Hello! This month we’ve chosen to focus on relief, development, and dependency. I believe these are crucial topics for the church to understand as it becomes increasingly involved in global ministry. Let's not make the mistakes of the past and the present by creating huge systems of dependency, but may we be wise as we assist our global friends. We need to be sure that our assistance is not laying a dependency trap, enslaving them and taking away their hope of personally addressing their own problems. We entreat you as missionaries to teach development principles to your churches, helping them avoid becoming entangled in dependency issues. - Dave

PLEASE NOTE: There will be no Missionary Monthly for July. We will return with a new issue in August. In the meantime we hope you'll forgive us for the length of this issue!

This month’s update twists the wide-angle lens out to focus not on the American church in particular but on American society as a whole. I think right now in the U.S. we are seeing a new era of global awareness, interest, concern, and a sense of responsibility to humanity. Hollywood movie stars such as Matt Damon and Brad Pitt have lent their voices and influence to the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History. Peers Don Cheadle and George Clooney are also championing the Not On Our Watch Project, a campaign to aid the victims and bring an end to the genocide in Darfur. Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novels The Kite Runner and the recently released A Thousand Splendid Suns, which shed light on the harsh realities of life in Afghanistan, are flying off shelves and showing up in book clubs everywhere. Starbucks’ latest literary spotlight shines on A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier in Sierra Leone. More and more it seems those in positions of influence in our society are moving toward rather than shying away from the grave concerns around the world, and they are compelling the public to take notice.

What got me thinking about all of this was an article featured on the front page of the Sunday, June 3rd Chicago Tribune. Though placement isn’t everything, when it comes to the newspaper I think it’s a good indicator of what journalists consider important and likely to interest readers. The headline read, “I’ve seen more death than anyone should,” and the subhead, “Despite the sickness and tragedy, a Chicago-born doctor wouldn’t want to be anywhere but in desperate Haiti.” The article goes on to tell the story of David Walton, a Harvard Medical School student who for the past four years split his time between practicing medicine in Haiti and the U.S. through a special residency program at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Walton’s work is supported by an organization called Partners in Health, to which the paper invites donations. The article recounts the doctor’s background, the conditions in which he lives and works in Haiti, the dire health care needs in that nation, and the stories of a few of Walton’s patients. A note in the sidebar directs readers to an online slideshow about Walton’s work in Haiti.

What prompted me to share this with you? I have a few reasons. First, I thought you might be interested in how a major newspaper portrays this man’s commitment to compassionate medical service overseas. Second, I wanted you to see how powerful a simple slideshow with an audio track can be. Third, I suppose I wanted to encourage you by making you aware of this emphasis in our society on being an informed and responsible global citizen. I see this as having the potential to positively influence your efforts to capture the attention of the World Christians in your churches and invite them into active partnership in your part of the world. Finally, in light of the book I’ve reviewed below, I wanted to sound a note of caution, that while relief and financial aid for the world have found a voice in popular culture, there’s danger in the perpetuation of assistance that stops short of development, creates dependency, and so robs people of their dignity.  - Dave (with Suzanne)

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RELIEF vs. DEVELOPMENT  I (Dave) recently attended a gathering of pastors at Saddleback Church in California. A number of issues related to local and global missions were presented and discussed. One of the topics had to do with the difference between relief work and development work. The speaker began by pointing out the distinction between "burden" and "load" in Galatians 6 and went on to describe how this should inform our response to people in need during and after times of crisis and natural disaster. I thought you might find the notes from this talk interesting. You can download them here. [Please note that the opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and not necessarily WorldVenture.]

THE MARK OF THE CHRISTIAN
In John 13:34 we read: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Have you ever done a word search and noticed how many references there are to the word “love” in the Bible? In my concordance, “hate” fills about a half a column. “Happy” has so few references that it is easy to miss as one scans down the column. “Heaven” takes up a column and half and “hell” about an inch of space. Now the word “holy” gets a column and half in my book, but the word “love” is different. In my concordance, the references fill 8½ columns! That is incredible!

I’m always leery of placing a whole lot of weight on statistics, but when the statistics are prefaced by the Great Commandment I think we need to pay attention. What God is saying to us is very clear. Our Lord tells us in John 13 that “all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” This is about as plain as it can be. If you want people to see God in you, the best way to make that happen it so love others—in this case, other Christians. Why? Because the way we treat each other as Christians is an indication of Who we follow. Why? Because the supreme attribute of God is love. Of all the things that God is known for, love is at the top of the list. If we lead with other things—like anger, manipulation, greed, war, or hate—then people will not see God through us. Francis Schaeffer called love the mark of a Christian.

Our Lord also gave us the story of the Good Samaritan, moving the command to love beyond the confines of the local church to our neighbor. Remember: this story defines our “neighbor” as the person in need whom we’ve never met before. Schaeffer concludes his essay The Mark of a Christian by stating, “Love—and the unity it attests to—is the mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father.”

Why do we spend so much time talking about marketing strategies, best programs or approaches, 6 no-fail tactics for church growth, 10 proven steps to successful parenting, or 5 ways to save a marriage, and spend so little time considering the power of God’s love? We cling to our lists and gravitate to “proven” ways to get results when all the Bible clearly points as that which NEVER fails is pure, unadulterated love. I am not discrediting careful thinking about how we do what we do, but I am concerned that I so often turn away from the clear mandate of Scripture toward the latest strategy that promises to produce the results I want. We must never forget that above all else, we are COMMANDED to LOVE one another (our brothers and sisters in Christ) and everyone else God brings across our path. Love works—and it never fails!

I want to call myself back to the power of love this summer. I need to do this. I’m pushed around so much in airports, in traffic, and by society that I get to the point where I just want to fight back. Ever feel that way? I find myself not caring as I jostle someone in the airport security line or cut someone off in traffic. After all, I reason, I’ll be the one getting cut off if I don’t get in there first. And so I begin to adopt an attitude of looking out for #1, getting even, and “they did it to me first.”

That is not how I am called to live as a Christ-follower. I am called to respond in love, to consider others better than myself, to look out for their interests and seek their good. This must begin with the way I treat my Christian brothers and sisters, and then move out to touch the rest of the world.

I’ve decided that I need to walk through those 8½ columns of references to love in the Scriptures and cement once again in my mind why the Great Commandment is so important and how living it out really does affect all who come in contact with me. I find I too easily to drift away from this primary tenant of faith.

It’s so easy in our hustle-and-bustle, bottom line, me-first society to be unloving. Sometimes it even feels good for a few seconds (or minutes), but then we remember that we have a higher calling and a much more difficult task. That task is to love one another in a way that speaks volumes to a watching world about Whose we are and what we’re all about. We have God’s Word on it.  - Dave

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“The Christian really has a double task. He has to practice both God’s holiness and God’s love. The Christian is to exhibit that God exists as the infinite-personal God; and then he is to exhibit simultaneously God’s character of holiness and love. Not his holiness without his love: that is only harshness. Not his love without his holiness: that is only compromise. Anything that an individual Christian or Christian group does that fails to show the simultaneous balance of the holiness of God and the love of God presents to a watching world not a demonstration of the God who exists but a caricature of the God who exists.”  - Francis Schaeffer, in The Mark of the Christian

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When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement by Glenn J. Schwartz
2007 World Mission Associates
Reviewed by David Korb

Author Glenn Schwartz served in Zambia and Zimbabwe during the 1960s. He returned to the States in the 70s to serve as an administrator in Fuller Seminary’s School of World Missions. Since 1983 he has been serving as the Executive Director of World Mission Associates.

I recommend this book as a “must read” for anyone involved in global missions. I do need to give you a word of warning, however, that the book is a bit pedantic. The preface admits, “this book is a compendium of the author’s writings over the past decade or more. It is not a concise, concentrated treatment of dependency in the Christian movement. Nor does it seek to address one audience only. Sections of it are addressed to church leaders, others to missionaries, mission executives and short-termers.”

The chapters are constructed in such a way that Schwartz concludes each with a summary statement, questions for discussion, and suggested reading (indeed, the bibliography alone is of great value for those wanting to research this issue for themselves). I feel that at times the author is too extreme in his view that money can take away dignity, but nonetheless I think his cautions are important to consider at a time when money is pouring out indiscriminately from the US, and other countries, into target nations.

Schwartz illustrates his points with ample stories, which are mostly from his experiences in central and South Africa, but they serve to prove his points. He describes the syndrome of dependency, gives a historical development of this syndrome, and discusses what local leaders and missionaries can do to avoid or break the dependency syndrome. Schwartz also discusses the issues of dependency among the poor and unemployed and discusses the triggers that move people from dependency to self-reliance. This gives you a sampling of the 24 major topics discussed in this book.

I found the author’s view on supporting nationals very interesting. He compares the expense involved in sending North American missionaries to the cost of supporting nationals. He cautions that as enticing as it might be to support nationals at a fraction of the cost of a Western missionary, in doing so we are actually depriving the local people of supporting those within their own community. He adds that in certain places local evangelists who are supported by foreign money are perceived as “paid foreign agents.” Schwartz concludes, “This is such a significant problem in places like India that nonbelievers assume that if one is even a Christian, they are being paid from overseas.”

I highly recommend this book because I feel this is a subject we must address if we are going to enter another culture in a productive and helpful way. This book will challenge your thinking and push you to determine your position on these matters.

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