Caution for Global Renegades
Just as our understanding of global poverty has changed over the years and our efficiency for meeting international needs has advanced, so has our understanding of global justice issues. The old way of doing global outreach was more focused on one-time gifts, check-writing, short-term trips and casual relationships. There are numerous downsides to this classic model. It’s short-lived and makes us feel better for a while, but it doesn’t accomplish much, and it could even do harm. Many churches have done a great deal of damage by going rogue into a third-world country to save the day without a clear understanding of the country’s culture and its people and without a global partner.
The new way of doing global work focuses more on long-term relationships, systematic development, mutual transformation and intelligent partnerships. It’s a holistic approach that builds solidarity with the church and the poor on a much larger and deeper scale.
Stearns says poverty is one of the oldest and most complex issues in the world. You don’t lift communities out of poverty by addressing one dimension alone. If you provide food and even agriculture development and better nutrition, that’s a good thing, but if the people who now have food have no health care, then they still have no recourse when they’re ill; they still don’t have any knowledge of disease prevention or safe childbirth. All of these issues individually are Band-Aids. We need to address all these things in the community simultaneously.
“We often spend a year before going into a community to meet with leaders to create a vision for the future according to their needs. It’s very much an empowerment model—we don’t do things to people or for people but with people,” says Stearns.
So, proceed with caution and proceed wisely, making the most of partnerships with effective and trusted organizations, but by all means proceed. Because I think it’s safe to say that the church has a new global responsibility, one that’s been growing over the last few decades. It’s much more than a responsibility, really; it’s an opportunity to let the light of Christ shine on a global scale. It’s a chance to bring glory to God through our discerning, long-term commitment to see the most impoverished people in the world find hope and to find it through the very hands of the church.