work force in Z because its workers and managers were distinguished by high quality work, honesty, frugality and reliability.

            This small enterprise began in early 1981 when B had a great burden to provide work for the new converts being made under his preaching and that of church leaders like Peterson Sozi and Edward Kasaija.  Not long after he pushed for this ministry to come into being his own work of discipling became so heavy that it was taken over by S who carried it forward under remarkable difficulty. Imagine the scene: Five figures are moving down the dusty Z street with paint buckets suspended on long poles resting on the shoulder of the painters.  The hour is seven a.m. when hardly anyone is on the streets.  Since these workers have no vehicle this particular morning they walk over four miles to the job, carrying all their buckets, brushes and drop clothes.  When they arrive at the job, they have prayer and go to work with vigor, with no one loafing, taking unscheduled breaks, or stealing paint and selling it.  Later the painting company prospered and a vehicle was secured.  In 1983 one of the believers took over as general manager and another became manager of the painting on the job.  That year the gross business reached almost $60,000, a phenomenal development.  But even more important, these poverty stricken believers prospered on their godly living, giving to the church, prayer life, and personal testimonies associated with their high quality work as painters.  In City D, corrupted as the city had been by the former leader, these painters who refused bribes and opportunities to steal paint were viewed as strange indeed.

Painting Company Lessons

            We would call attention to the following distinguishing features of this enterprise which contributed to God’s blessing of its work:

 1.       Small is beautiful.  The painting company began with five Nationals and with a very small investment.  It followed in its development the principle that you must be faithful with the small before you go onto the large.

2.       Small enhances the dignity of national Christians. Naturally, if a project is too small it can have the problem of being uneconomical.  But small that is just a bit larger has the supreme value of providing a challenge to national Christians by stretching them to do what is really new for them, but keeping the challenge within the possible for them to achieve.  Regular small achievements by national Christians as they learned new skills and saw the business grow built confidence in themselves.

3.       Personnel are more important than money.  Altogether over a period of almost four years something like $5,000 was spent, equaling somewhat more than a $1,000 per year investment. Most of this money was in the support of the three workers who brought this undertaking into being. Done this way, the project did not create a culture of dependence by attracting attention to the material resources contributed from overseas.

 4.       The contribution of national Christians must be significant, not just token. In this instance the new converts were so poor that they had very little to give materially, but they gave what they had in abundance: time and labor. The nature of the painting required work and lots of it, and it was the one resource the poor  believers had in abundance.  In giving of themselves they were the essential producers of the project.

 5.       Converts who have made a visible change in their lives are the ideal candidates for this kind of diaconal ministry.  In other words, the  workers chosen over a period of time were those who showed evidence of wanting to be disciples, i.e., teachable people.  Converts also should be, as these were, chosen from among the poor, not from the professional or student classes who have less understanding and appreciation for the nature of hard work.

 6.       From the beginning these new disciples were taught to share their material goods with others.  Since the work eventually proved to be profitable and they received good salaries, they gravitated toward giving more than a tithe to the church and giving freely to other poor.  This too enhanced their dignity as Christians and honored Christ.  The principle is that there is no giving done which ends up only in receiving.  Every receiver must become a giver, not just a consumer.

Theological Foundation for Mission to the Poor

Against this background of activity and practice, we now need to ask what is the broader spiritual foundation for the mission to the poor.  A careful examination of Scriptural doctrine and missionary principle indicates that our theological picture is incomplete unless we discover how it relates to the poor.  In other words, we are insisting that our theological picture is both inadequate and distorted unless we grasp its relationship to poverty and the life of the afflicted and oppressed in this world.  We begin by noting how Scripture relates God Himself to the poor.

 God is identified in Scripture as the God of the poor and afflicted.  Psalm 68:5-6 says: “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.  God gives the desolate a home to dwell in; but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.”  In the self-definition of God given in Deuteronomy 10:17-22, He characterizes Himself as the God of the weak and impoverished, who “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing” (10:18). In keeping with His character as God of the impoverished, the Father sends His Son to save us by becoming poor for our sakes (2 Corinthians 8:9, Philippians 2:5-8).  Divine election itself is focussed on the poor.  James asks, “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He has promised to those who love Him” (James 2:5)?  Judgement day is pictured in James as a day of wrath for the exploiters of the poor (James 5:1-6).

1.   The kingdom of God with all it is wondrous powers is the possession of the poor.  Jesus says, “Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).  These poor are undoubtedly the spiritually poor, those who have no righteousness and achievements in which they can boost.  But more is intended in the Lucan context, for in Luke’s gospel it is made abundantly clear that the poor in a material and social sense are in the foreground – those who are without human resources of any kind.  For example, consider Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 2:46-55.  God has “exalted those of low degree” and “filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.”  When you look at Mary and Joseph as examples of what is meant in the Magnificat you see that they are the physically poor (Luke 2:1-7, 24), those whom Vinay Samuel has called the “marginalized” in society.

The picture is filled in by a survey of the figures dominating the Gospel of Luke.  You have the prostitute of Luke 7:36-50, the parable of Good Samaritan of Luke 10:29-37, Jesus’ disturbing identification with the tax collectors and sinners of Luke 15 with its magnificent parables of lostness, the Samaritan leper of Luke 17:11-19, and the salvation of the thief on the cross of Luke 23:39-43.  All of these and other figures from Luke drive home to us that the kingdom is being made up of the poor, understood not only as the physically poor, but also of those who are the disenfranchised, the powerless, the oppressed, and the ones without resources of any kind.

2.   One of the chief reasons for God’s preoccupation with the poor is found in His heart of mercy (Exodus 2:23-25).  But bound up in His compassion is a larger purpose: it is to glorify Himself alone by His saving deeds of mercy in redeeming the poor.  His intention is to take that which is least honorable in the earth and, by the change He brings to them by His transforming grace, to reveal His glory and grace.  Therefore He chooses the “nobodies” of a Corinth so that no flesh should boast in itself but in God.  Paul writes, “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:28-29).

3.   Climactically we see that the gospel is uniquely designed for the poor. It is a message of grace. The law says, “Do this and you shall live.”  Whereas the gospel says, “Christ has done all, and through faith in Him you shall live.” Thus the gospel is a gift, a righteousness earned by another, and received most readily by those who have been trained by society and experiences of poverty to see their lives as one big need left unfulfilled.  Even their consumerism pays off. The poor are those who always want more because they have nothing.  They are socially marginalized, so their only recourse is to beg.  This is their one talent.  They are quite shameless in asking for help, even daring to grab hold of that which they have not merited.

So they find it easier to understand the whole concept presupposed in the gospel of the needy sinner.  Socially they are the “sinners” – that is society despises them and treats them as the defiled, the unworthy, the untouchables.  For the rich and the self-sufficient the whole idea of grace as mercy for the unworthy is repugnant.  They are the do-ers, the morally successful, the righteous, the strong and the powerful.  Therefore it is the poor and the defeated who, when wrought upon by the Spirit of grace, take the kingdom of heaven by storm.  They know their need socially and enter quickly into a sense of their need as sinners against the divine law.  We do not mean that all the materially poor do this, but those elect poor do so with joy.  They are delighted with a rich Savior who in mercy shed His precious blood for the unworthy.

4.    Thus the gospel is uniquely designed for the poor.  What the rich must do is to learn from the poor, to become poor in spirit.  They are not ordinarily called to become the voluntary poor after the model of St. Francis of Assisi, but to be saved they need to become poor in spirit, to become imitators of the poor and thus to receive Christ as a rich Savior.  The call of salvation therefore is aimed first of all to the poor as the nobodies of society and as they demonstrate the nature of sin and salvation in coming to Christ they challenge the rich by their example to humble themselves and also to trust in Christ’s substitutionary righteousness.

Applied to unreached peoples, we now find that they divide into two classes:1) the poor and marginalized (the vast majority of unreached people), and 2) the rich unreached people who are self-sufficient morally, socially and spiritually. It is with the first class that the primary resources of the church are to be directed, though not to the exclusion of the unreached rich.  For example, in X there are two groups that have yet to be reached.  On the one hand, the poor people of the deserts  and the poor people of the mountains in the West ; and on the other hand, the rich Moslems   people who are major movers in the transportation industry in X and conscious of their own moral attainments in a society of social decay.  Our approach should be to go to the rich with the good news that God is saving the poor nomad and mountain people and making them into vessels of grace and beauty.

Concluding Guidelines

In conclusion we want to set forth clear and firm guidelines for the actual undertaking of the mission besides ourselves.  They are especially dependent upon the thinking of Vinay Samuel of Bangalore, and are as follows:

 1.       Pray constantly for God’s wisdom in providing an approach to any group of poor people targeted for evangelism.

 2.       Decide whether you are working in a situation of immediate, life-and-death crisis (as in a famine) or one of long-term development.  Where there is danger of death from drought or disease, emergency measures must be immediately taken by the church to preserve life.  This means direct giving of food and medicine.  But the situations in view here are the long-term ones where there is severe poverty, but not danger of immediate death via starvation.

 3.       Send personnel rather than money to help the poor.

 4.       Let the personnel bring the gospel first and pray for conversions.

 5.       Let these personnel work through the natural vehicles of communication in the society of the poor – i.e., using the stories, dances, music, etc. of the people.

 6.       Select a core group of people from natural leaders of even the most totally disenfranchised, but always make the willingness to volunteer and work to be a decisive factor in any selection of a core group.

 7.       Do not pay the leaders who emerge from this process of selection.  Let them be supported when there is need by their own people.

 8.       Let the personnel from outside the poor community appear in work clothes and do not permit rich appearing outsiders to enter the actual communities of the poor, especially whites.

 9.       Learn to listen to the poor express their own needs.

 10.   Learn to expect that the poor will first provide you with a “shopping list.” Then in partnership with them explain you have no money for such projects, but then work and pray with them to discern their real needs.

 11.   Together with them select projects for self-help that they can do themselves.

 12.   Do not send money to the churches established until the leaders and the members have learned the principles and practice of stewardship.

13.   Do not begin poorly conceived projects because rich Christians of the West want to be emotionally fulfilled and/or feel guilty because of their abundance.

 14.   Do not send money to help put up church buildings (if at all) until the congregations have saved and banked at least one-fourth of the money needed.

 15.   Public health evangelism and discipling is often the most appropriate project because of its great need, small expense and the ability of nationals to participate with minimal training.

 16.   Pastors of local churches should come from local churches and not be missionaries.

 17.   Wherever possible training pastors should take place within their own culture and society to prevent uprooting the poor from their cultural setting.

 18.   Churches organized should be self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating even where there is great poverty.

 19.   These churches should be organized into fellowships or presbyteries for government, training of leaders, and for acting as a missionary base for fulfilling Christ’s command to go to other unreached people.