When Helping Hurts (Interview with Authors)

Next week I will be posting a review of "When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without hurting the Poor and Yourself," which I believe to be one of the most significant books on poverty and social justice written in the past decade. It is a true gem for the church and I wholeheartedly recommend it for Church mission leaders, deacons and deaconesses, pastor and elders, non-profit leaders, and the lay person who desire to redemptively help the poor and see chronic poverty broken.

Here is an 8 minute interview with the authors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzUKZajloJY

Social Concern on the Scope of the GARBC?

Apparently so in 1970. I recently uncovered a document from the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches on their web page dating back to forty years ago. At the GARBC's national conference in Denver Colorado, their messengers voted on to adopt a resolution on Social Concern. Here it is in its entirety.

Social Concern
WHEREAS our nation is afflicted with innumerable social problems such
as drug abuse, alcoholism, crime, violence, immorality, delinquency,
divorce, social injustices, and poverty; and

WHEREAS Christians are to do good unto all men because all men,
however sinful they may be, are made in the image of God and are
objects of His concern; and

WHEREAS Christians have experienced the love of Christ and are by
that love constrained to care for those who suffer and sorrow; and

WHEREAS Christians alone have the message of hope for sinful and
suffering humanity because Christ alone is the Good Shepherd Who
provides for those who become His sheep;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT we the messengers of the General Association
of Regular Baptist Churches, in Annual Conference in Denver,
Colorado, June 22–26, 1970, acknowledge the obligations of love in
Christian concern for all those fellow citizens who are enduring social
ills and afflictions; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we encourage our constituency to
render to the needy members of our society assistance of which we
are capable by the wholehearted support of our approved social
agencies.

Denver, Colorado
June 22–26, 1970

So what's the big deal about a group of Baptist Churches adopting a resolution about Social Concern? For one thing, these Baptists happen to be separatist and fundamentalist with a history of reacting against any type of social mandate as sliding towards the social gospel. For my interest, it's the association of churches that I grew up a part of as well as the association that my current church fellowships with. Moreover, one of the reasons that the GARBC church which nurtured me as a teenager dropped my financial support for some missionary work that I was doing 17 years ago had to do with adding "social concern" activities to go along with the evangelism and discipleship that I was already involved with. They were fearful that I was being led astray by "neo-evangelical" types and would soon embrace the social gospel.

Nevertheless, I'd also like to make a few observations about the resolution.

1. It acknowledges both individual sin such as drunkenness, immorality, and drug-abuse and systematic sin such as social injustices.

2. It emphasizes God's Image in humanity, the love of Christ in us, and the scriptural command to "do good to all" as our motivation for engaging these social problems.

3. It emphasizes the gospel message as the hope for "sinful and suffering humanity."

4. It assumes a response of loving compassion towards those who are suffering as a result from these social ills.

5. Therefore, the church embraces both evangelism and a form of social action (compassionate service) when engaging these pressing issues of society.

This document will give me some historical ammo in March when I teach a workshop at a GARBC church ministries conference called "The Poor are with you always: helping break chronic poverty in the lives of the poor in your community through the gospel."

Maybe the GARBC's emphasis upon social concern in its past can act as a gateway to a future GARBC emphasis upon social concern.

A Familiar Divide?

A familiar divide is back again within the North American evangelical church. Its origin goes back one hundred years ago when the social gospel won over large segments of churches within mainline denominations. Yet a century later, after the fundamentalist-modernist battles in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the emergence of a new evangelicalism in the 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s, the church growth movement of the1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s and the emerging church movement of the twenty-first century; after all these years, we Christians still can’t seem to resolve its tension. Social gospel slippery slope assaults are still lobbed from the right. Accusations of pie-in-the sky, other-worldly pre-occupations are hurled from the left. Both sides have dug their trenches and hunkered down, waging a theological battle over what constitutes the mission of the church. Its impact is swaying most evangelical entities, including mission agencies, churches, seminaries, denominations, para-church ministries, and relief/community development organizations. Even the late Dr. Ralph Winter (one of the 20th century’s greatest missionary statesman) recently bemoaned that the biggest trend in global mission happens to be “the polarization of mission agencies between those that focus on evangelization and those that concentrate on relief and development.”

However, UTM has always made every effort to resolve this tension in mission between evangelism/discipleship and social concern/justice as we serve the urban poor. In future blog posts, I will share a variety of theological, historical, and socio-cultural reasons that the mission of the church should wholeheartedly embrace both. Since I am blogging rather than writing essays, these rationales will be random, reflecting my ADD thought-patterns.

But before I begin to share my views, I’d like to hear your beliefs as to what comprises the mission of the church. Any thoughts?

Piper's View of Piety..."Should Produce a Passion for Social Justice and Practical Mercy "

Here's yet another reason why I love John Piper. Yesterday morning I clicked onto the blog "Desiring God" for my daily dose of John Piper. On this day, Piper summarizes one of his sermons from a few years back about what true piety should produce in us, that is "a passion for social justice and practical mercy." Preaching from Isaiah 58, he lists five needs that Isaiah and Jesus are passionately concerned about. (1) the need for freedom from bondage and oppression (2) the need for food (3) the need for housing (4) the need for clothing (5) the need for respect. The longer version of this sermon is even better, where he makes assertions such as "Piety that does not produce a passion for God-exalting social justice and practical mercy is worthless." and "I want to remind us as a church that we have been saved for the sake of God-exalting good works. We have been saved not merely to avoid evil, but to do good. Therefore the people of Christ should not be known primarily for what we don’t do, but what we do do."

Two months ago, I blogged here about a distorted piety being a fallacy that prevents today's evangelical churches from embracing its God-given responsibility to the poor. Since so many of these churches are children of the enlightenment (modernity) with their pie-in-the-sky dispensationalism, their church-growth/marketing pragmatism, their soul-saving dualism, their idol of consumerism, and of course their misplaced pietism, I've sort of wrote off the church in America (although my obedience to Christ and my calling has kept me within the church). Because Piper is such a towering, influential figure among fundamental and conservative evangelical pastors, maybe pietism in the evangelical church will begin to be restored to its proper place, which is producing a passion for social justice and practical mercy.