Smart Compassion

How to Stop "Doing Outreach" and Start Making Change

Wesley Furlong

• Publisher: Herald Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781513800394
• eBook ISBN: 9781513800455
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

When is doing good not good enough? When does “doing outreach” actually do harm?

Smart Compassion calls Christians to strategic, prayerful, and biblically based approaches to compassion. With evangelical Anabaptist convictions and insights from psychology, Wesley Furlong uses his background as a church leader and nonprofit founder to guide readers through the three aspects of smart compassion needed for families and neighborhoods to flourish: collective empowerment, radical hospitality, and healing presence. In the vein of When Helping Hurts, discover wise strategies that bring Jesus’ love to your neighbors. Shift your paradigm from fixing everybody’s problems to spending yourself well. Learn how to hold together justice and evangelism, worldly wisdom and divine revelation, action and prayer.

For anyone who wants to make a difference but doesn’t know how, Smart Compassion offers a contagious vision and practical steps for real change.

1

When Doing Good Isn’t Good Enough

One of Robin’s earliest memories is being molested by her grandfather. The family faithfully attended church, yet there was a secret contained on the seventeenth pew, where they sat every Sunday for twelve years. “I grew up with my mom and grandparents. It was a weird, isolated, and lonely childhood. My grandfather was abusive throughout my childhood, but I didn’t know it wasn’t normal until much later,” she says now, recounting vivid details with an eerie detachment. “My presence was my mother’s worst nightmare and supposedly the reason she never did anything with her life,” Robin recalls. “She reminded me of my inconvenient presence on a regular basis with her cutting words. I imagine she was molested by my grandpa as well. I don’t think people can really have as much anger as she did for no reason.”

“If only I had known!” is a common sentiment of many people who find out that they have been near those who suffer in silence. If only people in Robin’s congregation had picked up on the warning signs. If only people had been aware of the prevalence and impact of early childhood trauma. If only. . .

The warning signs were definitely there. When she was young, Robin told strangers she wanted to live with them, and she acted out in class with highly destructive and inappropriate behavior. She was labeled as difficult, hyperactive, angry, and oversensitive. By the time she was thirteen, she had run away from home on numerous occasions.

Did you see someone like Robin this week? She is that one teenager who is always borrowing your daughter’s clothes and never returning them. Perhaps you saw her hanging out at the park when you knew it was a school day. Maybe you’ll see her walking around the mall on a Tuesday morning.

Knowledge makes a difference.

One of the greatest barriers hindering churches from making a significant impact in their communities is a lack of knowledge. It isn’t apathy, insensitivity, or a lack of resources. When I work with a congregation that wants to engage with its community, I reveal local data that showcases needs in the neighborhood right around the church. The response from members is almost always, “We had no idea! If we had known, we would have responded differently.”

I don’t doubt it for a moment. Knowledge matters, and the good news is that knowledge has never been more accessible. In the time it takes you to read this introduction, you could learn the number of reports of human trafficking in your area, and could find out how your area compares to state and national averages on everything from teen births, sexually transmitted diseases, overdose deaths, access to primary and mental healthcare, and graduation rates to the number of children in poverty, single parenthood rates, crime indexes, housing problems, and much more.

For example, when you discover research like the landmark study of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), which sheds light on the surprising prevalence of trauma in our homes, you learn that Robin’s story, while it might seem rare, is actually commonplace. You learn that a congregation’s inability to minister to her is a reflection of our difficulty in seeing what we’re not looking for. When you are familiar with the research on adverse childhood experiences and the impact of one’s biography on one’s biology, your knowledge will help you identify and respond to children and families, especially those experiencing trauma.

In the pages that follow, we’ll look at ways to overcome the knowledge gap. Knowledge really does make a difference.

Is more always better?

The idea that knowledge is required for smart compassion came from a string of failures. As a young pastor, my vision for our community in southern Florida was a bit like that of a high school student studying a foreign language: show up, get a good grade, but don’t worry about actually gaining fluency. Participation points were enough; real change wasn’t the goal. Unlike the highly motivated students in my high school who had recently emigrated from a Spanish-speaking country and were studying English, I lacked the vision, desperation, and immersion to become fluent in Spanish. Similarly, as a pastor, as long as I could say about our congregation, “We’re showing up and our grades are good,” I was pleased. I lacked the vision, desperation, and immersion to see real change in our community.

Then, in 2008, something dramatic happened: the economy tanked. Overnight, our city became the epicenter of the national recession. Life in Cape Coral, Florida—a city that became known for leading the nation in foreclosures—became almost eerie, and it happened really fast. Our beautiful coastal city, with more canals than any other city in the world, now looked as if it had been hit by the zombie apocalypse. I’d drive to work and see overgrown lawns and boarded-up homes almost everywhere I looked. I’d walk into a coffee shop that had always been buzzing with the energy of people laughing and talking, and it would be almost empty. Every day, in every office, the members of my congregation and I would listen to coworkers talk about job loss, relocation, or downsizing in some way or another. The city was enveloped by an inescapable and pervasive sadness. Unemployment and foreclosure rates were in a free fall. Crime, domestic violence, and overdose deaths were spiking, and on the cycle went.

We discovered a young homeless woman sleeping in our church. My brother mentored a boy for months before he learned the boy’s family slept in their car in the parking lot of the local Walmart. Our city had no homeless shelter, and the needs were growing by the month.

What do you do in a place like this? I wasn’t sure what our role as a church was in the community. Was housing now suddenly a part of our church’s mission? To what degree should we expand our focus and commit ourselves to the flourishing of our community? I wasn’t sure. Even if I had been sure, I wouldn’t have known how we could make a real difference.

In the absence of knowledge, my strategy became “More is better.” If we collected 25,000 pounds of food last year, let’s try to collect 40,000 pounds this year: “C’mon church! Let’s not let anyone go hungry!” Was food the most pressing need in our community? Sure. If someone asked, “What’s your strategy for the food drive?” I’d say, “To help the food bank.” If the person asked about the deeper challenges underlying our efforts, I’d say, “Let’s not get too analytical; just put some extra cans in the cart.” We generously and indiscriminately distributed resources, without much thought to measurements of success. Anecdotes of success were sufficient. In the absence of a real vision for change, all I needed were a couple of heartwarming stories to feel good about our efforts.

In addition to the “More is better” approach to community engagement, I leaned toward scalable, efficient, and transaction-oriented outreach programs, with priority given to those that could most directly translate into church growth. Food and clothing drives were perfect examples. They were easy, tangible, and scalable, and everyone could participate. My thought was: once we discover a need, we create a program to meet the need, and then people’s gratitude will be a conveyor belt to a front-row seat on Sunday morning. My rationale might not have been quite that cavalier, but looking back, I’m amazed at how little thought I gave to the question of our role in the healing and flourishing of our community. We were good at “doing outreach,” but we had no vision for real change.

Every detail . . . except one

A single event in 2008 rattled my perspective enough to make me go back to the drawing board and ask some basic questions about what to do in response to the increasing stresses and brokenness in our community.

Christmas was approaching, and a nearby school had a large number of children from families who were struggling to make ends meet. So our church decided to throw an elaborate Christmas party for these families. The idea started to snowball as we began to plan it. We might not have known how to create jobs, assist with housing, or help much with life-controlling addictions, but we could throw a good party! We raised a large amount of money for gifts and grocery cards, and we worked hard at all kinds of preparations. Then, on one December evening, we put on a red-carpet event complete with a catered meal, theatrical performance, family pictures, gift bags, and customized presents for each child. We had carefully thought through every detail . . . except one.

How would this generous gift affect these families?

That night, it was a single encounter that changed everything for me. I was greeting people in our lobby toward the end of the party when two boys ran up to a couple of older women from our congregation. The little boys wrapped their arms around the women’s legs and said, “Thank you! Thank you! How did you know?” They turned around to their father, who was standing off at a distance, and yelled, “Daddy! These are the women who bought us the presents!”

It was the look in his eyes that broke the whole event for me. That father was embarrassed, belittled at not being able to provide for his own kids. From the look on his face, he wanted to hide. But he had to show up for his kids to receive their gifts. His dignity was the price of admission. And he was willing to pay it.

I watched this man’s reaction, and knew that embarrassment was exactly what I would feel if I were in his shoes. What are we doing?! I thought. Why hadn’t we secretly given the presents to the parents to give to their children on Christmas? Or even better, why hadn’t we let them buy presents at a reduced rate so that they had more options and more buy-in?

What we had done, I suddenly realized, was the equivalent of malpractice. Our hearts were in the right place, but my heart sank as I realized how misguided our efforts had been. We had based our response on reckless assumptions, no education, and no real willingness to assume the posture that true compassion requires. Had we really spent a ton of money only to cut off someone’s dignity in an ill-advised attempt to “make a difference”?

Back to the drawing board

I walked away from that Christmas event dismayed by my own arrogance. I started to think about all the other projects we were involved in both as a church and a family. I began to stand back and consider if it really was a good thing to let our ten-year-old children serve food to homeless men and women. I had told myself for several years that children learn compassion and become less entitled by serving others. My heart had been in the right place, but I was beginning to realize how misguided my thinking was. Had I actually let the homeless become an object lesson for our kids?

In the wake of these changes in our community, our congregation went back to the drawing board. For us, the drawing board began with prayer. There was no strategizing at first. We gathered leaders of our congregation, and we began to pray this prayer: “God, give us your heart for your people, and help us see them as you see them. Teach us what we’re supposed to do in this city.”

We began to deconstruct everything we thought we knew. First, we began by getting rid of our assumption that we even had the first clue how to best help our community! We invited the church to join us for a forty-day period of prayer and fasting.

This time of brokenness, prayer, and fasting became the catalyst for the wonderful things that would come. We became more intentional in getting to know our community. We wanted to be more familiar with our own backyard than anyone else was. How did we do that?

Staff and volunteers from our congregation went to the people who had the closest contact with our community: educators, nonprofit leaders, police officers, emergency room nurses, and leaders of other churches. We approached these community leaders with two questions: “What’s working well?” and “What’s most needed?”

We discovered some hidden treasures in our city. There were churches and nonprofits running fantastic ministries that few people knew about. The need to “get the word out” about these services was one major theme of our conversations. One practical way we responded to this need was by creating a small resource guide. We distributed it everywhere in our community so that everyone would know where to turn for help when a crisis hit. We quickly distributed these little resource guides throughout the city—to police officers, grocery stores, banks, emergency rooms, local businesses, and individuals.

We also learned that clothing drives, food pantries, and church-run thrift stores dotted our city’s landscape. Yet in our city of 170,000 people, there wasn’t a single homeless shelter. Despite the exponential growth in opioid abuse, there was no inpatient drug and alcohol treatment center. Because there weren’t enough approved foster homes in the city, most nights there were children sleeping in the offices of government social workers.

What do we do with this information in the church? I remember the first time I shared the information about kids in foster care sleeping in government buildings. I showed our congregation the specific ratio of the number of foster children to the number of licensed and active foster homes. I showed the foster care facility on a map and shared the stories of kids sleeping in social workers’ offices in a government building for that week alone. I then drew a ten-mile radius around the office building and asked, “How many churches do you think are inside this radius?” There was a collective gasp in the room as little red dots suddenly lit up the map. Thirty-one churches within ten miles surrounded the building, and yet children facing unspeakable trauma were forced to sleep in offices.

Today, when I share this kind of information with congregations, the response to such jolting realities is always the same: We had no idea! We didn’t either at first. The problem for our congregation wasn’t our lack of concern. It wasn’t even apathy. It was our lack of knowledge. We needed a clear vision and a smart strategy.

We needed to learn smart compassion.

One open door

In the early days of our work, I came across a story that captured the essence of the most important shift we needed to make. Just before sunset on a Friday evening in 1859, a man named Henri Dunant walked in utter dismay across the Italian countryside, surveying a fifteen-mile battlefield where forty thousand soldiers lay dead and dying. The Battle of Solferino was the most savage battle the country had ever seen.

Dunant stood in utter disbelief that so many wounded soldiers had been abandoned. The nearby townspeople had secluded themselves behind locked doors, waiting for the horrific sounds of the wounded to die down.

In a moment of outrage and desperation, Dunant ran through the streets rallying the townspeople, crying out, “All are brothers, all are brothers!” The people responded. They began to open their doors to the hurting and wounded soldiers. Before Saturday dawned, several makeshift hospitals were saving hundreds of lives. It was an amazing feat: on Friday night the townspeople hid inside their homes, unable to fathom the hell outside; on Saturday morning, a hope had exploded into action.

All of this began with one open door. It began with one person looking out and discovering that the “problem” was simply another human being in need!

Everyone who opened their door that night had every reason not to. Their apprehensions likely compounded exponentially as they thought through what-if scenarios. What if they rob us? What if I catch a disease? What if there’s a backlash for helping our enemies? I’ve heard those men are savages. Who knows? Maybe they’re getting what they deserve. It’s absolutely chaotic out there. I’m not good with blood. This house is a wreck. I’ve got a thousand things piling up here. If there’s time later, I’ll see what I can do.

It takes a mix of compassion, selflessness, and boldness to sidestep all of those justifications and open your door. In Solferino, as neighbors began bringing food and supplies and blankets, caring for the wounded, and noticing others doing the same, they began to experience the energy and hope of collective empowerment. As they opened themselves and their homes to those in need, they drew near to the other through radical hospitality. Their close attention to the specific needs and areas that tilted the balance between life and death is a picture of healing presence.

It’s often easier to close our doors. When our consciences nag us, we can toss out a few gifts to justify our separation from those in crisis. Opening our doors is a powerful first act.

When collective empowerment, radical hospitality, and healing presence come together, you’ll always find new life. A Friday and Saturday in Italy changed battlefields forever. Dunant’s prayer—his plea that all are siblings; all are family—changed modern history. Dunant’s actions marked the beginning of what we know as the International Movement of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

What about your community? How well do you know it? Is doing good no longer good enough? Do you have a vision for real change as you pray, “Go...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Note: Dragging the Piano into the Street
• 1. When Doing Good Isn’t Good Enough
• 2. Compassion + Wisdom
• Part I: Healing Presence: Become a Conduit of God’s Love
• Part II: Radical Hospitality: Extend Your Family
• Part III: Collective Empowerment: Open the Right Doors
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• The Author