From Dependence to Dignity

Brian Fikkert,Russell Mask

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780310518136
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The church of Jesus Christ finds itself at a very unique moment in history. The average Christian living in the "economically advanced countries" enjoys a level of prosperity that has been unimaginable for most of human history. At the same time, over 2.5 billion people in the Majority World (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) live on less than $2 per day, with many of these people being Christians. Ironically, it is amongst the "least of these" in the Global South that the global church is experiencing the most rapid growth.

All of this raises profound challenges to the global church. How can churches and missionaries in the Majority World effectively address the devastating poverty both inside their congregations and just outside their doors?How can churches in the economically advanced countries effectively partner with Global South churches in this process? The very integrity of the global church's testimony is at stake, for where God's people reside, there should be no poverty (Deuteronomy 15: 4; Acts 4: 34).

For the past several decades, microfinance (MF) and microenterprise development (MED) have been the leading approaches to poverty alleviation. MF/MED is a set of interventions that allow households to better manage their finances and start small businesses. From remote churches in rural Africa to the short-term missions programs of mega-churches in the United States, churches and missionaries have taken the plunge into MF/MED, trying to emulate the apparent success of large-scale relief and development organizations. Unfortunately, most churches and missionaries find this to be far more difficult than they had imagined. Repayment rates on loans are low and churches typically end up with struggling programs that require ongoing financial subsidies. Everybody gets hurt in the process: donors, relief and development agencies, churches and missionaries, and--most importantly—the poor people themselves.

This book explains the basic principles for successfully utilizing microfinance in ministry. Drawing on best practice research and their own pioneering work with the Chalmers Center, Brian Fikkert and Russell Mask chart a path for churches and missionaries to pursue, a path that minimizes the risks of harm, relies on local resources, and enables missionaries and churches to minister in powerful ways to the spiritual and economic needs of some of the poorest people on the planet.

The insights of microfinance can play a tremendous role in helping to stabilize poor households, removing them from the brink of disaster and enabling them to make the changes that are conducive to long-term progress. Moreover, when combined with evangelism and discipleship, a church-centered microfinance program can be a powerful tool for holistic ministry—one that is empowering for the poor and devoid of the dependencies plaguing most relationships between churches in economically advanced countries and churches in poor nations.

PART 1

REPLACING DEPENDENCY WITH DIGNITY

CHAPTER 1

MASAI MISSIONS

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.

— 1 Corinthians 1:26 – 29

Because of the [savings and credit association] and through the teaching we are receiving, I have accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. And he has changed my life.

— Member of a church-centered microfinance ministry in Togo, West Africa¹

A missionary stands in the front of the church gathering and shares her vision for her ministry in rural Kenya: “I want to be able to help the Masai girls far in the interior regions. The Masai fathers do not want to invest in their daughters’ education because their daughters will be lost to other families when they get married. I want to teach the girls living in the interior regions, so that I can empower them to be just like us.”

And what would it mean to be “just like us”? All of the women in this church gathering — including the missionary — are Masai, a seminomadic tribe in East Africa. Their ears strain under the weight of their heavy earrings. In fact, their entire bodies seem to strain under the weight of their difficult lives. Masai women are viewed as property by their husbands, relegating them to a second-class social status. They are subjected to backbreaking work, female genital mutilation, polygamy, and low levels of education. Indeed, the strain of this reality is evident on the faces of all the women gathered in this small church in rural Kenya.

But there is hope in their faces as well, hope that has come from the church’s ministry, a ministry that the women run themselves: a microfinance ministry. Lacking access to formal banking services, these women have always struggled to save and to borrow, and are often forced to go to loan sharks, who charge them exorbitant interest rates. As a result, they have had a hard time accumulating the money they so desperately need to start small businesses, pay school fees, purchase medicine, and respond to other opportunities and needs.

Microfinance addresses these problems by providing poor people with access to the financial services that they lack, services like savings, loans, insurance, and money transfers, in the hope of helping them to improve their economic situation and to get out of poverty. In the past several decades the microfinance movement has experienced explosive growth, becoming one of the leading strategies for alleviating poverty in the Global South (Africa, Asia, and Latin America). Therefore, in 2006 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the microfinance movement, and to the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh that he founded.

In the case of the Masai church, the women are engaging in a simple — but powerful — form of microfinance, a savings and credit association that has enabled the women to save and lend their own money to one another. No loan capital from outsiders is needed. This is a very poor church using its own human, financial, and spiritual resources to restore oppressed women and to send them out as missionaries to other oppressed women.

Savings and loan services can do all of that? No, not on their own. But this savings and credit association does far more than provide beneficial financial services. Group meetings consist of Bible study, prayer, singing, and fellowship, providing these “second-class citizens” with a profound encounter with the ultimate solution to all of our needs: Jesus Christ.

Indeed, the women share how God has used the savings and credit association to bless their lives in multiple ways. Despite being born into an inferior social status, each of these Masai ladies now resembles the woman described in Proverbs 31, whose hard work, entrepreneurship, and faith resulted in praise from her husband and children. They hold their heads high as they describe how the association has provided them with the capital and the dignity they need to start and expand their own small businesses and to meet a variety of economic needs. This is ministry — powerful, holistic, restorative, microfinance ministry.

One lady testifies, “I bought a cow with my loan of 20,000 Kenya shillings (approximately $300 US) and then sold it. I got good profit! When I finished this loan, I took another loan of 20,000. I am so happy. This has really uplifted me. I have now started another business of selling practice tests to students to help them prepare for the national exams. With the profits I am able to pay the school fees for my children.”

Another lady shares, “Some Masai women look at all my business activities and wonder if I am a pure Masai. They do not believe that a Masai woman can do all these things. But I am a pure Masai.”

How do the Masai men view the empowerment of these women? One lady, who became a cattle trader as a result of the microfinance ministry, beams as she states, “Because we are born-again Christians, the Lord has helped this group of ladies. My husband is very proud of me. The Masai men don’t think we women can do anything. But because I have been working so hard, my husband sees that I am a very important person.” Another woman states, “As a result of this group, my husband is proud of me. Even my children are proud. I am doing business and paying school fees for my children. I am even paying the tuition for my husband to get more education. All the family members are happy.”

And Masai outside the church are taking note. Seeing the improved economic and social status of these ladies, unbelievers are asking if they can join this microfinance ministry. The women anticipate that after these unbelievers join the savings and credit association, they will eventually become Christians and join their church.

And now the ladies are sending out one of their own as a missionary to other Masai girls far in the interior regions, so that those girls can be “just like us”: namely, restored image bearers who are seeking to restore others.²

The Upside-Down Kingdom Meets the Internet

This is more than just an inspiring story, for the Masai church’s microfinance ministry represents a highly significant development with both theological and strategic implications for the church and missions in the twenty-first century. Later chapters will unpack these implications in greater detail.

But for now, consider this: As the center of Christianity shifts from the West (North America and Western Europe) to the Global South, grinding poverty is on the front doorstep — and in the front pews — of the church of Jesus Christ. The Global South includes 2.6 billion people who live on less than two dollars per day, and it is amongst these very poor people that the church is experiencing its most rapid growth. As church historian Philip Jenkins notes, “The most successful new denominations target their message very directly at the have-nots, or rather, the have-nothings.”³

Moreover, as the church’s missionaries strive to take the gospel to unreached people groups, they will necessarily be doing so amongst the poorest people on the planet. According to one estimate, more than 80 percent of the “poorest of the poor” live in the “10/40 Window,” the band of countries that contain the vast majority of the remaining unreached people groups. “The poor are the lost, and the lost are the poor.”⁴

Reflecting on these developments, missiologist Andrew Walls states that the church of the twenty-first century will be a “church of the poor. Christianity will be mainly the religion of rather poor and very poor people with few gifts to bring except the gospel itself. And the heartlands of the Church will include some of the poorest countries on earth.”⁵ Similarly, Jenkins notes, the typical Christian in the world in the twenty-first century is not a businessperson attending a megachurch in an American suburb but rather a poor woman in a slum in Sao Paulo, Brazil, or a poor woman in a village in Nigeria⁶ . . . or a poor Masai woman in rural Kenya.

The Great Commission has been given to the church, and in the twenty-first century this church will largely consist of very poor people bringing the gospel to other very poor people.

Stop and think about this amazing reality: The advancement of the Great Commission in the twenty-first century is largely in the hands of some of the poorest people on the planet.

Can they possibly move things forward? The evidence from the Masai church and its missionary is a resounding “Yes!” Indeed, there is no better missionary to poor, oppressed Masai women than a formerly poor and oppressed Masai woman, whose entire life has been transformed through the power of Jesus Christ.

None of this should be too surprising, for God has chosen “the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:28 – 29). The kingdom of God is upside down; it has always been this way.

Coexisting with these materially poor churches is another group of people: Christians in wealthy nations who possess vastly greater financial, human, and technological resources than Christians have at any other point in history. Even the average Christian in North America or in other wealthy regions is one of the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth.

Indeed, there are greater disparities of wealth within the global body of Jesus Christ than at any time in its history. Moreover, due to the forces of globalization, these disparate portions of the body are coming into regular contact more than ever before. Indeed, short-term mission trips, email, the internet, Facebook, Skype, and Twitter have made our highly unequal world much smaller. As a result, poverty is on center stage for the entire body of Christ on a daily basis. And in the midst of all of this, 1 John 3:17 – 18 rings out across the ages:

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

All of these realities raise two profound questions for the body of Christ at the start of the twenty-first century:

1. How can materially poor churches and indigenous missionaries in the Global South advance the Great Commission in the context of widespread poverty inside their congregations and communities?

2. What are the roles of financially prosperous churches, mission agencies, Christian relief and development organizations, church-equipping ministries, and donors in this process?

From Dependence to Dignity

Unfortunately, all too often the answer to this set of questions is this: well-meaning churches and organizations from wealthy countries pursue strategies that either ignore churches in the Global South or that make them chronically dependent on foreigners for human and financial support.⁷ In the process, these well-meaning outsiders hinder the ability of these materially poor churches to use their own gifts — which are actually quite substantial — to help fulfill the Great Commission.

And a second dependency is also quite common. Poverty alleviation efforts in the Global South often undermine the dignity of poor individuals and communities, making them highly dependent on the churches and organizations that seek to serve them.⁸ Therefore, the capacities of the poor are weakened, and their poverty is actually deepened by the very churches and organizations that are trying to help them.

Hence, the body of Christ needs to move away from dependency-creating strategies and toward dignity-enhancing strategies with respect to two parties in ...