Urban Leadership Foundation
A hub for leadership training in cities and among the world's 1.4 billion slum-dwellers
The Role of the Affluent Church
Viv Grigg (from Cry of the Urban Poor)
Reference: Grigg, V. (2005). Cry of the Urban Poor. GA, USA: Authentic Media in partnership with World Vision.
Rich churches immediately think of giving financial help when they think of the poor. This is not the primary need. Far more important is giving personnel who can impart spiritual life and technical skills. Nevertheless, there is a place for the transfer of capital. It needs to be done in a such a way that it does not distort the local cultural situation, impose goals on the poor church by the affluent church, nor create dependency.
Having said that, in the case of widows and orphans, refugees, and others for whom the calamity is immediate, or for whom no long term solutions are available, direct aid is most appropriate. In such situations, dependency on the church is normative and not unhealthy. Thus child sponsorship programs, for example, are a good biblical response to what is generally an insoluble problem apart from continuing input from outside.
One of the underlying theses in the theory of capitalism is that creativity must be encouraged and released. This is derived from a cultural understanding of Genesis 1, where God created humankind in his creative image. A second thesis is that the availability of capital is a crucial factor in generating this release of creativity. In reality, seed capital for ideas generated by the people themselves is a means of fostering entrepreneurial ability. Long-term input to ongoing projects, however, results in dependent relationships that are not healthy.
Giving scholarships to the poor so that they may get training in fields that are expanding is another good way for the affluent church to serve the poor. Scholarships are generally not open to significant corruption nor dependency, and fit with cultural patterns that enable the poor to emerge from poverty.
Our aim needs to be to get the means—and control of the means—of industrial production into the hands of the poor. This involves transfer of expertise, work patterns, management skills and capital. The diagram on the next page further explains what the upper and middle classes can do to fight against poverty and empower the poor.
As indicated in the diagram on page 278, transfer of seed capital through loans or a credit cooperative is a significant way to assist a poor church. This enables the poor themselves to decide on the use of the money for activities that people already may have initiated. The poor are wise. They know which proposals from other squatters have the potential for success or failure. The people can organize cooperatives in such a way that each person, as he or she repays a loan, gives an extra “thank offering,” thus increasing the sum total of capital available and covering for cases of failure and non-repayment.
Transferring expansion capital for functioning businesses is another option at a higher level, as is the transfer of capital for small business development. Neither of these is easy to develop without the decision-making remaining to a large extent in the hands of the donor. Because of this, the failure rate is far higher than in cooperatives.
Funding for community leadership programs also increases the net level of skills in the community. This may pay for management courses, community organization courses, or field trips to observe projects in other communities that are models and can be copied. This kind of funding, however, while significant, can also lead to dependency.
The primary focus should be on the transferal of skills and value systems. This can best be done by supporting an incarnational development worker in the squatter area.
Confrontation with injustice
For those in the upper echelons of government, industry or military leadership, a Christian commitment to the poor involves working to restructure society for their uplift.
In the present world economic milieu, this commitment to the poor leads to a commitment to theories of democratic capitalism that have been transformed by ethics and social conscience to include many socialist goals.
While recognizing the demonic factors of capitalism, it has obviously been more effective in generating significant city-wide economic uplift for the poor than has socialism.1 It provides more government capital for housing, education, and health than does socialism. On the other hand capitalism, has never provided sufficient housing for the poor, so that in certain areas governments must take social responsibility.
As we reflect on the nature of God and humankind, we are led to severely oppose multinational control of economies, and to support cooperative patterns of profit sharing within industries as ways of protecting producers from foreign exploitation.
In terms of politics, a Christian posture means confronting corruption among rich politicians, military elite, and businessmen. It also means seeking long-term democratic structures that will enable the poor to have a voice, and hence to defuse violence. These roles are not dissimilar to those proclaimed by the prophets in the Old Testament.
It is important that movements of churches among the poor and among the elite have a strong theology of social transformation. One hundred years after his ministry began, Wesley transformed England because his theology dealt comprehensively with the issues of society that caused poverty. Sadly, in Brazil, where there are great movements among the poor, Pentecostal theology has not provided the 29 evangelicals in Parliament with the theology they need to transform their nation.
The outline of such a theology of social transformation is the genesis of another book. Meanwhile there is work to do among the poor.
Notes
1. Berger, Peter, The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions About Prosperity, Equality and Liberty, New York: Basic Books, 1987, p. 213.
2. Galbraith, John Kenneth, The Nature of Mass Poverty, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 321-2.