Lesson from Rwanda: Bang For the Buck

I tend to be cheap. Some of you know that. Other words I'd use to describe myself are thrifty and glad to make a good deal. I also know that God has created me and all people to be good stewards of God's things. This is one reason I am drawn to this ministry of empowering orphans in Africa that Zoe Ministry is doing. Doing the most good with the resources God has given to us seems to me to be a faithful act.

There are many orphans and vulnerable children in the world. And followers of the risen Christ are rightly concerned for them since Jesus tells us that as you have done it unto the least of these my children you have done it unto me.

Now you could adopt an orphan for $20 a month for 18 years or so. That would be $4320 to help feed, clothe, and teach an orphan child. Say you decided to do that for 80 orphan children. That would be $345,600. But if you adopt the sharing hope empowerment method that Zoe Ministry is using then you would help those same 80 orphans with $18,000 over three years because at the end of three years the children are equipped to provide food for themselves, have reliable income, provide for their own shelter and have the dignity that comes from not only providing for their family but giving generously to help empower other orphaned children.

This is the principle of empowerment and multiplication and generosity. It has great "bang for the buck!" But because it is rooted in the gospel of Jesus it also has a tremendous bang for the kingdom of God.

Now the empowered orphan children of Africa are challenging me to think about how I am doing this (or not) in my daily activity.

Lesson from Rwanda: Empowerment

Empowerment. I like how that word sounds. But I have little understanding about how to do it. My time in Rwanda is allowing me the opportunity to witness empowerment in action.

Maybe you've heard the saying: "Give a person a fish and they will eat for a day. Teach a person to fish and they will eat for a lifetime." This is empowerment.

It is a step (or two) further than most of us go in our service to God. I know that is true in my life. It is easier for me to give somebody who is hungry a fish (or money). I feel good about myself when I do that. And there is nothing wrong with that, by the way. However, God invites us to get a little more involved. God gave us the best example of this involvement when He became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ.

God entered into the messiness of our lives to show us how to live with self-giving love. He said as much to the disciples after having washed their feet - modeling a life of self-giving love. Jesus said, "I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done for you." Jesus empowered his disciples to serve like him.

Imagine if you can that you are orphaned because your parents died of AIDS or they were killed by genocide. You are stigmatized and isolated from your community and treated like garbage to be thrown away. You have no home and no one wants to take you in. You don't know how to prepare or cook food. So you either steal food from someone's garden or you work for someone who exploits you by paying you very little. This is the typical life of an orphan child in Rwanda before they get involved with Zoe Ministry (www.zoeministry.org).

Today we met Burnadette who is 15 years old. On top of experiencing all of those things above, she was born with a medical condition so her bowels were not working properly. She smelled really bad. Not even her family wanted to be around her and she wanted to die.

Was Burnadette hopeless? So it might seem.

But a working group of orphans was being put together by Zoe Ministry in Burnadette's villiage. She began to realize she was not the only one who felt like she did. Through help from Zoe Ministry she was able to get medical treatment to repair her bowels so that she wouldn't smell anymore. Through the help and support of other orphans in her working group, she was able to learn to farm and breed rabbits to provide food and income for her and her sisters and brother.

Today while we were meeting and talking with Burnadette a group of 30 members of her family group were busy at work putting up a fence around her home and building a small kitchen garden by her house. Next week Burnadette will go to the home of someone else in her working group to help them too.

Burnadette has been empowered. She has been given dignity. She has been given hope. She is becoming the person God has created her to be - passing on to others what had been given to her.

With this empowerment model of ministry with orphans, the ratio of paid Zoe Staff to orphans is about 1:900. This is because the orphans are caring for one another. And when they graduate from the 2 to 3 year program they are then sponsoring new working groups of orphans themselves - passing on to others what they have received.

I wonder who you are empowering?
Are you just a disciple? Or are you a disciple maker?
Are you just doing good things for other people or are you teaching others to do good things?

The children of Rwanda have challenged me with these things.

Seeing God's Kingdom in Rwanda Africa

I have the privilege of spending this week in Butare, Rwanda Africa with Zoe Ministry (www.zoeministry.org) whose purpose is to share God's hope with AIDS orphans through the ministry of empowerment. Many good ministries to AIDS orphans offer aid/relief through financial gifts, but what happens when the giver of that aid quits? Often the orphans are left in the same place that they began - poor, hungry, isolated.

I'm learning about a new model for ministry to orphans in Africa that is so simple, but seems so revolutionary. It's basis is in the concept of empowerment and is deeply rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Rather than a traditional orphanage model, this ministry finds orphans and vulnerable children in villiages and groups them together in what they call "working groups." These working groups might be 20 to 25 families (around 60-75 children altogether). At the beginning of what is often a two to three year process the working group is "coached" by a indiginous social worker who helps them decide on leadership and goals for their group.

Often the first goals are "food security" and finding "income generating projects" that will help the children who are currently eating once every 3 to 4 days to start eating once a day. Indeed in a period of a month or two the group goes from being sick, hungry and homeless to eating food that they grow and purchase from money they make through selling food they grow. What the Zoe Ministry gives them is the support and tools the orphans need to do this work for themselves.

What we've seen are children who were once homeless, hungry and isolated now with the dignity that comes with providing for themselves and others who are in the same spot they are.

One really cool story happened today. After members of three different working groups finished sharing with us some of their stories they expressed their thanks to us by singing and processing toward us with several bags of vegetables full of things they had grown. They said, "Because of all that you have given to us we want to bless you with a portion of what we have been given." Keep in mind that these children are now eating once a day and they are giving us enough food that would likely feed them for a week! We received the food with humble and grateful hearts knowing at that moment they were giving us far more than we could ever give to them.

It was the extravagant generosity of the Kingdom of God embodied right before our eyes!

I can't wait to be able to share more pictures, video and stories upon our return. Thank you for your prayers for Lonnie, Kathy, myself and the rest of our team as we travel. And thank you also for your prayers for the orphans and workers with Zoe Ministry in Rwanda!

Holy Week

It's Holy Week and here in Orlando even the pine trees know it.

The Shape of Things to Come

We've been doing a message series in our church's worship services on The Lord's Prayer. Praying "Thy Kingdom Come" is a prayer that will change us. It is clear from reading just a little of what Jesus said about the Kingdom of God that he is talking about a way of life that is different from what we're used to in this world. Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in his day, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." John 18:36

Author, Donald Kraybill puts his finger on how different the Kingdom of God is in his book entitled, The Upside-Down Kingdom. He suggests that the kingdom of God points to an inverted way of life that contrasts with the established social order. In this inverted kingdom, the first shall be last and the last shall be first, the exalted will be humbled and the humbled will be exalted, sinners are forgiven and welcomed while the self-righteous are punished, the poor are blessed and the rich are condemned, the lost are found and the dead are brought back to life, the lion lays down with the lamb and spears are beaten into pruning hooks.

So even while the Kingdom of God is not of this world it is not "other-worldly." In other words, this isn't a reality that we will only experience after we die. Jesus also teaches his disciples to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." What type of matter the new creation, the new Jerusalem, the kingdom of God will take is yet to be determined, but ever since the resurrected Jesus ate fish with his disciples on the beach and Thomas touched the risen savior's nail scarred hands and pierced side, Christians have anticipated a kingdom of God that involves bodies and earth rather than ghost-like spirits and clouds. Any type of disembodied notion of the kingdom of God was condemned by the early church as a heresy called "Gnosticism."

So when we pray "Thy Kingdom Come" we are speaking of the shape of things to come on earth as it is in heaven. Indeed, Christians are called to live into the Kingdom of God right now. After all, Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news" Mark 1:15. That means we should be seeing glimpses of the Kingdom of God on earth all around us. Those glimpses may seem small or insignificant (such as a mustard seed, Matthew 13:31-32) but Jesus insists they are the shape of things to come.

This week a member of my church dropped off her daughter for preschool and she was driving a different car than usual. Turns out she had rented this one while her car was in the shop for some repairs. She came in after the drop off and shared with me that her 3 year old daughter had been exploring all the compartments in this rental car and found a bag of bullets. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "I have no idea what to do with a bag of bullets? I've got no use for them. What am I supposed to do?"

Reflecting later on that conversation it occurred to me that her reaction to this bag of bullets was a glimpse of the inverted way of life in God's Kingdom. According to the Biblical prophets who speak of turning spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3), we are all headed in the direction of the day when we find a bag of bullets and shrug our shoulders. We will simply have no use for them in God's Kingdom.

What ways are you seeing glimpses of the Kingdom of God coming on earth that reveal the shape of things to come?

Changed By Pain

Recognizing the necessity for suffering I have tried to make of it a virtue. If only to save myself from bitterness, I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transform myself and heal the people . . . . I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive. Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope, p. 41

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1

This week it occurred to me that the transforming work of God happens in our lives when we aren't comfortable. Perhaps you've noticed that times when you have felt most uncomfortable, least self-sufficient, and even powerless, you have been most open to change and trust in God.

One of my sisters in Christ moved away this week to be with her daughter in Tennessee. I met her 13 years ago at Church. Over the years she grew to know God's love and saving grace through worship and studying the scripture. She had good friends and a supportive family. She was happy.

But God must have been messing with her because not long after I met her she made a decision to do something pretty uncomfortable. She became an advocate for homeless families in central Florida and went out recruiting other pastors and churches to form what would become the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Central Florida (a network of churches to help homeless families find dignity, get employment and back into a home).

What makes her decision even more surprising is that she was a retired nurse and had never stood in front of pastors and churches to make speeches before. That was really hard for her, made her really uncomfortable. But as it turns out, she wasn't the first person to ever find in her personal ordeals an opportunity to transform herself and heal the people.

Apparently this is the way God has chosen to transform the world . . . through a cross. God's desire isn't to serve us as a kind of divine genie who grants our wishes if we're good enough. God looks at us in love and longs to make us new. God sees for us a new reality which we aren't capable of seeing apart from sharing in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is what leads Christians to say things like this:

But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.
1 Peter 4:13

It took a long time for the Interfaith Hospitality Network to gain momentum and get started. There were days when it looked like it might not happen. But even if it hadn't, Shirley was being changed, deepening her trust of God and concern for the poor. Her discomfort had revealed God's glory.

In what ways might God be using your discomfort or inviting you into it in order to transform you?

How have you noticed the way God uses discomfort to bring transformation?

Keeping Time

In his book, Everyday Matters, Dr. L. Gregory Jones wrote an essay titled, “HallowThanksMas.” It caught my attention today as we find ourselves right in the middle of “HallowThanksMas.” Dr. Jones writes, “HallowThanksMas is that season that starts the last week of October and extends until Christmas Day. Retailers have Christmas decorations up in mid-October, and then the materialistic press to buy more and more sets in. Throughout this season, adults become frenetic, anxious and – all too often – depressed.”

Well, in my family growing up, I remember enjoying this time of year. For Halloween we would make homemade costumes, usually coordinated with my sisters. We’d walk the neighborhood with my dad, collecting some candy and “trick or treat for UNICEF.” Leading up to Thanksgiving we would revisit the history of “The Pilgrims.” It always seemed pretty cool when the boats pulled up on the shores of Plymouth Rock the Native Americans (I knew them as Indians) were thrilled and shared a big meal together with these strange new people from another world. Seemed to me like the first “pot luck” dinner. Then around that time we would flip through the pages of the Sears Roebuck “Wish Book.” It was full of awesome toys, and my sisters and I would make our lists of wishes for Christmas.

Into the middle of this time of year I would hear another story. It was a story told by my church and it included an evergreen wreath with five candles. I learned at that it was called an Advent Wreath. The best I recall, this Advent Wreath was like a countdown to Jesus birthday. I could not wait until we lit the big white candle in the middle so I could finally open my Christmas presents! Jesus’ birthday was awesome because I got toys.

I liked “HallowThanksMas” as a kid. But as I grew older I began to feel less thrilled with this season. For some reason I’d get through it and feel more hollow than holy, more tense than thankful, and I started to wonder if Jesus was really pleased with His own birthday.

Over the years, I have responded to this discontentment with “HallowThanksMas” by choosing to keep time using the Advent Wreath. As I’ve become more serious about observing Advent I was surprised to learn that it is far more than a countdown to Jesus’ birthday. Advent is a helpful practice for resisting all the things I don’t like about “HallowThanksMas.” Advent teaches us patience, the gift of waiting. It morphs self-gratification into self-giving. It opens up new hope for the world’s future by pondering the past. It invites us to marvel at the wisdom of a God who would choose to restore the world through a child. Advent surprises us with the joy of knowing that our ways are not God’s ways, and the grace to know that God’s way will prevail.

The gift of keeping time with Advent has the capacity to transform “HallowThanksMas.” I don’t suspect it will return us to the way we thought about it as children (if those happen to be good memories for you). I do believe it will make us more holy, thankful and full of wonder. If that sounds like something you’d like, then I encourage you to use Advent to keep time starting the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Attend worship during this season if you don’t already and try using an Advent Devotional book during the week. We are using this one produced by Zoe Ministry in my church.

Blessed Advent!