The problem? Decisions are taking precedence over discipleship. In the process, there is an increasing gap between the numbers who are deciding for Christ and the numbers who are being trained as disciples. The wolves are eating the difference.

Is it time to slow the pace of evangelism and to increase the pace of training and discipleship?

“But, you’re knowingly leaving the masses in darkness and the prospect of eternal damnation.”

Is it any worse to offer Christ to people, who, after having decided for Him, lose their faith for lack of training in Christian living, Bible study, sound theology, and apologetics? Could this be the point of Jesus’ story in Luke 11:23-26, where an evil spirit, having been cast out of a person, rounds up seven more spirits to re-inhabit the poor man? “And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.” Matthew’s account adds this application: “That is how it will be with this wicked generation” (Mt. 12:45b).

The Parable of the Sower (Mt. 13:1-9) should also give us pause. Is it any joy that so many sprang up “quickly” and then “withered” (v.5) or were eventually “choked?” The former “quickly falls away” because of “trouble and persecution” (v. 21). The latter is choked by the worries and cares of this life (v. 22). In both cases, there is no fruit and the metaphorical wolves have been fattened.

A little reflection on the metaphor should alarm us. Does a wolf need fully-grown animals, the kind that can and have been reproducing, bearing children, for its food? Hardly. It prefers the weaker and younger offspring. Newborns are just fine, if you can get to them. Just as young sheep are easy prey for wolves, so are young, undiscipled believers. Masses and masses of young, undiscipled believers, left without training and solid food for growth, leave the wolves salivating overtime. And, reproducing overtime, as well.

Dare we ask ourselves if the proliferation of cults and perverse systems with some tenuous link to the Bible are not due to the masses of tender converts upon which to feed and to prey? Is it surprising that the “burned-over” district of upstate New York (a region where every square inch of land was somehow touched by the Second Great Awakening) gave rise to all sorts of false cults (including Mormonism) in the following several decades?

Evangelism no doubt maintains the size of the sheep herd. And, so the church is growing, at least nominally. But, it may also be unwittingly fattening, strengthening and vitalizing the enemies of truth, at the same time.

If it is true that a high evangelism-to-discipleship ratio is actually strengthening the position of fiendish unbelief, how might this situation have occurred? It is because Western-funded and managed Christian movements have measured success in terms of numbers of converts instead of measuring evidences of transformation in people and society. Another way of framing this is to say that modern believers, under the spell of reductionist, modern Western thinking, have so emphasized the evangelistic mandate of Matt. 28:19-20 as to virtually ignore the equally compelling cultural mandate of Genesis 1 and 2. Lest this be seen as re-visiting the old “quantity vs. quality” dilemma, we agree that the book of Acts is replete with numbers of converts (such as Acts 2), but the real questions is: “How did the early believers measure the success of their mission?”

Success was measured by evidences of the Kingdom. Personal and social transformation were the sine qua non of the early Christian movement. The Apostolic Church beheld the joy of community, of God’s reality in their midst. Convert-making programs don’t seem to have headed their agenda.

But, let us go back further to Jesus Himself. How did He measure the success of His mission? When the Apostles came back to Jesus after their first journey, He said, “I’ve seen Satan fall!” We don’t see Him quizzing them about the numbers of converts they made. In His earlier instruction before He sent them out, He didn’t lay emphasis on methods. He rather said “Proclaim the Kingdom!”

On top of that, He threw up big barriers to discipleship. The narrow road was hardly inviting. The promise of martyrdom attracted the hearty few. If Jesus’ view of success was tied into numbers of converts, He was a failure.

A final clue comes in Jesus’ High Priestly prayer of John 17. He seems to measure His success by indicating that He had completed the work assigned to Him by His Father, by which He brought glory to the Father. His prayer (at the end of the chapter) is not that more will be added to the small group of followers, but, rather, that they will display an incredible, unheard-of unity.

Let us move to Paul, the best-known of the Apostles, besides Peter. Are there commands to witness, to make converts? Precious few, if any, dot his letters; rather, his letters are written with the clear intent of training and discipleship.

While his epistles offer very little by way of exhortation to evangelism, what we do see are intense commands to effect transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit. And lurking in the background are warnings about our menacing Enemy. He lurks about to devour, to cast fireballs, to deceive, and so forth. His “front-men” (literally) are those who “take capitives by means of hollow and deceptive philosophy.” They are “mutilators of the flesh, men who do evil” “hypocritical liars” who teach people to “abandon the faith and to follow deceiving spirits.” To summarize, Paul recognized, as did Jesus, that transformation (not numbers of converts) is our goal, a goal that is constantly threatened by, among other things, the presence of false teachers and their teachings.

What is the modest proposal of this paper? Simply, that we throttle-back on evangelism and throttle-forward on discipleship. This is not a call for cessation of evangelism, but rather a plea for us to examine the reality of the situation—many converts, little transformation.

Understanding this may help to understand why places like sub-Saharan Africa teem with converts, and yet, the societies, at least, are going “to hell in a handbasket.” If Christians are the “salt of the earth” whose transformative impact should greatly outweigh our numbers, why are so many developing countries awash with converts and with crushing debt at the same time? Many of these converts will not be able to live long lives by which to glorify God as they fulfill their callings—and why?

Untaught to apply the truth to all dimensions of reality, unskilled in contextualizing Biblical truth in a way so that it transforms their worldview and their way of living, these believers are food for the wolf of hunger as well as the wolf of false teaching. One kills the body, the other the soul, and, in either case, God’s Kingdom is hindered.

Is it fair to suggest that our massive crusades and evangelistic campaigns are one vast feeding and breeding ground for the Enemy? Perhaps not, but are we honestly willing to face the problem of the masses of untaught, undiscipled believers?

Notice the way Jesus got the disciples exercising gifts of leadership from the outset, before they were “ready.” Jesus didn’t wait for disciples to be born again, baptized, trained theologically and supervised under a safe religious system with guaranteed controls before He was involving them in leadership. He got them out telling others about Him within a few weeks of being with Him (Matt 10:1–14). He led the movement He began from underneath, very quickly involving the disciples in leadership assignments without mentioning positions or titles. He had a radically different paradigm from that of the religious leaders of His day, and of our day as well. He was training them to lead before they were actually born again, in our evangelical understanding of what that means. After all, the journey of discipleship doesn’t start when a person comes to faith in Christ, but long before.

Movements not just meetings

In his book Organic Church², Neil Cole describes his journey from a static kind of church planting model to a dynamic and rapidly expanding organic movement of over 800 simple churches. Cole describes his journey of disenchantment with “church growth” seminars that attributed the secret of growing churches to clean toilets and plenty of parking spaces. Cole comments: “Apparently, the kingdom of God is held up by dirty toilets and poor parking. Jesus will have to wait for us to clean up our act. In India and China, however, where the church is growing fastest, among the most noticeable missing ingredients are clean toilets and parking spaces.” ³

Cole describes coming to the realization that God wanted him to help birth a movement that radically lowered the bar for what it meant to be church, but raised the bar for what it meant to be a disciple in the church. By assertively sharing Christ and making disciples, their movement, Church Multiplication Associates (CMA), grew in just a few years to over 800 churches in more than 30 States in the U.S.A. and 25 countries around the world.

How does such a movement happen? There has to be the blessing of God, for sure. But besides that, simple church movements are spurred in their growth by personal discipleship. It is people discipling people. Programs don’t disciple people, buildings don’t disciple people…people disciple people. And discipled people transform nations.

In our church planting endeavours in Cape Town, we stress the loving invitations of Jesus to everyone, and then teach the loving commands of Jesus to those who are serious. We lower the bar for doing church so that everyone can be part of it, and we raise the bar for being a disciple so that everyone knows what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, a person who lives a transformed life.

Of the four kinds of soil that received the seed in the parable of the sower, only one kind was deep and lasting. That is what we look for to make our disciples, transform communities, and find future leaders. We consciously and unconditionally love all those we minister to, but we also recognize that some people are hungry to learn more about Jesus and some people aren’t.

Formation, not just information

When I think about those who have influenced me most in life, it’s a few people who made a significant investment in me. These are men and women who believed in me and took time to impart to me what God had deposited in their lives. The goal of discipleship is not disseminating information, but life-on-life formation. I have heard a lot of great sermons in my days. I have read many excellent books. And I have interacted with world-class leaders. But what really changed my life were those who took the time to get to know me and mentor me. Those are the ones who really impacted me. I can count them on the fingers of two hands. God put something in each of them that was unique, and they passed it on to me. I am what I am today because of those men and women.

People like Gordon Fee. Dr. Fee was one of my professors while I was studying at Vanguard University. He was much more than a professor, actually – he became a mentor. He became a friend. He took time to hear my story. He would come by my room in the residence hall to visit with me and the other students. He would stop by the gym and shoot hoops with us as we practiced for our next game. He invited me to his office to chat. He poked around in my heart when he sensed I was not doing well. There has never been a time I have preached God’s word that I was not passing on to others what was imparted to me by this man of God.

Disciple making is the way Jesus did church

Jesus chose a few people and poured Himself into them. He preached to the multitudes, but He spent most of His time with His disciples. Jesus calls us to follow His example by reproducing what He has given to us in others, who in turn are to invest in others also (2 Tim 2:2). Building a disciple-making culture and birthing a disciple-making movement does not happen by accident. Passionate people catch the fire that burns in them from someone else and in turn pass it on to others. Every person who is influencing other people’s lives can tell you about the people who impacted upon them.

There are churches and movements today that produce these kinds of results, while others don’t even come close. The reason? Some have caught the vision of relational disciple-making, and others have not. How can we expect to reproduce our lives in others, and see whole cities and nations transformed if we don’t deliberately pass on to them what God has given us?

Anything good in our life is the result of our being impacted upon by someone else. It began with Jesus and His disciples 2,000 years ago, and it carries on with us today. If you have hope, passion, a sense of purpose and destiny, it is because you received it from someone else. You are one of many in a long line of people who have touched each other’s lives. And if others are changed because of you, it will be because you gave to them what has been given to you. Passion for Jesus and His purposes in the earth is received, nurtured, then passed on to others. That’s how it lives on in the Church.

Passion and purpose come at no less a price than Jesus and His disciples paid to possess them. If Jesus walked the way of suffering to receive the blessing of the Father, do we think we can do anything less? If we are willing to align ourselves with a tribe of people with proven passion, it will mean getting out of our comfort zone, taking up our cross, and putting ourselves in harm’s way for the sake of the gospel and for nations to be transformed. If we are willing and obedient, we will experience the same fruit as the first disciples.

Jesus chose personal investment in people’s lives as the primary way He did church. The Sunday-centric model of church will not change the world. Some think the church started on the day of Pentecost, but I disagree. Jesus led the first New Testament church. He modelled for us how to do church by the way He gathered and invested in the lives of a few men and women. He modelled a new way of doing church. He gathered, equipped and mobilized faithful men and women into a movement of devoted followers (Matt 28:19–20, 2 Tim 2:2). This kind of one-on-one intentional relationship is the key to helping people get freed from their brokenness and turned on to serving Jesus. Discipleship isn’t a school or program, but a lifestyle of passion and purpose passed on through personal investment and involvement in one another’s lives (1 Thess 2:18–19; 3:10).

I met a young man named Charles a few years ago. I asked him if he had a dream, and he eagerly shared it with me. “I want to have eight generations of disciples. I am an eighth generation disciple. I have traced it back through the guys in our church, starting about 20 years ago.” He named the men in the long chain of relationships that Charles knew by heart, and could articulate the principles that made it so powerful.

“I want to start a church planting movement someday, and I know I won’t be able to do it unless I invest my life in others,” said Charles. He was right. There are no short cuts to doing church the way Jesus did it. He built a team that became a community that multiplied and grew into a movement. You can build a disciple-making church with two or three generations of disciples, but Charles was already dreaming of more than one church, and more than four generations of disciples. He wanted to build a church-planting movement, and he knew it had to begin with him leading people to Christ and investing in them one at a time.

When I quizzed Charles on what steps he was taking to turn his dream into a reality, he told me about room-mates he was reaching out to and new followers of Jesus with whom he was meeting weekly to have a quiet time and share their faith. He was taking simple, practical steps to turn his dream into a reality. He was faithfully working away at it, and you know what? I believe his dream will become a reality.

Making disciples is not an option, it’s a command

Jesus said: “Teach them to observe all things I have commanded you.” (Matt 28:19–20) Obedient disciples make disciples. It’s the heart of what we do. There is nothing more important than investing our lives in other people. There is no more crucial role for leaders in the church. When leaders invest their lives in other leaders, it’s discipleship at its best. Why? Because only those who live with apostolic intent can create a leadership culture conducive to attracting and releasing more leaders. When a leader develops other leaders, the impact of one life is multiplied many times over. It produces more fruit for the kingdom of God.

Making disciples is personal in nature but transformational in scope

Jesus said we are to make disciples of “all nations.” It’s God’s way of spreading His glory to the whole earth. Personal discipleship connects us to God’s global purposes.

Making disciples is God’s way of transforming cities and nations

To quote Landa Cope: “A reached community is not a discipled community.” God uses the process of personal discipleship to bring about spiritual transformation in individuals’ lives, and in turn, those transformed individuals influence their business, family, school and, in time, whole cities and nations. As Landa says, it is possible to evangelize people by the thousands and millions, but that does not mean they have been discipled.

Africa, the continent where I live, has actually been evangelized over and over again. But it has not been discipled. Africa desperately needs a new kind of Christian and a new way of doing church. When we disciple people in small groups, we are doing church the way Jesus did it. He modeled a new concept of church by gathering a few men and women and teaching them to love and obey Him. In this sense Bill Hybels is right: the church is the hope of the world. Hybels declares: “The church is the only God-anointed agency in society that stewards the transforming message of the love of Christ … the local church is the hope of the world.”

If the church is to steward the message in the same manner as Jesus, we must make disciples who know, love and obey Jesus. This means that every aspect of their life must be different: how they work, love their family, tell the truth, handle money with integrity, and reach out to the poor. Personal salvation is not enough. It is the beginning of a relationship with Jesus Christ, but if we follow the example of Jesus, calling people to obey Jesus is the goal. Discipleship is intended by God to lead to transformation, both on a personal level and in the surrounding community. Sadly, many leaders are getting people to make decisions about Jesus but they are not making disciples for Jesus.

Weaving a discipleship net

When Jesus called Simon Peter and Andrew to become His disciples, He called them to be fishers of men. Later, He described the kingdom of God as being like a net that is cast into the sea to catch fish (Matt 13:47). Though Jesus cared for individuals, He longed for many individuals to experience forgiveness of their sins. If we are to weave a net to catch the harvest God wants to bring through our lives, it means weaving a discipleship net. Weaving a net is another way of saying that God wants us to be intentional about winning and gathering and multiplying transformed people for Him. In the same way that Jesus very deliberately selected and equipped men and women to bring in a great harvest, we’re commissioned to do the same thing in our sphere of influence. Jesus did not come to establish an institution called church, but to empower people to do church intentionally. God has a passion to gather a great harvest for His glory—and He is inviting us to work with Him as His co-labourers to draw in the net.

To weave an effective discipleship net means gathering and equipping people to be disciple-makers themselves. That means modeling disciple-making in our lives. It comes down to small groups and one-on-one times with people at work and school and who live close to us. If we select and faithfully disciple a few people in our sphere of influence, and they in turn are discipling others, we take the first steps to build a harvest gathering net for the kingdom.

It begins with casting the vision, then inviting people to respond. Jesus began the process of training His disciples by letting them in on the big plans He had for their lives. He told them He was going to make them fishers of men. He told them, “You will see heaven open.” Over and over again He encouraged them to dream big dreams for their lives, helping them catch a glimpse of the courageous men and women He was calling them to become. For those who were willing to obey Him, He invested in their lives, then He asked them to disciple others.

Discipling someone means intentionally identifying with God’s interests in that person’s life. When someone says yes to your invitation to spend time together, get to know them – ask questions, draw them out, develop genuine interest in their lives. By prayerfully affirming them, you will impart life to them. Tell them God loves them. Pray for them. Bless them. Tell them the things God gives you for them when you pray for them, but don’t use churchy language. Your encouragement and belief in them will give them courage to say yes to God’s love. Help them realize the great value they have to God. Paul was doing this very thing when he wrote these words to his disciple, Timothy: “I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you.” (2 Tim 1:6)

If we don’t disciple the hearts and minds of our people, someone else will do it for us. We live in a pluralistic culture. There is a constant battle for people’s passion. Every disciple of Jesus is on the front line, frequently alone. Living in such an environment calls for clear biblical thinking, and that means teaching and training. Memorized answers will not be enough. We must not let people think that by going to a meeting once a week they will be ready to face the challenges the enemy throws at them.

We have the awesome responsibility and opportunity to help shape the world-view of people and impart to them kingdom values. We are preparing frontline workers for the kingdom of God. God has called them, placed them where He wants them, and we get to equip them to be “full-time” for Jesus.

The cost of discipleship

Jesus said that for those who believe in Him, they will do greater works than He did. This promise is not a blanket guarantee for anyone who wants to be a disciple, but it is an insight into how much God wants to work through us. The cost is great, but if we are willing to pay the price, we will inherit the rewards of obeying Jesus. Paying the price means making a conscious decision to live full-time for Him at work, in our residence hall at the university, with our neighbors, and with our family members. It means dying to self, exchanging our life for His, confronting strongholds in our lives (2 Cor 10:4–6), living a life of truth and accountability with two or three others on a weekly basis, and walking with others in honest, accountable relationships. God is calling us to father and mother movements of men and women who will do mighty exploits for God, and that will not happen if we are not diligent in seeking God and obeying Him.

There are churches and movements today that produce these kinds of disciples, while others don’t come close. The reason some churches and movements produce these kinds of disciples is because their leaders have been captured by a vision of laying down their lives for the purposes of God. If the people who lead have this kind of passion and vision, it will be passed on to others. Unless we make disciple-making our main agenda, all our visions are fantasy. It’s the difference between dreaming and doing. And to do the job really well, we have to make our main business making disciples who make disciples.

Making disciples creates a discipleship culture

When personal discipleship is a way of life for a church or movement, it ensures that what they stand for is passed on. Discipleship helps create a culture. One person cannot do that by himself or herself. A solitary individual cannot possibly be in enough places to influence enough people. By calling us to birth and nurture a disciple-making movement, God has designed a process that has the deepest impact on the greatest number of people. This is how a movement grows to impact upon thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people, all with the same passions and dreams.

Discipleship is the difference

All kinds of programs and strategies have been developed by Christian organizations and local churches to evangelize the world. All these programs and strategies are great. But programs and strategies don’t disciple people. Great ideas don’t make disciples. Disciples make disciples. There is no shortcut and there is no other way for a church or movement to reproduce itself and to have a transforming influence on a nation.

You won’t reproduce the vision and values God has put in you if you don’t make disciples. There is no other way to pass on the spiritual DNA God has put in you. There are many methods that seem more glamorous, and there are many approaches to ministry that get more attention. But if you want to build a leadership culture, if you want to impart apostolic passion to your church or movement, and if you want to see the gospel have its desired transforming effect on people and nations, it will happen because you make disciples.

Who was William Carey? He was exactly the kind of man that the Lord seems to delight in using to accomplish great things; in other words, the kind of person that most of us would least expect. He was raised in a small, rural English town where he received almost no formal education. His chief source of income came through his work as a cobbler (a shoemaker). He had an awkward, homely appearance, having lost almost all his hair in childhood. Upon his arrival in India and throughout his years there, he was harassed by British colonists, deserted by his mission-sending agency, and opposed by younger missionary recruits who were sent to help him. Despite these setbacks, he became perhaps the most influential person in the largest outpost of the British Empire.³

Carey didn’t go to India merely to start new churches or set up medical clinics for the poor. He was driven by a more comprehensive vision—a vision for discipling the nation. “Carey saw India not as a foreign country to be exploited, but as his heavenly Father’s land to be loved and served, a society where truth, not ignorance, needed to rule.”⁴ He looked outward across the land and asked himself, “If Jesus were the Lord of India, what would it look like? What would be different?” This question set his agenda and led to his involvement in a remarkable variety of activities aimed at glorifying God and advancing His kingdom. Following are highlights of Carey’s work described in Vishal and Ruth Mangalwadi’s outstanding book The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for the Transformation of a Culture.⁵

Carey was horrified that India, one of the most fertile countries in the world, had been allowed to become an uncultivated jungle abandoned to wild beasts and serpents. Therefore he carried out a systematic survey of agriculture and campaigned for agriculture reform. He introduced the Linnean system of plant organizations and published the first science texts in India. He did this because he believed that nature is declared “good” by its Creator; it is not maya (illusion) to be shunned, as Hindus believe, but a subject worthy of human study.

Carey introduced the idea of savings banks to India to fight the all-pervasive social evil of usury (the lending of money at excessive interest). He believed that God, being righteous, hated this practice which made investment, industry, commerce, and economic development impossible.

He was the first to campaign for humane treatment of India’s leprosy victims because he believed that Jesus’ love extends to leprosy patients, so they should be cared for. Before then, lepers were often buried or burned alive because of the belief that a violent death purified the body on its way to reincarnation into a new healthy existence.

He established the first newspaper ever printed in any Oriental language, because he believed that “above all forms of truth and faith, Christianity seeks free discussion.” His English-language journal, Friend of India, was the force that gave birth to the social-reform movement in India in the first half of the nineteenth century.

He translated the Bible into over 40 different Indian languages. He transformed the Bengali language, previously considered “fit for only demons and women,” into the foremost literary language of India. He wrote gospel ballads in Bengali to bring the Hindu love of music to the service of his Lord.

He began dozens of schools for Indian children of all castes and launched the first college in Asia. He desired to develop the Indian mind and liberate it from darkness and superstition.

He was the first man to stand against the ruthless murders and widespread oppression of women. Women in India were being crushed through polygamy, female infanticide, child marriage, widow burning, euthanasia, and forced illiteracy—all sanctioned by religion. Carey opened schools for girls. When widows converted to Christianity, he arranged marriages for them. It was his persistent, 25-year battle against widow burning (known as sati) that finally led to the formal banning of this horrible religious practice.

William Carey was a pioneer of the modern Christian missionary movement, a movement that has since reached every corner of the world. Although a man of simple origins, he used his God-given genius and every available means to serve his Creator and illumine the dark corners of India with the light of the truth.

William Carey’s ministry in India can be described as wholistic. For something to be wholistic, it must have multiple parts that contribute to a greater whole. What is the “whole” to which all Christian ministry activities contribute? Through an examination of Christ’s earthly ministry, we see that the “whole” is glorifying God and advancing His kingdom through the discipling of the nations (Matt. 24:14; 28:18–20). This is God’s “big agenda”—the principal task that he works through His church to accomplish.

If this is the whole, then what are the parts? Matthew 4:23, highlights three parts: preaching, teaching, and healing. Because each part is essential to the whole, let’s look at each one more carefully.

Preaching includes proclaiming the gospel—God’s gracious invitation for people everywhere to live in His Kingdom, have their sins forgiven, be spiritually reborn, and become children of God through faith in Christ. Proclaiming the gospel is essential to wholistic ministry, for unless lost and broken people are spiritually reborn into a living relationship with God—unless they become “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17)—all efforts to bring hope, healing, and transformation are doomed to fail. People everywhere need their relationship with God restored, yet preaching is only one part of wholistic ministry.

Teaching entails instructing people in the foundational truths of Scripture. It is associated with discipleship—helping people to live in obedience to God and His Word in every area of life. In Matthew 28:20 Jesus tells His disciples to “teach [the nations] to obey everything I have commanded you.” Unless believers are taught to obey Christ’s commands, their growth may be hindered. Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.”

Healing involves the tangible demonstrations of the present reality of the Kingdom in the midst of our hurting and broken world. When Jesus came, He demonstrated the present reality of God’s Kingdom by healing people. “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor,” was Jesus’ report to His cousin John the Baptist in Matthew 11:4–5. Jesus didn’t just preach the good news; He demonstrated it by healing all forms of brokenness. Unless ministry to people’s physical needs accompanies evangelism and discipleship, our message will be empty, weak, and irrelevant. This is particularly true where physical poverty is rampant. The apostle John admonishes, “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:17–18).

Here’s a picture of the basic elements of a biblically balanced, wholistic ministry:

First, there are multiple parts—preaching, teaching and healing. These parts have distinct functions, yet they are inseparable. All are essential in contributing to the whole, which is glorifying God and advancing His Kingdom. Lastly, each part rests on the solid foundation of the biblical worldview. In other words, each is understood and implemented through the basic presuppositions of Scripture. In summary, preaching, teaching and healing are three indispensable parts of wholistic ministry, whose purpose is to advance God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Without these parts working together seamlessly, our ministry is less than what Christ intends, and will lack power to transform lives and nations.

To comprehend the nature and purpose of wholistic ministry, two concepts must be understood. First is the comprehensive impact of humanity’s spiritual rebellion. Second is that our loving, compassionate God is presently unfolding His plan to redeem and restore all things broken through the Fall.

When Adam and Eve turned their backs on God in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:1–6), the consequences of their sin were devastating and far-reaching; they affected the very order of the universe. At least four relationships were broken through the Fall. First, Adam and Eve’s intimate relationship with God was broken (Gen. 3:8–9). This was the primary relationship for which they had been created, the most important aspect of their lives. When their relationship with God was broken, their other relationships were damaged too: their relationship with themselves as individuals (Gen. 3:7, 10), with each other as fellow human beings (Gen. 3:7, 12, 16), and with the rest of creation (Gen. 3:17–19). The universe is intricately designed and interwoven. It is wholistic, composed of multiple parts, each of which depends on the proper functioning of the others. All parts are governed by laws established by God. When the primary relationship between God and humanity was severed, every part of the original harmony of God’s creation was affected. The results of this comprehensive brokenness have plagued humanity ever since. War, hatred, violence, environmental degradation, injustice, corruption, idolatry, poverty and famine all spring from sin.

Thus, when God set out to restore His creation from the all-encompassing effects of man’s rebellion, His redemptive plan could not be small or narrow, focusing on a single area of brokenness. His plan is not limited to saving human souls or teaching or even healing. Rather, it combines all three with the goal of restoring everything, including each of the four broken relationships described above. Colossians 1:19–20 provides a picture of God’s wholistic redemptive plan:

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Christ], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Emphasis added)
 

God is redeeming all things. Through Christ’s blood our sins are forgiven and our fellowship with God is renewed. And not only that—we also can experience substantial healing within ourselves, with others, and with the environment. The gospel is not only good news for after we die; it is good news here and now!

The task of the church is to join God in His big agenda of restoring all things. We are “Christ’s ambassadors,” called to the “ministry of reconciliation” (see 2 Cor. 5:18–20). In the words of Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer, we should be working “on the basis of the finished work of Christ . . . [for] substantial healing now in every area where there are divisions because of the Fall.”⁶ To do this, we must first believe that such healing can be a reality here and now, in every area, on the basis of the finished work of Christ. This healing will not be perfect or complete on this side of Christ’s return, yet it can be real, evident, and substantial.

Preaching, teaching, and substantial healing in every area where brokenness exists as a result of the Fall—in essence, wholistic ministry—is the vision that Christ had and modeled for us on earth. It was the vision that set the agenda for William Carey in India. It is the vision that should set the agenda for our ministry as well.

When Jesus sent out His disciples on their first missionary journey, “He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:2). Yet today it’s common for Christian ministries to separate the twin ministry components. Some focus exclusively on preaching, evangelism, or church planting, while others focus on meeting the physical needs of the broken or impoverished. Typically these two groups have little interaction. This division is not what Christ intended. By focusing on one to the exclusion of the other, ministries are limited and ineffective in bringing about true, lasting transformation.

The Bible provides a model of ministry where preaching, teaching, and healing are, in the words of Dr. Tetsunao Yamamori, “functionally separate, yet relationally inseparable.”⁷ Each part is distinct and deserves special attention and focus. Yet the parts must function together. Together they form a wholistic ministry that is both powerful and effective—a ministry able to transform lives and entire nations. The work of William Carey in India gives historical testimony to this fact. According to theologian David Wells, preaching, teaching, and healing must be “inextricably related to each other, the former being the foundation and the latter being the evidence of the working of the former.”⁸

God’s promise to Abraham was effectively a promise to the world. In Genesis 12:1-2, God declared that He would not only bless Abram (his name at that time), but that Abram would become a blessing. The next verse reveals the amazing magnitude of that blessing: “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” How was it possible that one man would become a blessing to all of the families throughout the earth?

Even though Abram obeyed God, it’s unlikely that he grasped the global implications right away. The complete promise, as Abraham heard it repeated in the years to come, had three parts: land, family and blessing. The first two parts about land and family probably made some sense right away. But what probably remained a mystery was the promise that somehow through his family, blessing would come upon every nation on earth.

While years passed without receiving the promised land or sons, Abraham must have pondered just what the fulfillment of God’s promise would look like. We would do well to ponder it as well. The promise that “all nations will be blessed” is still being fulfilled in our day. What does it mean for a nation or people to be blessed? What should we be looking for as stewards of Abraham’s promised blessing by faith in Christ?

What Does “Blessing” Mean?

If our only source were the book of Genesis, we would still learn a great deal about the idea of blessing. In Genesis, the word “blessing” is used to describe a pronouncement or endowment of blessing. It is an act in which a future destiny or goodness is spoken, and thus bestowed upon the person or entity being blessed. The term blessing is used to describe the fulfillment of what was promised, whether material or otherwise. God pronounced blessing at creation, empowering animal life and humanity to fulfill the mandate He had given, to “be fruitful and multiply and fill” their respective domains. Throughout the rest of Scripture, when blessing is fulfilled in creatures, people, households or nations, they are enabled to flourish and to move toward their intended fullness and destiny.

In Genesis we also see clear references to how the promise of blessing was fulfilled in tangible ways. Near the close of Abraham’s life we read that God “had blessed Abraham in every way” (24:1). What exactly were these diverse ways that Abraham had been blessed?

We can find three broad categories of blessing in the Genesis story. First, we see blessing as material wealth and fruitfulness (24:35, 30:27, 30). Second, we see blessing as favored relationship with God and the experience of His presence (14:19-20, 21:22, 26:22). And third, we see blessing bringing about a measure of peace amidst families and peoples (21:22-23, 26:18-29).

Beyond Abraham’s Family

We’ve seen what it meant for Abraham and his family to be blessed. But do we also see the nations blessed in the stories of Abraham’s family in Genesis?

Of course, we see Abraham and his family sometimes becoming anything but a blessing. Abraham lies to his foreign hosts with drastic results (12:10-20, 20:1-18). Jacob’s sons wipe out the men of an entire Canaanite city (33:18-34:31). Despite these and other events, God did bring help to other nations through Abraham and his descendants. For example, Abraham came to the rescue of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 14), which had been taken captive by raiding armies that had seized “all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food supply” (14:11). Not long after this, Abraham prayed that God would spare the entire city of Sodom (no doubt including some who he had already rescued from captivity). He argued his case before God, not just for Lot and his family, but for “the whole city” (19:28). Even though the city was destroyed, the point is that Abraham initiated intercession to save the entire city.

It is significant that near the end of Genesis, we see Abraham’s grandson Jacob pronouncing a blessing upon the Pharaoh himself. The exact words aren’t recorded, but there was a formal occasion in which “Jacob blessed Pharaoh” (47:7,10).

The crescendo of Genesis is the story of Joseph. Like Abraham and Isaac before him, the incredible productivity of Joseph’s work caused watching foreigners to conclude that God’s presence with Joseph had brought a surprising abundance. “The LORD was with him and … the LORD caused all that he did to prosper in his hand” (Gen 39:3). His master recognized that “the LORD’S blessing was upon all that he owned, in the house and in the field” (39:5) because of Joseph.

Blessing Egypt and the People of All the Earth

God gave Joseph an interpretation of a dream that predicted a seven-year famine. Pharaoh acknowledged Joseph’s wisdom as coming from God and declared, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt” and further, “Without your permission, no one shall raise his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt”(41:41, 44). When the famine came, its devastation “spread over all the face of the earth” (41:56). Joseph was positioned to extend blessing to many nations, as “the people of all the earth came to buy grain from Joseph” (41:57).

In the second year of the seven-year famine, Joseph distributed food in exchange for money and livestock (47:14-17). As the final year of the famine came, he had arranged for the survival of the people of Egypt. In exchange for state ownership of land and a 20 percent tax (a very generous arrangement compared to most feudal systems), he offered grain to be used as seed for planting as a way of restarting agricultural cycles after the famine (47:18-24). As the famine ends with hope for long-term survival, the statement of the people is telling: “You have saved our lives!” (47:25).¹

Later Will Be Greater: Fulfillment in Descendants

Did Abraham comprehend the blessing to the nations that God was promising, especially the eventual magnitude of it? In each of the five times God spoke to Abraham (Abram), Isaac and Jacob (Israel), promising blessing to the nations, He amplified and clarified how His promise would be fulfilled.

The Promise Fulfilled in Christ

Most Christians have been taught well about Jesus Christ coming to provide a way for people to be adopted as sons and daughters into the family of God. In the book of Galatians, Paul says that “when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son… that we might receive” adoption as children of God (Gal 4:4-5). But a few verses earlier in the same book Paul says that those who believe in Christ have been joined with Christ in such a way that they become part of Abraham’s family. “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:29).

The way the promise was given to Abraham, blessing would be fulfilled in the “seed” of Abraham. This word is often used as a “collective singular,” speaking of many seeds. Thus, the term can refer to one descendant or to a multitude of descendants. Which is it?

Paul answers the question this way: Both are true. There is one pre-eminent son of Abraham: “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ” (Gal 3:29). Christ is the one seed of Abraham, but Paul also declares that since people become sons and daughters of Abraham’s family by faith, the promise is being fulfilled by their faith as those who inherit the promise:

“It is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, ‘All the nations will be blessed in you.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham” (Gal 3:7-9).

Christ has now ended the curse and opened the family of God. Now people from every family on earth can be part of Abraham’s family by faith in Christ. They inherit the full family heritage of being blessed in order to be a blessing to the nations.

God’s Promise Becomes Our Mandate

God’s promise to bless the nations through Abraham’s descendants carries mandate force for all who have been joined with Christ by faith. The promise so clearly reveals God’s purpose, that Christians rightly consider it to convey God’s mandate to serve as His agents of blessing among all the peoples of the earth.² We are blessed in Christ in order to bring forth the blessing of Christ among all the nations. But what are we hoping for? What does it mean for the nations to be blessed? And how are we to pursue it? The promise of blessing shapes and integrates our mission in two important ways.

Relational Blessing: Belonging to God’s Family

The greatest blessing imaginable is the privilege of belonging to God’s people, and therefore, belonging to God as His children. Christ has opened Abraham’s family to all. We now participate in bringing people from every people, tribe and clan to be joined with Christ by faith and enfolded into the people of God. Extending the invitation to belong to God’s family is the greater part of what it means to bring blessing to the nations. We cannot consider that the Abrahamic blessing has visited a people today if the gospel of Jesus Christ has not yet been clearly conveyed to them.

What will it look like when this aspect of God’s blessing is fulfilled? We can look forward to the day when we will see at least some from every people on earth trusting and following Christ. The blessing of the nations means much more than evangelism, but it certainly can mean no less than the evangelization of every people.

We have seen in the book of Genesis that God displayed evidence of His dynamic presence with His people. God will be no less present amidst the peoples of the earth as groups of obedient followers of Christ emerge and grow among the nations. As in the book of Genesis, the presence of God with His people in our day is the beginning of all of the more tangible aspects of blessing that God brought about. This means that evangelization has a special priority (in order, not importance). God’s promise to bless the nations is the framework in which Christ’s commission makes sense. This same promise authorizes Christ’s followers to hope and to work for God’s life to abound in every people.

Material and Social Blessing: Abundance and Peace

We can expect the blessing of belonging to God to become a reality amidst every people. But we can look forward to so much more! We can expect to see significant displays of the abundance of God’s life. We should not expect a utopian perfection. But we can work and pray with a strong hope, partly informed by what we see in the book of Genesis, that God will be with His people to bring forth significant measures of blessing among the nations.

And so we ask again, what will the fulfillment of God’s promise to bless the nations look like? Of course, it will be different in every place and people, but we should expect God to bring forth every kind of blessing, such as economies that flourish with justice and righteousness, agricultures and industries that abound with plenty for all, and peace throughout communities and between peoples and races. We can expect that God will enable His people to wage war with disease, to break the vicious cycles of poverty, to provide water in desert lands, and to be present with healing in the midst of catastrophe.

We should expect that some of Abraham’s children by faith will be used by God to preserve life after the example of Joseph. We are probably seeing now in many cities an answer to Abraham’s prayer for the city of Sodom in Genesis 18. In that prayer God said that an entire city would be spared the immediate consequences of their sin because of the righteousness of a few. In Abraham’s day there were less than ten. Now there are millions of his faith family spread throughout many of the cities of the earth.

Blessing as Transformation

Recently the term “transformation” has helped many express hope that Christian mission can be directed beyond successful evangelism to also seek lasting changes in society which reflect the justice and character of Christ. The biblical ground for integrating evangelism with social action is usually found in numerous biblical texts dealing with the hope and reality of the kingdom of God. It could be that we have been overlooking another body of biblical truth that supports a robust and strategic holism. God’s ancient promise of blessing provides a vivid, rich and powerful framework for integrating the pursuit of societal transformation and the completion of world evangelization.

Here are six reasons why the Abrahamic promise of blessing provides a framework for us to pray, plan and co-labor for the evangelization of all the peoples of the earth with hope that the results will include significant transformation.

1.  God Works With and Through His People

God’s people work with intentionality, strategy and hope, using all of the grace, skills and resources God has entrusted to them. But at the same time, God infuses the work of His people with His power and life. Blessing is a function of the work of people and the presence of God. Blessing is always more than the sum of all human efforts.

2.  Increase and Fullness, but Never Perfection or Utopia

A blessed city or people is not a perfect society. Instead, hope for blessing gives us courage to pray and to work toward societies that flourish in every way—spiritually, relationally, physically, economically, aesthetically and environmentally.

3.  Not Exclusive to God’s People

While God’s people are distinctively blessed, God intends that blessing to extend beyond His people. The well-being of entire cities and nations can be pursued without respect to how the gospel may have been received or rejected.

4.  Growth Rather Than Redistribution

Generosity is certainly a virtue of anyone who would desire to be a blessing in a biblical sense. But being a blessing means something other than merely sharing wealth with equality in view. The basic idea of blessing is that God’s life multiplies and comes to an abundance or fullness by God’s doing.

5.  Blessing Even From the Poor and Powerless

Throughout Genesis, God brought about great blessing through weak, comparatively poor or powerless people. Being a blessing in God’s hand is never the exclusive privilege of those who are wealthy or well-positioned by global standards.

6.  Blessing is Variable, Slow-Forming and Long-Lasting

Changes that can be attributed to God’s blessing often take place over a period of years, generations, or even centuries. The fruition of blessing appears in comparable, but never identical ways in every people or place.

Co-Workers with God to Bring Blessing

We find in the Genesis account a remarkably clear prophetic sketch of the broad scope of God’s purpose for His people. Since God’s promise to Abraham embodies His purpose and our mission, then we are right to expect that our mission will lead to social and material change or transformation. But the main lesson to be learned is not that God’s mission includes concerns for social and physical issues. The greatest lessons we may find are those which show us how to co-work with God to bring forth His blessing. To be God’s blessing among all the peoples will require our utmost effort somehow blended with the exertion of God’s miraculous, life-giving power.

As God continues the fulfillment of His promise in our day, we can learn important lessons about how we can co-work with God from the lives of Abraham’s family. Perhaps the person in Genesis that best exemplifies the mystery of God at work with His people to bring forth blessing is Abraham’s great-grandson Joseph.

1.  Co-working With God

Joseph worked with God and God worked through Joseph. When Potiphar’s household was blessed, the miraculous increase was said to be “the Lord’s blessing.” But the abundance multiplied in extraordinary ways because of the diligence and wisdom of Joseph’s efforts. We see God at work in supernatural ways by giving Joseph abilities to interpret dreams. But it was Joseph’s skill and wisdom, given by God, that put together a long-range plan to help the people of Egypt survive the famine and to restore economic and agricultural abundance.

2.  Working Faithfully Regardless of Position

When Joseph worked as a slave, he worked diligently so that blessing abounded throughout all of his master’s affairs. Even while in Pharaoh’s dungeon as a prisoner, he proved trustworthy and was put in charge of running the prison because “whatever he did, the LORD made to prosper” (Gen 39:23). He was promoted to the highest pinnacle of power in an extensive empire. In that position he was used to save many lives and to restore the fertile agricultural economy of Egypt.

3.    Serving as One Sent by God

Joseph gradually came to understand that he had been sent by God. He could have lived out a story-line of victimization as someone who had been brutalized by his family, unjustly treated as a slave, wrongly accused and forgotten in prison. But instead, he recognized that God was aiming at something far beyond his own well-being. God was using circumstances intended for evil and turning them toward good (50:20). Joseph told his brothers, “God sent me before you to preserve life” (45:5). Joseph is the first person in the story of Scripture who verbalizes a recognition that they have been expressly sent by God to accomplish a mission of any kind.

4.  Accomplishing God’s Purpose

As Joseph stated it, the purpose God sent him to accomplish was simply to “preserve life.” Joseph preserved the lives of his own family, but the grateful exclamation of the Egyptian people tells the greater story of lives saved throughout Egypt and Canaan: “You have saved our lives!” (47:25).

Without clarity about God’s greater purpose unfolding over many years, it’s doubtful that Joseph would have recognized that God had sent him at all. Joseph could have arranged that his remains would have been entombed in grand Egyptian style. Instead, he insisted that his remains be carried back to the land that God had promised Abraham (Gen 50:25, Heb 11:22). Joseph realized that he was pursuing a purpose that would be fulfilled beyond his own life span.

You Have Been Long Awaited

We know that Abraham gazed at the sky, counting the stars, believing that his family would number in the billions. But according to Jesus, Abraham saw more than the sky at night. He saw the day. The Day of Christ. A day in which billions of his children would be blessed and be a blessing among all the peoples of earth. No wonder he was moved with joy. Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).

When John Wesley launched a Church Planting Movement in this context, he not only changed the eternal destinies of an estimated one million people who came to Christ through his ministry, he changed their economic status as well. Not only did the Methodists he led get saved, they got out of poverty and became a powerful influence in discipling their nation. Wilberforce and other “spiritual sons” of Wesley honored him as the “greatest man of his time.”

The Methodists made such an impact on their nation that in 1962 historian Élie Halévy theorized that the Wesleyan revival created England’s middle class and saved England from the kind of bloody revolution that crippled France. Other historians, building on his work, go further to suggest that God used Methodism to show all the oppressed peoples of the world that feeding their souls on the heavenly bread of the lordship of Christ is the path to providing the daily bread their bodies also need.

Could Church Planting Movements of our day apply these same teachings with similar impact?

Personal Impact

Coming to Christ under the influence of the Wesleyan Methodists changed people by making Jesus the Lord of their lives. “Methodists” were given that name because they methodically sought to obey the Lord in all areas of their lives by obeying three main rules:

one, do no harm;

two, do as much good as you can; and

three, use all the means of grace that God has provided.

The resulting spiritual change affected their daily lives in four main ways, each of which improved the social and economic status of the new believers:

First, they abandoned sinful habits which had previously ruined their lives.

Second, they began a new life of holiness which led to health and wealth.

Third, by going to the Methodist meetings they learned to read, which gave them upward mobility.

And fourth, they developed a new view on money, which enabled them to profit from the technological innovations of their age.

Abandon Sinful Habits

Toward helping Methodists obey the first rule, they were gathered into cell groups where they confessed their sins to one another and prayed for one another to receive the self-control which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. They thus aided one another in gaining the strength to abandon sinful habits which had previously ruined their lives and consumed their resources.

In explaining the rule against doing harm, Wesley specifically mentioned drunkenness and fighting. When describing the change made by coming to Christ, he noted “the drunkard commenced sober; the whoremonger abstained from adultery and fornication.” Wesley may have mentioned the three sins of drunkenness, fighting and immorality because their effect was so obvious in his society.

Hogarth’s print, Gin Lane, shows the social decay of Wesley’s age. Gin had recently been invented. One-half of each year’s grain crop was turned into this poisonous liquid instead of being baked into healthful bread. A quarter of the houses in London were licensed to sell it and the police were powerless to stop the crimes of desperate drunken men.

The police were also overwhelmed by the fighting and killing of the mob. The law executed people for 169 capital crimes, but the regular march to the gallows did nothing to make the streets safe at night. Sexual immorality was common at all levels of society, and the nation was overwhelmed with illegitimate children.

When people got saved, they repented of their sinful lives. Forsaking drunkenness, fighting and immorality made obvious changes in their lives. Believers stayed sober and quit doing the crazy and dangerous things intoxicated people do. They stopped fighting and thus avoided the injuries and feuds that destroy productivity. They abandoned promiscuity and started valuing their families and raising their children. Simply renouncing these three self-destructive behaviors greatly improved the economic lives of the Methodists.

Begin a New Life of Holiness

While Wesley’s first general rule stopped the downward path of the Methodists, his second general rule, “Do all the good you can,” led them out of abject poverty. Wesley described this positive change: “The sluggard began to work with his hands, that he might eat his own bread. The miser learned to deal his bread to the hungry, and to cover the naked with a garment. Indeed the whole form of their life was changed: they had ‘left off doing evil, and learned to do well.’”

In his second rule Wesley said that Methodists should live with “all possible diligence and frugality” and “employ them [other Methodists] preferably to others, buying of one another, [and] helping each other in business.”

These new lives of honesty and industry helped some Methodists succeed in business and others to become dependable and truthful employees. Besides raising their incomes, Methodism helped people curtail needless expenses and save their money for worthwhile endeavors. Wesley noted that the disciplines of the Christian life often lifted people from poverty: “For wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which in the natural course of things, must beget riches!”

Learning to Read

A third way in which salvation changed the economic life of Methodists was by teaching them to read. One of the means of grace which Methodists used in obedience to Wesley’s third rule was attending Methodist meetings. At these meetings Methodists were urged to read the Bible and taught to sing to hymns of Charles Wesley. As illiterate people learned to sing these hymns, they also learned to read.

Charles wrote thousand of hymns for the people called Methodist, who usually learned them by singing them one line at a time as they were called out by the song leader. This “lining out” of the hymns enabled the singers to memorize the songs they sang. When John later published the hymns and sold them cheaply, people could match the words they knew by heart with the printed words on the page, and thus teach themselves to read. Since the Methodists usually sang five hymns at every meeting, each gathering functioned as a thirty-minute adult literacy session.

Because literacy was the admission ticket to the middle class, Methodism provided the means for the upward mobility of hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken people.

A New View of Money

Finally, Methodism gave people a new view of money.

Wesley often preached on this topic; his most famous message on money made three points: Gain all you can; save [economize] all you can; give all you can.

First, Methodists were to make as much money as they possibly could. Wesley said that despite its potential for misuse, there was no end to the good money can do: “In the hands of [God’s] children, it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked. It gives to the traveler and the stranger where to lay his head. By it we may supply the place of a husband to the widow, and of a father to the fatherless. We may be a defense for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them that are in pain. It may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame: yea, a lifter up from the gates of death!”

Wesley urged Methodists to gain wealth through honest wisdom and unwearied diligence. “Put your whole strength into the work. Spare no pains,” Wesley exhorted. But make sure the work does no ill to oneself or to the neighbor. Thus Methodists must avoid work with dangerous chemicals or in unhealthy environments. They must also not endanger their souls by any work that involves cheating or lying. Likewise, any trade that hurts the body, mind, or soul of the neighbor is out of bounds. Thus distilling liquor, running a tavern, or peddling patent medicines were forbidden to Methodists.

Wesley’s second injunction, “Save all you can” had many practical implications: save all you can by refusing to gratify the desires of the flesh. “Despise delicacy and variety and be content with what plain nature requires.” Refuse also the desire of the eye with superfluous or expensive clothing, and reject the pride of life, buying nothing to gain the praise or envy of others. Wesley pointed out that gratifying such desires only increases them, so if people were to throw their money into the sea, they would be doing themselves and others less damage than if they bought needless goods.

Finally Wesley told Methodists to “Give all you can.” He pointed out that all money comes from God, and that people are not the owners, but only the trustees, of God’s money. He said that God wants believers to make sure that they and their families have adequate food, housing, clothing, tools and savings to do all the work which God has appointed for them to do. He then stated that any money beyond these necessities must be given to the poor. “Render unto God not the tenth, nor a third, not half, but all that is God’s (be it more or less) by employing it all on yourself, your household, the household of faith, and all mankind in such a manner that you may give a good account of your stewardship.”

Altogether, this advice stirred Methodists to become “early adopters” and to benefit from the new opportunities the Industrial Revolution afforded.

Wesley’s teaching to pursue wealth in order to use it for good was not without its danger. Toward the end of his life he gave increasing attention to the dangerous temptation to justify buying whatever we can afford.

Discipling the Nation

Coming to Christ through the Methodist movement changed the lives of a million people in Britain and North America in the eighteenth century. As in other cases of “redemption and lift” through the power of the Gospel, most of these people and their children moved from the desperation of hand-to-mouth poverty to the security of middle-class life as they made Christ their Lord and experienced the impact of His power on their economic lives.

As these people moved up the social ladder, they began to influence the political life of their nation. They helped to transform Britain from an eighteenth-century kleptocracy—where the powerful fueled their lives of indulgence by exploiting the poor, into a nineteenth-century democracy—which abolished slavery and used its empire to enrich the lives of every subject of the crown.f

For Further Study

Here are three worthy efforts to summarize Wesley’s influence and/or his perspective on money:

England Before and After Wesley by Donald Andrew is a distillation of John Wesley Bready’s 1939 book by the same title. www.currah.info/pages/dis744/england-before-and-after-wesley.pdf.

Four Lessons on Money From One of the World’s Richest Preachers is my own more detailed analysis of Wesley’s teaching, model and observations www.ChristianityToday.com/ch/1988/issue19/1921.html

What Wesley Practiced and Preached About Money is adapted from Four Lessons on Money http://www.MissionFrontiers.org/issue/article/what-wesley-practiced-and-preached-about-money

Water, Water Everywhere

The link between poverty and water can be measured in competition, cost/convenience, purification, and sanitation with education.5
Competition arises where limited water is available for drinking, irrigation and industry. Those in power control water resources, and the poor lose when the supply is reduced.
Cost/convenience reflects the daily effort required to access sufficient water. People can only live near water, but for the poor, the time-cost of obtaining “cleaner” water often interferes with education or profitable employment. The poor frequently…
fetch water from a distance,
use sources of questionable quality,
risk contamination of stored water,
rely on unethical providers, and
pay more than those with plumbing.6
(Many excellent charity-based well-drilling ministries are whittling away at this access problem.)7
Purification is an increasing global challenge—from biological, natural, agricultural, industrial, and pharmaceutical contaminants.8 The poor must use the most questionable water, and can become a breeding ground for diseases that threaten everyone in their communities. So helping the poor access clean water benefits their whole community. Historically, purification has only been viable at a community level, through urban treatment filtering of well water. (Wells improve quality and access, but must be monitored, maintained, and protected.)
Sanitation with education is another vital factor. The poor most often lack basic understanding regarding contamination, and opportunity to apply that understanding. This is one reason literacy is such a powerful weapon against poverty.9

Getting Personal

New, inexpensive filter purification technology makes possible a revolution in clean water access akin to what the cell phone is doing for services and information.10 Individual house churches or families can now use and care for their own personal filter and share it with others, enabling use of local unimproved sources and serving as a safety net for community treatment.11
When disasters compromise community water treatment,12 portable filters can continue serving in an evacuation.

Turning Wine into Clean Water?

Steve Downey13 and Nick Noll,14 my collaborators for this article, have identified two filters developed since 2008 (Sawyer® and Berkey®) which exceed EPA standards for water purifiers and appear most useful for missionaries and those they serve.15 Neither is yet capable of turning wine back into water, but both are …
effective for nearly all pathogens,
low-cost and low-maintenance,
long-lasting and fully portable,
and “fail-safe” (plug up rather than allowing pathogens through).

Church Planting Movements

Large-scale efforts to address poverty can be hindered by corruption at high levels and/or spiritual forces which rob the poor of their initiative and creativity. The collective discipling, personal transformation and trust relationships which develop in Church Planting Movements (CPMs) produce the kind of “spiritual capital”16 necessary to sustain businesses that break the poverty cycle.
CPMs are flourishing among the poor, and the relational discipling of CPMs creates an ideal environment for the propagation of literacy and hygiene education. Even before the advent of CPMs, Frank Laubach is credited with bringing literacy to a hundred million people through his emphasis on How to Teach One and Win One for Christ; Christ’s Plan for Winning the World (Zondervan, 1964). How much more will God do in our day as we encourage and assist CPMs to be active in lifting their members and their communities out of poverty?

The Business of Business

A few years ago Landa Cope’s materials first helped me see the key role business has in providing employment and reducing the cost of goods and services. Charity can help in a crisis, but generally …
reduces personal initiative,
undermines local businesses,
hinders long-term growth, and
are unsustainable.
In contrast, business models can …
cultivate personal initiative,
generate income for house church leaders and their coaches, and
sustainably reduce the local cost of goods.
The time is ripe for business initiatives to reduce the cost of clean water through the sale of new filtering technology. Through microfinance loans individuals could purchase filters on credit to be repaid from …
reduced medical expenses,
productivity gains, and/or
selling clean water to others at a reduction of their current cost.
Of the two filters mentioned above, the Sawyer® is best suited for poverty contexts with high levels of water-borne disease. It…
improves health and productivity,
is low-cost and lasts for years, and
filters rapidly enough for on-demand use.
The other filter mentioned above, the Berkey®, removes a much wider range of EPA recognized dissolved contaminants17 and still costs less than 2¢/gallon for replacement filters. Both companies are owned by Evangelicals, but Sawyer® is more aggressively pursuing sustainable business models for providing the world’s poor with clean water.
Retired missionary Lou Haveman is coordinating Sawyer®’s global distribution. To learn more visit Business-Connect.net/water-business.f
Note: As of this writing, none of the authors of this article have a financial interest in Sawyer® filters. However Nick’s business sells 40+ other brands of filters, including Berkey® filters, and will soon be carrying Sawyer® filters as well.
Toward experimenting with business models that reward everyone’s involvement, Robby and Nick have worked out a deal for interested missionaries and their friends to share in a group discount on Berkey® filter systems and portable water bottles, plus a commission for referring others. See the paid ad for Berkey® filters on page 13.
1  As quoted in my May MF article: Church Planting Movements from One Indian Perspective
2  http://wsscc.org/media/vital-statistics
3  http://siwi.org/documents/Resources/Water_Front_Articles/2007/WF4-07_A_Little_Light_Relief.pdf
4  Next Generation Business Strategies for the Base of the Pyramid: New Approaches for Building Mutual Value by Ted London and Stuart Hart (FT Press, 2010), and The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by C. K. Prahalad (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009).
5  WaterSanitationHygiene.org
6  The Poor Pay More http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR06-complete.pdf (pp 51–53)
7  clean-water-for-laymen.com/clean-water-organizations.html and hydromissions.com/links.htm
8  The difference between biological and other contaminants is comparable to the difference between a pipe bomb and a nuclear bomb. Biological contaminants multiply and spread, while other contaminants (such as the Chlorine often used to control pathogens) only affect the one who ingests them.
9  From 2002–2005, Mission India provided literacy training for 74,000 people with an initial average daily income of 77¢—well below the U.N. poverty standard of $1/day. Through this one-year, two hour/night training, average income rose by an average of 57%, as reported in Is Hearing Enough? Literacy and the Great Commandment (WCL, 2010), pp 76-77.
10 “Cell phones increasingly make banking and other key services available to the very poor, along with information to guard them from price-gouging.”—Gary Edmonds, former secretary-general of the World Evangelical Alliance, and president of Breakthrough Partners.
11 Even in the U.S., centralized treatment can fail. In 1993 403,000 people became ill and 69 died when a Milwaukee treatment plant became infected, costing $32 million for medical care and $65 million in lost productivity.
12 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita impacted 800 treatment plants, affecting five million people, and placed uncounted wells under “boil” restriction. http://mceer.buffalo.edu/publications/Katrina/07-SP02web.pdf
13 A Lifewater-trained volunteer with experience in Kenya (with River International and Harvest Keepers) and Latin America (River International). Steve is the author of http://clean-water-for-laymen.com
14 A second-generation MK with a passion to address water needs through 911Water.com
15 Similar but less suitable filters discovered in our research include reverse osmosis, Katadyn®, and Lifesaver®. Nick and my wife independently researched filtrations options and, like many missionaries, settled on Berkey® filters for our home use.
16 See “Spiritual Capital” by Ken Eldred, on p. 11 of this issue.
17 Water.EPA.gov/drink/contaminants/upload/mcl-2.pdf

The Unforgettable Woman

Jesus’ statement appears in a story that has nothing to do with the poor. It is about a woman Jesus said we will always remember. Just before the Lord’s supper and arrest, this woman poured a jar of expensive perfume on Jesus’ head.
Jesus knew the woman was preparing him for burial. She understood before the disciples that Jesus was headed to the cross.
The disciples criticize this act of devotion: “Why this waste? … The perfume could have been sold and given to the poor.”
Jesus’ reply is withering: “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” He understood her act and considered it a wonderful gift.
It is at this point that Jesus quotes and extends Deuteronomy 15: “The poor will always be with you, but you will not always have me.” Only He and the woman seemed to understand that Jesus would not always be with the disciples.

The Mistaken Activist

There is an important lesson here for Christians working among the poor. Too many justify ruining their health and destroying their families by their commitment to the poor.
This is not what Jesus asks us to do. Our devotion must be to Him, not the poor. While we are supposed to love our neighbor, especially our poor neighbor, we are to worship only Jesus. The woman understood this, and the disciples did not.

The Poor that Aren’t Supposed to be There

By now you can see that I am uncomfortable with the way Jesus’ statement is sometimes taken out of context. My disappointment is increased because a little curiosity about the passage Jesus quoted could greatly increase our understanding of God, His people and the poor.
The portion of Deuteronomy from which Jesus quotes starts with a complete contradiction of what Jesus’ quotes. Dt 15:4 states, “There should be no poor among you….”
Really?
The rest of verse four explains why: “… because in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, He will richly bless you.” There were to be no poor because there would be plenty.
And there would be more than enough. “For the Lord your God will bless you as He has promised, and you will lend to many nations, but have to borrow from none” (v. 6). There would be a surplus to trade with other nations.
I believe that the loving, caring God who created the world never intended a world of scarcity. I can believe this before I can believe God intended the poor to always be with us.
But there was a condition. “He will richly bless you, only if you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today.” The blessing and abundance of the Promised Land are dependent on the faithfulness of God’s people to God’s commands.
It is at this point that an apparent contradiction first enters the text as God commands: “If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather be openhanded and freely lend to him whatever he needs.”
How can this be? We were just told “there should be no poor among you,” and now we are given instructions about to what to do if there is a poor person. Did Moses get confused? Is this a contradiction?
I don’t think so.

The Ones who Failed

God knows that there will be poor in Israel, not because God failed to provide, but because humans would not be faithful to God nor to each other. There had to be provision for the poor in the Promised Land because Israel would fail.
And so it is today, I suspect. There is enough agricultural production to feed every person on the planet. Yet people are dying of hunger and chronic malnutrition stunts the growth of children.
It is not that God’s planet cannot provide, but that we do not follow His commands. We neither love God nor love our neighbors.

What Jesus Really Meant

So what did Jesus mean when He said, “the poor will always be with you?” Did He mean poverty is something we should tolerate?
I don’t think so.

First, Jesus was making a point about worship. He only referred to the poor after the disciples proposed they were more worthy of this woman’s devotion.
Second, Jesus was being ironic. In quoting from this passage, Jesus was letting His disciples know there are only poor in God’s abundant creation because of human sin. “The poor will always be with you,” was a rebuke to His disciples.
The passage in Deuteronomy closes with a command. After the verse, “There will always be poor people in the land,” we find this: “Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land” (v. 11).
God knew humankind would face this contradiction. His world is productive enough to meet everyone’s needs. And humans created in His image are creative enough to make it so.
Yet sin in the heart and a fallen creation result in God’s world not being all it was created to be. While God didn’t intend there to be any poor, He knew there would be poor as long as there are sinful people.
Jesus statement that the poor will always be with us is intended to shame us; to remind us that there are poor only because we have failed. He never intended to justify tolerance to the point of neglecting the poor.

The Message for Us

What are we to conclude?

First, Jesus was not condoning the existence of the poor. He was reminding us, with some considerable irony, that the poor are here because we have failed to keep God’s commands.
Second, unrighteousness—of those who are not poor and the poor themselves—is the cause of poverty. At the most fundamental level sin distorts our relationships with God, with each other and with our world. Our relationships do not work for our well-being and the result is poverty, racism and other expressions of injustice. Poverty was and is not part of God’s intention.
Third, to tolerate poverty by excusing it in Jesus’ name is an insult to our Lord, who so consistently extended Himself for those who were poor, sick and suffering. Tolerating poverty makes a mockery of Jesus statement of His mission in Luke 4:18.
Finally, our response to the poor is to be openhanded, and to enjoy sharing what God has given us. “Give generously to him (the poor) and do so without a grudging heart” (v 10). As a result the “Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your had to.” Caring for the poor is good for us!
As long as we live in a fallen world, we are to be openhanded and to lend freely. If loans are not repaid after seven years, we are to write them off. The goal is caring for our family, not running a business.
After all, if we were doing our job, there would be no poor. It’s our fault, not God’s.f

• Our broken relationship with God is the essence of spiritual poverty.
• Our broken relationship with others and with community is social poverty.
• Our broken relationship with our environment and our broken self-view (or relationship with self) have been damaged by sin.
Myers states, “Poverty is a result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable.”31 In short, poverty is a consequence of sin.

Poverty Is a Lie

Compassion President Dr. Wess Stafford offers a view of poverty that has some similarities to those described above. Stafford describes the marred identity and disempowerment as being caused by false messages. He stresses that these false messages have their greatest impact during childhood.
At its very core, poverty is a mindset that goes far beyond the tragic circumstances. It is the cruel, destructive message that gets whispered into the ears of millions by the enemy Satan himself: “Give up! You don’t matter. Nobody cares about you. Look around you: Things are terrible. Always have been, always will be. Think back. Your grandfather was a failure. Your parents couldn’t protect or take care of you. Now it’s your turn. You, too, will fail. So just give up!”32
When a child (or adult) believes that lie, then he is poor. Poverty described in these terms is primarily an internal condition resulting from an external message of oppression. The internal condition is one of disempowerment, fatalism, hopelessness and lack of initiative. The person in this condition will often be a victim of his circumstances rather than an agent of positive change in his community. That person’s extremely low self-view will translate into a low regard for others and likely into damaged relationships. Damaged relationships then reciprocate and reinforce the message of worthlessness. The belief that “it won’t get any better” may undermine initiative. It may not matter how many opportunities are created, because the effort of striving, risking and capitalizing on those opportunities requires a belief in the possibility of a better future. The majority of individuals in that state are incapable of transformational development. To sum it up in one word, they lack hope, and hope is a major engine of growth and wellness.
The marred identity includes a self-view of powerlessness, of being victim to circumstance, of not only low self-esteem but also a projection of low value on others in community. When one sees poverty as having its root in human identity (self-concept), then it profoundly impacts the strategies chosen for development.
When one defines poverty primarily as an internal condition resulting from external devaluing messages, it holds significant implications for poverty-fighting strategies. One must ask: How and when did the internal condition become entrenched? How can “the lie” be exposed and the person freed from its oppression? Can we prevent it from being heard or being believed?
It also becomes clear that when the lie is deeply entrenched in later stages of human development (adults) it is difficult to reverse. However, intervening early in human development, during childhood, offers the best opportunity to reverse or prevent the lie from gaining traction in the identity-shaping stages of human development.
There are pivotal moments in human development, defining moments, that shape long-term self-view and identity. Those pivotal moments must be won by truth and not by the lie. The lie speaks in abuse; the truth must protect. The lie speaks by ignoring; the truth must listen. The lie criticizes; the truth must praise. The voice of truth must carry throughout the early and most vulnerable stage of human development to break the power of the lie.
In cases like these, the poverty-fighting strategies are driven by the question: How do we introduce the voice and message of truth? The voice that says, “You do matter! Your thoughts and feelings are important! Don’t give up! It can get better! You are full of God-given potential to change it!” The lie can be a pervasive voice and a long-term presence in the environment of the child. The message of truth, spoken and demonstrated in the life of the child, must be equally persistent and focused in order to prevail.
As Stafford described it, poverty is defeated when the young lady who grew up in the slum sees the damage in her world and says, “See what’s going on over there? That’s wrong — and I can fix it.”33 The strategic importance of childhood in social transformation is addressed in a separate Compassion Ministry Philosophy Paper.
The statement “poverty is a lie” is not meant to deny the reality of poverty. Poverty is absolutely real. Nor is the statement meant to imply that overcoming poverty is as simple as a change of mind. The statement certainly does not mean to blame the victims in the sense that they were the ones who chose to believe this lie. Rather, the concept conveys the idea that we are surrounded by false messages about who we are — about our nature, power and value. These messages mask the truth of our identity: We are people made in the image of God, granted unique talents by God and capable of receiving the Holy Spirit. We are dearly loved by God. All of us believe the lie to some degree, but for the poor, it is debilitating.
Endnotes
Chapter 8 – Internal Conditions and External Circumstances of Poverty

25. Christian, J. (1994). Powerlessness of the poor: Toward an alternative kingdom of God based paradigm of response. Ph.D. Thesis. Fuller Theological Seminary.
26. “Inadequate worldview,” as described by Myers, 75. Myers B. (1999) Walking with the poor. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
27. “God complexes,” as described by Myers, are those tendencies that the wealthy have to view themselves as heroes in the story of the poor. In short, those who have money and power might feel they’ve been given divine responsibility and divine right to rescue the poor.
28. The “marred identity” is that tendency among the poor to see themselves as having little value, potential or power to create a better future.
29. A similar model was proposed by Chambers in 1983 (Myers, 67). Ravi Jayakaran has also expressed poverty as a lack of freedom to grow and that bondage is seen in mental, spiritual, social and physical forms (Jayakaran 1996, 14; Myers, 80).
30. Myers, B. (1999). Walking with the poor. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
31. Ibid.
32. Stafford, W. (2007). Too small to ignore. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press.
33. Ibid.

• Our broken relationship with God is the essence of spiritual poverty.
• Our broken relationship with others and with community is social poverty.
• Our broken relationship with our environment and our broken self-view (or relationship with self) have been damaged by sin.
Myers states, “Poverty is a result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable.”31 In short, poverty is a consequence of sin.

Poverty Is a Lie

Compassion President Dr. Wess Stafford offers a view of poverty that has some similarities to those described above. Stafford describes the marred identity and disempowerment as being caused by false messages. He stresses that these false messages have their greatest impact during childhood.
At its very core, poverty is a mindset that goes far beyond the tragic circumstances. It is the cruel, destructive message that gets whispered into the ears of millions by the enemy Satan himself: “Give up! You don’t matter. Nobody cares about you. Look around you: Things are terrible. Always have been, always will be. Think back. Your grandfather was a failure. Your parents couldn’t protect or take care of you. Now it’s your turn. You, too, will fail. So just give up!”32
When a child (or adult) believes that lie, then he is poor. Poverty described in these terms is primarily an internal condition resulting from an external message of oppression. The internal condition is one of disempowerment, fatalism, hopelessness and lack of initiative. The person in this condition will often be a victim of his circumstances rather than an agent of positive change in his community. That person’s extremely low self-view will translate into a low regard for others and likely into damaged relationships. Damaged relationships then reciprocate and reinforce the message of worthlessness. The belief that “it won’t get any better” may undermine initiative. It may not matter how many opportunities are created, because the effort of striving, risking and capitalizing on those opportunities requires a belief in the possibility of a better future. The majority of individuals in that state are incapable of transformational development. To sum it up in one word, they lack hope, and hope is a major engine of growth and wellness.
The marred identity includes a self-view of powerlessness, of being victim to circumstance, of not only low self-esteem but also a projection of low value on others in community. When one sees poverty as having its root in human identity (self-concept), then it profoundly impacts the strategies chosen for development.
When one defines poverty primarily as an internal condition resulting from external devaluing messages, it holds significant implications for poverty-fighting strategies. One must ask: How and when did the internal condition become entrenched? How can “the lie” be exposed and the person freed from its oppression? Can we prevent it from being heard or being believed?
It also becomes clear that when the lie is deeply entrenched in later stages of human development (adults) it is difficult to reverse. However, intervening early in human development, during childhood, offers the best opportunity to reverse or prevent the lie from gaining traction in the identity-shaping stages of human development.
There are pivotal moments in human development, defining moments, that shape long-term self-view and identity. Those pivotal moments must be won by truth and not by the lie. The lie speaks in abuse; the truth must protect. The lie speaks by ignoring; the truth must listen. The lie criticizes; the truth must praise. The voice of truth must carry throughout the early and most vulnerable stage of human development to break the power of the lie.
In cases like these, the poverty-fighting strategies are driven by the question: How do we introduce the voice and message of truth? The voice that says, “You do matter! Your thoughts and feelings are important! Don’t give up! It can get better! You are full of God-given potential to change it!” The lie can be a pervasive voice and a long-term presence in the environment of the child. The message of truth, spoken and demonstrated in the life of the child, must be equally persistent and focused in order to prevail.
As Stafford described it, poverty is defeated when the young lady who grew up in the slum sees the damage in her world and says, “See what’s going on over there? That’s wrong — and I can fix it.”33 The strategic importance of childhood in social transformation is addressed in a separate Compassion Ministry Philosophy Paper.
The statement “poverty is a lie” is not meant to deny the reality of poverty. Poverty is absolutely real. Nor is the statement meant to imply that overcoming poverty is as simple as a change of mind. The statement certainly does not mean to blame the victims in the sense that they were the ones who chose to believe this lie. Rather, the concept conveys the idea that we are surrounded by false messages about who we are — about our nature, power and value. These messages mask the truth of our identity: We are people made in the image of God, granted unique talents by God and capable of receiving the Holy Spirit. We are dearly loved by God. All of us believe the lie to some degree, but for the poor, it is debilitating.
Endnotes
Chapter 8 – Internal Conditions and External Circumstances of Poverty

25. Christian, J. (1994). Powerlessness of the poor: Toward an alternative kingdom of God based paradigm of response. Ph.D. Thesis. Fuller Theological Seminary.
26. “Inadequate worldview,” as described by Myers, 75. Myers B. (1999) Walking with the poor. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
27. “God complexes,” as described by Myers, are those tendencies that the wealthy have to view themselves as heroes in the story of the poor. In short, those who have money and power might feel they’ve been given divine responsibility and divine right to rescue the poor.
28. The “marred identity” is that tendency among the poor to see themselves as having little value, potential or power to create a better future.
29. A similar model was proposed by Chambers in 1983 (Myers, 67). Ravi Jayakaran has also expressed poverty as a lack of freedom to grow and that bondage is seen in mental, spiritual, social and physical forms (Jayakaran 1996, 14; Myers, 80).
30. Myers, B. (1999). Walking with the poor. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
31. Ibid.
32. Stafford, W. (2007). Too small to ignore. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press.
33. Ibid.

Bryant Myers describes poverty in terms of relationships damaged by sin:

• Our broken relationship with God is the essence of spiritual poverty.
• Our broken relationship with others and with community is social poverty.
• Our broken relationship with our environment and our broken self-view (or relationship with self) have been damaged by sin.
Myers states, “Poverty is a result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable.”³¹ In short, poverty is a consequence of sin.

Poverty Is a Lie

Compassion President Dr. Wess Stafford offers a view of poverty that has some similarities to those described above. Stafford describes the marred identity and disempowerment as being caused by false messages. He stresses that these false messages have their greatest impact during childhood.
At its very core, poverty is a mindset that goes far beyond the tragic circumstances. It is the cruel, destructive message that gets whispered into the ears of millions by the enemy Satan himself: “Give up! You don’t matter. Nobody cares about you. Look around you: Things are terrible. Always have been, always will be. Think back. Your grandfather was a failure. Your parents couldn’t protect or take care of you. Now it’s your turn. You, too, will fail. So just give up!”³²
When a child (or adult) believes that lie, then he is poor. Poverty described in these terms is primarily an internal condition resulting from an external message of oppression. The internal condition is one of disempowerment, fatalism, hopelessness and lack of initiative. The person in this condition will often be a victim of his circumstances rather than an agent of positive change in his community. That person’s extremely low self-view will translate into a low regard for others and likely into damaged relationships. Damaged relationships then reciprocate and reinforce the message of worthlessness. The belief that “it won’t get any better” may undermine initiative. It may not matter how many opportunities are created, because the effort of striving, risking and capitalizing on those opportunities requires a belief in the possibility of a better future. The majority of individuals in that state are incapable of transformational development. To sum it up in one word, they lack hope, and hope is a major engine of growth and wellness.
The marred identity includes a self-view of powerlessness, of being victim to circumstance, of not only low self-esteem but also a projection of low value on others in community. When one sees poverty as having its root in human identity (self-concept), then it profoundly impacts the strategies chosen for development.
When one defines poverty primarily as an internal condition resulting from external devaluing messages, it holds significant implications for poverty-fighting strategies. One must ask: How and when did the internal condition become entrenched? How can “the lie” be exposed and the person freed from its oppression? Can we prevent it from being heard or being believed?
It also becomes clear that when the lie is deeply entrenched in later stages of human development (adults) it is difficult to reverse. However, intervening early in human development, during childhood, offers the best opportunity to reverse or prevent the lie from gaining traction in the identity-shaping stages of human development.
There are pivotal moments in human development, defining moments, that shape long-term self-view and identity. Those pivotal moments must be won by truth and not by the lie. The lie speaks in abuse; the truth must protect. The lie speaks by ignoring; the truth must listen. The lie criticizes; the truth must praise. The voice of truth must carry throughout the early and most vulnerable stage of human development to break the power of the lie.
In cases like these, the poverty-fighting strategies are driven by the question: How do we introduce the voice and message of truth? The voice that says, “You do matter! Your thoughts and feelings are important! Don’t give up! It can get better! You are full of God-given potential to change it!” The lie can be a pervasive voice and a long-term presence in the environment of the child. The message of truth, spoken and demonstrated in the life of the child, must be equally persistent and focused in order to prevail.
As Stafford described it, poverty is defeated when the young lady who grew up in the slum sees the damage in her world and says, “See what’s going on over there? That’s wrong — and I can fix it.”³³ The strategic importance of childhood in social transformation is addressed in a separate Compassion Ministry Philosophy Paper.
The statement “poverty is a lie” is not meant to deny the reality of poverty. Poverty is absolutely real. Nor is the statement meant to imply that overcoming poverty is as simple as a change of mind. The statement certainly does not mean to blame the victims in the sense that they were the ones who chose to believe this lie. Rather, the concept conveys the idea that we are surrounded by false messages about who we are — about our nature, power and value. These messages mask the truth of our identity: We are people made in the image of God, granted unique talents by God and capable of receiving the Holy Spirit. We are dearly loved by God. All of us believe the lie to some degree, but for the poor, it is debilitating.

Endnotes

Chapter 8 – Internal Conditions and External Circumstances of Poverty
31. Myers, B. (1999). Walking with the poor. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
32. Stafford, W. (2007). Too small to ignore. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press.
33. Ibid.