Tag Archives: Sustainable Change

Part 3 – Intro to God’s Plan

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If you read the last post, you know that my wife urged me to close my company and take a year off of work (a sabbatical) to figure out what God wanted to do with our family. That year ended with a Biblical model for serving the poor and our commitment to empower a group of single mothers and help them gain the skills they needed to become everything God created them to be. Now that we’re up to speed, let’s continue with this post.

Watching my grandchildren grow and their thirst for knowledge and independence reminds me of one of the first things I learned during the sabbatical. That day in April 2002 when I read Genesis, it wasn’t the first time I read the creation story. In fact, it wasn’t even the first time I had read through the book of Genesis. I had failed many times at reading through the Bible, although I would always finish Genesis before February came and I abandoned my New Year’s resolutions, but that day was different. My reading began with the same verses that most every “Read through the Bible” venture begins with.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. (Gen. 1:1-2)

The statement “The earth was formless and empty” brought up my first set of questions. For the first time, I thought about the fact that God had a completely blank canvas that He was working with. It was a clean slate. God could have made the world, and everything in it, any way He wanted to. Why did He create the things He created? Why did He create them to do what they do? Why did He say that what He created was good?

I did some research and found that the word translated as “good” in the Hebrew means that it was perfect. It was beautiful, better, or even best. He created exactly what He was trying to create, but I didn’t understand why. As I continued to read through the creation story and into chapter 2, that’s where things got interesting. I noticed something I’d never seen before.

This may not shock some of you, but it did me. I learned that God had a plan. He didn’t randomly create things for no reason. God had a plan for how He would take care of humanity and how all of creation would work together within that plan for our good. Click To Tweet My grandchildren’s desire to learn and grow is a perfect example of God’s plan at work.

We see His plan played out in the life of every child. At a certain age they don’t want us to take care of them anymore. They want to begin doing things independently. They want to care for themselves. Their desire is expressed through words that strike fear in the heart of every parent as they ring through their ears: I wanna do it. At that moment they take their stand and begin their journey towards independence.

For some reason, God created Adam with the need for a constant supply of food and water. It’s important we remember that Adam was created with a need for these things. God could have created Adam with no needs whatsoever because, remember, He was working with a blank slate and He is God and could have done it however He wanted. For His creation to be considered “perfect,” humans would die of thirst and starvation without food and water.

God provided for those needs through the garden. God also established a plan for Adam to meet those needs independently. We see God’s plan introduced in Genesis 2. As soon as God created Adam, in verse seven, His plan was put into place. God’s plan included four Fundamental Elements that are required for us to provide for our needs.

The Fundamental Elements are Resources, Opportunity, Instruction, and Relationships. With these four elements, Adam would be able to live and have a full life. In the next post, we’ll look at each element and where they are found in the life of Adam.

If you don’t want to wait for the next overview of Breaking the Broken – click here to order your copy today.

The Kid Around the Corner

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I was recently at a dinner and a church was being recognized for their outreach and service. As the pastor talked about how their church impacts their community he said, “We are very active in our community. Every month we do a clothing and food give away and give backpacks to the kids every fall.”

A picture popped up on the overhead of this Pastor and a child as he went on, “This is the child that we support in a third world country.  We got to meet him last fall on a mission trip and our support is helping this young man break free from the bonds of poverty.”

As the crowd rose to their feet with applause, to shouts of “Amen”, “Great Job” and “Praise God”, I wondered, “Why do we want to break the bonds of poverty in  Third World countries but the kid around the corner only gets a backpack and a box of food?”

“Why do we want to break the bonds of poverty in 3rd World countries, but the kid around the corner gets a backpack and a box of food?” Click To Tweet

I have started asking this question to Pastors and have received blank stares from some and a grimaced reality from others.

One Pastor responded, “Exactly”, as he proudly told me about their monthly food and giveaway programs. I am fairly confident he did not understand the question.

I asked his question to social media and got some very good responses.  While there are thousands of reasons, below are the thoughts of others as well as a few of my own as to why we only meet the immediate need to the kid around the corner.

  1. Some have a superman complex. They need someone to save. People on the other side of the world are not a threat. If you help the kid around the corner too much in ways that lead to independence and this person that used to be on the receiving end is now your peer/equal you have lost your power.
  2. It’s easy to write a check, pat yourself on the back, and move on. Not so easy to make a commitment, invest time in someone’s life, then see them continue to suffer. We live in the age of instant gratification in which we think 140 characters in ten seconds should yield a miraculous return on our investment. Besides, it’s harder to help someone you will see again because they might expect more of you, Rob! People don’t even want to walk across the street and meet their neighbor for fear of getting too close, much less look a hungry child in the eye because we might be compelled to try to help in some way, and then feel the pain when we fail to make a significant difference.
  3. Your post reminds me of a fav quote of mine from World Relief leader, Jenny Yang:
    “Charity removes us from the hard work of building relationships with people who make us uncomfortable. We have to transition from charity to justice.”
  4. We live in America…the land of opportunity. If somebody really wants to change, then they will change. Besides, we pay our taxes and the government takes care of them. They give them educational opportunities, healthcare and meet their immediate need. We limit our service because if this kid really wanted out, he’d “pull himself up by his bootstraps.”
  5. We alleviate our responsibility by not acknowledging the problem here in our own backyard. If we begin to invest ourselves in real solutions in our own communities, our reality will have to change. It could be considered a form of denial or self-protection to ignore the real needs of the kid around the corner, but help those who don’t really affect you in any way.
  6. Helping the kid around the corner is scary. It’s cool to go to an unknown, possibly dangerous place in a third world country for a couple of days, but the kid around the corner lives in a community that we try to avoid. He lives in communities with gangs, drugs and violence. We wouldn’t want to go there and we certainly would not our children to build a friendship with that kid.                                                                                       Last but certainly not least:
  7. We don’t really love our neighbor as ourselves. We want to do the minimum so that our ministry box gets checked and we can go home knowing we are good Christians.

The problem is, we are not being good Christians. We are not loving our neighbors as ourselves. To love the kid around the corner as you love yourself, you have to put yourself in their shoes. You’d have to ask the hard question, “What would I want if I were in their situation.”

Maybe a better question would be “What would I do if my child were the kid around the corner?” Click To Tweet

Treating the Symptom Never Ends the Struggle

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783 million people lack access to safe, sanitary water.

I was recently doing some work around the house and had the radio on and heard a commercial for an organization that is trying to address this crisis. I was surprised and encouraged because of what I didn’t hear. I didn’t hear a famous person make an appeal. I didn’t hear that for the cost of a cup of coffee I could provide a case of water for a family on the other side of the world and I didn’t hear about their efforts to load up planes and boats and take bottles of water to villages in third world countries.

Nope, I didn’t hear any of that. What did I hear that encouraged me?

I heard about a group that is actually working to end this crisis by helping people gain permanent access to clean water. I was impressed as I listened to the commercial because they were trying to create “sustainable solutions” to this crisis that claims the lives of millions of people.

Why don’t we deal with other social issues in this same manner? Why do we consistently treat the symptoms instead of providing sustainable solutions for those we serve? People being thirsty is only a symptom of the real problem, which is lack of access to safe, clean water. Many of our ministries treat other symptoms, but treating the symptoms never ends the struggle.

While we must meet the immediate need and provide assistance with our ministry resources, these efforts are lacking. God calls us to do more.

God calls us to provide life and healing in the lives of those we serve. Click To Tweet

The real work is in providing long-term, sustainable change.

Yes, we absolutely must provide a box of food for a hungry family or help a single mother with a light bill, but that’s not  that’s not the long-term solution and that’s not where we end. We have to take the next step and provide sustainable solutions. Let’s help them gain the resources, opportunity and instruction necessary to find employment and then let’s walk with them in relationships and help them overcome their struggles.

How about a job’s ministry attached to the food program? What about getting business owners in your church or community to take a chance on someone who doesn’t have the greatest work history and then work with that employer and their new employee to help them build a new work history.

If you are interested in learning more about creating sustainable change in the lives of those you serve, there are a few options as you move forward.

  1. Begin by ordering your copy of Breaking the Broken and learning more about God’s plan to provide life and healing to the poor and hurting.
  2. Contact us and learn how we can help your church or organization develop specific solutions to address the needs of the least, the lonely and the lost in your community.
  3. Click here and join us for the Sustainable Change Conference 2017.

If we really want to “serve like Jesus” then we need to provide sustainable change, because, like I said, Treating the symptom never ends the struggle Click To Tweet.