The Long Way to Lilongwe

Its been a few weeks now since our team has returned from Malawi and while it certainly still feels fresh, in some ways it feels like I’m already a couple degrees removed from it.  By “it”, I mean the myriad faces of former strangers who, just days prior, were unknown and separated by more than eight thousand miles.  By “it”, I mean the sights and sounds of village after village, each unique, but also common in many ways, still yet stirring with activity.  By “it”, I mean the look of astonishment in the eyes of an agogo (grandmother) as we approached and, to her surprise, knelt down with her for a brief exchange of translated words and untranslated smiles.  By “it”, I mean the face-to-face encounter with a coming famine affecting millions in the region, gathering like a dark storm on the horizon.  By “it”, I mean the words of prayer and encouragement, mixed with healthy doses of laughter, shared with the God-sent staff and volunteers of World Relief at different locations.  The “it” is merely the two-letter word that fails miserable to stand in for a ten day whirlwind experience of injustice, fear, anxiety, joy, appreciation, gratitude and most of all, hope.

You see, when I get the inevitable question of, “How was your trip?” its hard to frame in just a few short words what I truly desire to communicate.  I know there is a difference between a courteous inquiry as a means of small talk to acknowledge someone’s return versus a genuine curiosity and interest in what God is doing in a distant part of the world.  Both are equally appreciated and both deserve meaningful answers.  It is never easy to sum up in a 60-second “elevator speech” all of what one experiences on a mission trip, but I believe it matters that we try to do it anyway.  If we fail to recognize the importance of sharing the experience with family, friends and coworkers, we, in some ways, are failing to make good on one of the most important aspects of mission trips – to shed light on the work that God is doing in this broken world.

I think the biggest takeaway for me is the hopefulness that I witnessed amidst some pretty dire circumstances.  The level of poverty one sees in the rural villages, not even a few miles outside of a town, is beyond what we can relate to here in the U.S.  That more than 50% of the populous lives at or below the poverty line is starkly evident well before the pavement turns to dirt with pockets of thatch-roofed, mud-brick dwellings dotting the landscape in all directions.  In the rural areas, most families survive on subsistence farming and little more.  They grow what they need to eat, maybe some extra for selling in the market, but that’s it.  There is no meaningful welfare or social security safety net, so the most vulnerable, i.e. children, widows, HIV positive and the elderly, are often marginalized at best or forsaken at worst.  The government does have some programs such as agriculture training, food distribution and emergency clinics, but for the most part, the local churches are the primary means of support for these communities.  They often are the ones offering pre-school education, support groups and, through associations with affiliated denominational churches, provide some medical clinics and feeding stations.  The churches seem to be on the front-line, more so than any governmental agency, when it comes to addressing the various needs of the rural communities.

That’s what is so exciting and, yes, hopeful, about what World Relief is doing in Malawi.  For the last 3 years, they have been implementing a holistic model of church empowerment as their integral mission focus and, from what we witnessed, it is bearing fruit.  The stated goal of their work is to empower the local church to serve the most vulnerable.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Think again.  The simplicity of the mission statement belies the breadth of the effort and even more so, the depth of the challenges, but it also points to a fundamental truth – that the church is the means by which God is building His kingdom out of the messy brokenness of this world.  In the next few posts, our team hopes to share additional details of how this work is being done and some of what we experienced that gives reason to be hopeful.  Thank you for joining us on this venture.

According to a recently published index based primarily on data from the ongoing Gallup World View World Giving Poll (2014), the United States ranks #2 in a survey of 145 countries around world for charitable giving, donations and volunteering.  This seems to align with the notion that, by and large, we live in a relatively generous country that rarely shies away from an opportunity to help others.  Whether it involves mobilizing resources and supplies in response to a natural disaster or getting people to rally around a good cause, my own anecdotal experience mostly affirms what the polls seem to indicate.  This is not to pat ourselves on the back, nor should we diminish the good work that happens inside and beyond our borders as a result.  Rather, for me, it begs a central question: Why do we give?

There is certainly no shortage of smart people with doctoral degrees who could offer up a myriad of social-behavioral theories of mutual benevolence and why our evolutionary progress should lead us to promoting the common good of others.  But then again, why?  It seems that these theories can only go so far before they run headlong into the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest which generally tends to look out for “number one”.  At the risk of being overly simplistic, I find it hard to accept that the sole reason we donate, give and volunteer stems from an evolutionary vestige within our DNA, honed only by external social circumstances that surround us.

Obviously, our personal world-view will tend to shape any type of argument for or against a naturalistic origin of benevolence and mine is stridently that of a Christian’s perspective.  Looking through this lens, the answer to the initial question takes on a spiritual hue that others may not completely share, but I am convinced that upon reflection, most will agree that the answer must go deeper than mere evolutionary expedience.  You see, the nominal Christian world-view says that the world was perfectly created by God but was thrust into a state of imperfection with the introduction of sin committed by Adam and Eve.  That sin, our sin, is a part of the broken perfection that once was and our Creator has been desperate to restore all of creation ever since.  Irrespective of your particular viewpoint on God, one should have no trouble sensing this brokenness and disorder.  We look around and bear witness to much injustice and hurt around the world and can’t help but feel burdened, if not crushed at times, by waves of empathetic sadness or even guilt that comes from the knowledge that it exists.

To me, the answer to the question lies both inside and outside of us.  That we feel the burden or slightest empathy cannot be explained by broad-brushed strokes from the Darwinian inkwell.  They cannot satisfy the ultimate question of why people in one part of the world (or city) should have any concern for people of a different race or ethnicity in another part of the world (or city).  There is something common inside of us that goes beyond some shared DNA markers that binds our co-existence.  Just as an artist marks his work with a signature, or a clock maker uses a proprietary gear or mechanism, we too are marked by our Creator.  His perfect fingerprints are found in our imperfect hearts and personalities causing us to stir at the sight of injustice and become moved for the most vulnerable among us.  It’s not so much who we are, but rather who He is.  But we know that it is not enough to respond internally to the brokenness that surrounds us, but by His design, we feel the compelling need to act in order to do something about it.  Like the sound of one hand clapping, sympathetic feelings for an injustice are silent without the external action meeting the need.  It is no less than the indwelling of our Creator’s love for all of creation that drives us to action, whether we recognize or not.  We literally are His hands and feet in the world, becoming co-laborers in the redemptive, restoration of all that was lost since sin entered the world.  In this way, the answer to the question originally asked, “why do we give?” rightly and simply points us to the One who gave us everything.

In our modernized society, the dual concepts of saving and borrowing money seem as basic as housing or going to school.  They just are.  We grow up with at least a basic understanding that to achieve nominal success in life, we need to exercise fiscal responsibility, being good stewards of what God has blessed us with.  Furthermore, obtaining credit or loans, are a normal part of our financial system.  Of course, the judicious and wise use of credit is something we all can aspire to in order to limit our exposure to being “over-leveraged” or “over-extended.”  But have you ever considered what life would be like if you only had access to a minimum wage with no means (or conceptual understanding) of saving what little money was coming in?

As we are learning through our work with World Relief, the Savings For Life (SFL) program seeks to challenge the normative, cultural understanding of finances within the rural villages where income is meager and the concept of saving for an improved future outlook is rare.  Daily life is more about survival and subsistence in these contexts so it makes sense that saving and credit, as basic as they seem to us, can be completely foreign.  Or, they may have access to loans, but the interest rate or terms are so predatory that the borrower has no realistic chance of ever paying back the principle, stuck in a downward spiral of compounding interest.  That is where SFL comes in.

World Relief is creating SFL groups within communities, sometimes, but ideally implemented through the local church.  In these groups, the members are challenged to establish an oversight panel of peers in order to foster mutual trust and transparency.  Participants then can determine how much they will contribute on a regular basis and are held accountable each week as the finances are reviewed at group meetings.  The pooled funds are then loaned with reasonable rates of interest and terms to members of the group which they can use to establish a new business or for school or supplies.  Through SFL, the members are gaining more than access to credit, they are gaining hope for a brighter future and learning to better leverage the resources that God has blessed them with.

For more information on the Savings for Life program, please follow the link below.

 http://www.worldrelief.org/blog/savings-for-life%E2%84%A2-empowering-the-poor-in-rwanda

By Jeff Porter

Well, its been a busy year since our last mission trip to Malawi.  It was a year filled with rich blessings, some losses, some wins and more transition for our family.  We unexpectedly moved again, this time back into town and closer to our community of friends and family.  With all the busyness of life, the idea of returning to Africa for another mission trip, at least for me, seemed unlikely, if not, a little ambitious.

By most accounts, last year’s short-term trip to the Salima District with the World Relief team was a successful one.  Our team had put together a team-building workshop for the WR staff using Gallup Strengthsfinder as the core curriculum to help them identify God-given strengths in themselves and each other.  These strengths, if properly recognized and cultivated, would allow them to communicate with one another more effectively and find ways to increase productivity utilizing a limited staff stretched across a wide geographic area.  That was the core mission objective, though, upon reflection, it was only a small part of what God was up to when He thought that trip (and our team) up.

That brings me to a few months ago when the notice went out about another mission trip with World Relief.  My initial response, as expected, was to dismiss the idea.  Perhaps it was someone else’s turn, I told myself.  Alison similarly was noncommittal, although she probably knew deep down she would be called to return.  It wasn’t a question of value, having seen first hand the powerful result of ordinary people stepping out in faith to be used by God.  But after leading several trips over as many years and seeing the vast amount of need, it started to feel overwhelming with the hard work of these trips amounting to little more than drops in the ocean.  In the midst of this line of thought, I started to question my own purpose in going on another short-term mission and weighing it against the responsibilities at home, the costs and the time away from our kids.

As we talked and prayed through another opportunity to work with World Relief, we were reminded of the true picture of poverty, from the Christian’s perspective that hinges on four (4) key relationships: with God, with Self, with Others and with Creation (“When Helping Hurts”, Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert).  Within this paradigm, poverty is properly seen as a lack or diminished sense of at least one of these key relationships meaning all of us are in some state of poverty this side of Heaven.  Further, through this lens, it was more evident that the larger goal of mission work is to relieve poverty in ALL forms, not just material (our relationship with Creation), which seems to be the specialty of western culture.  Therefore, its less about the specific task or mission objective than it is about restoring some aspects of relationship with God, Self, Others and Creation.

With this perspective in mind, I have come to revise my prior conceptions and now recognize the importance of taking the long view on short term missions.  Rather than view them as seemingly disparate and disjointed efforts by various churches and organizations, the long view suggests that these are all part of a greater work, orchestrated by our heavenly Father, who is weaving a tapestry of redemption through restored relationships within Creation.

In the posts to follow, we will be sharing details and thoughts about our upcoming mission trip in July as well as some “points of interest” along the journey that we hope is only beginning.  To be sure, there is much to do and we look forward to the unfolding story!